NEWS
Monday, September 15, 2014 11
Cover
Food
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» continued from page 9
Several American states have criminalized revenge
porn, and Canada is working it into its cyberbullying law, Bill C-13. Although the Canadian proposal
still has problems that need to be worked out—like
not criminalizing unwanted targets (e.g. unwitting
teenagers) and its privacy violations (see the Supreme
Court of Canada’s decision in R v Spencer)—it’s a step
in the right direction.
The easiest current law to removing unwanted
images from the internet has nothing at all to do with
revenge porn or the theft of nude photographs. The
entertainment industry has been working hard for
the past couple of decades to remove pirated media
from the web. Take down notices are sent for copyright infringement, lawsuits are threatened. But for
personal matters, do the assailants or websites really
care? Users of social sharing sites like Reddit and
4Chan seem reluctant to take down the images of the
affected celebrities and continue to share them with
impunity.
The law should be strengthened to protect victims
of involuntary or revenge porn, provide the requisite
tools to remove the unwanted images from websites,
and create offences for the theft and sharing of them.
With all that being said, it’s time for some fun and
engagement in some criminal law analysis. If this
were a fact pattern, would the situation fit the crime?
Say Person A hacks into Person B’s personal computer, steals private nude images, and posts them on
the internet. Person A does this for the purpose of
creating porn and humiliating the women.
Turning to my trusty Criminal Code (and first
year criminal law summary), let’s put the provisions together. Section 265(1)(a) states that assault
occurs when a person, without the consent of
another person, applies force intentionally to that
other person, directly or indirectly. Section 271 gives
us sexual assault and Canadian case law has given us
two versions of the crime. Assault of a sexual nature
occurs when the sexual integrity of the victim is violated, whether it is for the intent of sexual gratification or for power, aggression, or control.
To my eye, the only (and major) thing unaddressed
is the assault itself. The internet removes the physicality of the act. In our digitalized age, the groundwork tends to already be done for the assailant. And
it would be a stretch to interpret the indirectly from
section 265(1)(a) as applying to the hacking a digital image. The voyeurism offence (section 162) seems
better suited, but applying it to already created
recordings runs into the same problem.
There is clearly a gap in the law. Combatting cyber
sexual assault is a vital element of improving our digital privacy. Yet for now, the creation and distribution of involuntary porn and revenge porn amounts
to little more than, as Jennifer Lawrence’s representatives put it, “A flagrant violation of privacy.” That
should probably change. ◆
LLBO licensed
Cost
Lakeview has $3 mimosas and $4 drink specials daily.
If you are a proponent of the “hair of the dog” theory,
this might just be the place for you.
A mimosa, coffee, and eggs benny ran at $18.75 plus
tax; the double eggy in a basket was two dollars
less. ◆
The Food
The menu is huge and overwhelming. There are nine
kinds of eggs benedict, in addition to about ten other
brunch choi