Google cracks down on revenge porn, here's what Indians should know

Google cracks down on revenge porn, here's what Indians should know
Google cracks down on revenge porn, here's what Indians should know

  Last year, a 22-year-old college student from Udupi in Karnataka was horrified when she discovered that her ex-boyfriend had posted intimate images of them on social media and pornographic websites after they broke up. The girl immediately filed a complaint and the boy was subsequently arrested by the police. She is one of several people in India who have fallen victim to “revenge porn”. On June 19, Google Search published a policy stating that they would honour the requests of those who have been victims of “revenge porn” and remove nude or sexually explicit images shared without their consent from Google Search results.  The move is being hailed from all quarters, although some have called it a “narrow and limited” policy, meaning it will be considered only after a removal request has been made. In February and March this year, Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit too had announced that it had banned revenge porn on their sites. Revenge porn is basically a jilted partner posting nude, explicit or private photos of the subject on websites without his/her consent in an attempt to humiliate them. According to law professor at University of Miami, Mary Anne Franks, “revenge porn” is a misnomer, instead, “non-consensual pornography” is the appropriate term, she says. The crime is rather new, but can wreak havoc in the victim’s life subjecting him/her to online harassment, social alienation, depression among other things. To address the issue, 21 states in US have outlawed revenge porn in the last two years, with legislation on the anvil in as many as 17 other states. A non-profit organisation Cyber Civil Rights Initiative is now trying to push a federal or national-level legislation to have a uniform law across all states. In India, however, there is no concrete legislation specifically targeting the crime. In cases where the victim’s nude or obscene photos are uploaded without consent, the accused is booked under different sections of the Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). A report here says that a subject can book cases of defamation under Section 500, criminal intimidation and file charges under Sections 504 and 506 of IPC and Section 66E and 67A under the IT Act also provide legal remedies under which one can charge the accused. But is this really sufficient? Though there is no specific data on the number of revenge crimes that are reported in India, incidents of cyber –related crime have shot up significantly.  According to National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) data up to July 2014, there has been a 63.7 per cent rise in cyber offences from 2012 to 2013. The category "transmission of obscene content in electronic form” witnesses a sudden explosion in the number of cases with a 104.2 per cent increase than the previous year. Though present law does have provisions to book a culprit for such violations, what India needs is a stringent and separate law specifically for revenge porn, similar to that of US, with harsher punishments to tackle the latest cyber-crime that is on the rise.  

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