Teacher on leave after photos from stolen phone post to revenge porn website

[Xithras]

5. Revenge porn is a tricky legal area.

Under federal law, if you pose nude for a picture that I take, I own that picture. Unless you can prove that I took the photo without your knowledge, or while you were incapable of giving consent, or were under the terms of a legal contract that limited its distribution, then I can do anything I want with the photo. You may be the subject of the image, but the image itself is my property. Under federal law, I can sell or distribute it however I see fit.

If you take a nude photo of yourself and its stolen or you send it to someone who later distributes it, you have a few legal remedies available to you because you own the copyright to the image. You can sue the person who distributed it, and you can issue takedown notices to any sites that display it.

A few states, like California, have also passed laws that have made it a crime to post photos on line with the intent to humiliate the subject, but I don't know of any prosecutions yet. There are also some real questions about how effective those laws are going to be, as the legality of the posting will come down to intent, and not action. In other words, if I take a private photo of you and sell it to a website for money, I haven't broken any laws...but if I post that same image to the same website just for "revenge" I'll be committing a crime. Only time will tell how effective the laws will be, but I wouldn't hold my breath on them having much impact.