Feminist legal geographies of intimate-image sexual abuse: Using copyright logic to combat the unauthorized distribution of celebrity intimate images in cyberspaces

Elizabeth Farries and Tristan Sturm
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Elizabeth Farries: Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Tristan Sturm: Queen’s University Belfast, UK

Environment and Planning A, 2019, vol. 51, issue 5, 1145-1165

Abstract: Women’s rights are often curtailed online due to the pervasive internet atmosphere of cybermisogyny. Extreme examples include ‘image-based sexual abuse’, a term which encompasses the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images. The harms attached to this phenomenon are well documented. In this paper, we explore how copyright logic, despite its male-centric and property oriented worldview, presents one legal solution to this problem. We assert that Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notices, a copyright mechanism that notifies websites they are hosting infringing content and requires the prompt removal of the content, represents a novel legal mechanism to force websites to remove image-based sexual abuse from women’s online spaces. By using critical discourse analysis to review how Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notices attempt to provide solutions to the socio-spatial problem of image-based sexual abuse, we argue that copyright can subvert its current leanings to return to its original purpose: supporting creativity. Supporting creativity also helps to protect against the reproduction of gendered harms, from the real world to virtual spaces. This theorization represents not just legal geography but a feminist legal geography, in that it recognizes the internet should be a safe and legal space for women. In endorsing a pragmatic legal solution for women to regulate the sexually violent and nonconsensual distribution of their intimate images online, copyright is one mechanism that affirms women’s right to cyberspaces.

Keywords: Nonconsensual pornography; copyright; cybermisogyny; Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown; notices; legal geography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:51:y:2019:i:5:p:1145-1165

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X18786964

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