Revenge porn is the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent. The material may have been made by a partner in an intimate relationship with the knowledge and consent of the subject at the time, or it may have been made without their knowledge. The subject may have experienced sexual violence during the recording of the material, in some cases facilitated by narcotics such as "date rape" drugs which also cause a reduced sense of pain and involvement in the sexual act, dissociative effects and amnesia. The possession of the material may be used by the perpetrators to blackmail the subjects into performing other sexual acts, to coerce them into continuing a relationship or to punish them for ending one, to silence them, to damage their reputation, and/or for financial gain. In the wake of civil lawsuits and the increasing numbers of reported incidents, legislation has been passed in a number of countries and jurisdictions to outlaw the practice, though approaches have varied and been changed over the years. The practice has also been described as a form of psychological abuse and domestic violence, as well as a form of sexual abuse.
Revenge porn most commonly refers to the uploading of sexually explicit material to the Internet to humiliate and intimidate a subject who has broken off a relationship. The term is also often misused to describe non-revenge scenarios, including nonconsensual pornography distributed by hackers or by individuals seeking profit or notoriety (more properly referred to by the terms non-consensual intimate imagery, NCII, or image-based sexual abuse, IBSA). The images are usually accompanied by sufficient information to identify the pictured individual (a process known as doxing), typically names and locations, and can include risqué comments, links to social media profiles, home addresses, and workplaces. In some cases victims are exposed to workplace discrimination, cyber-stalking or physical attack. Some companies search the Internet for potential sources of bad publicity, resulting in many victims of revenge porn losing their jobs and finding themselves effectively unhirable. Some academics argue that the term "revenge porn" should not be used, and instead that it should be referred to as "image-based sexual abuse."
Jurisdictions which have passed laws against revenge porn include Canada, Germany, Italy, Israel, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, 48/50 states of the United States—plus Washington, D.C., the U.S. military and U.S. territories including Puerto Rico and Guam. Australia has also passed a law at the Commonwealth level that commenced on 1 September 2018. The Australian states and territories of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania, have complementary state level laws that criminalize this behaviour. Furthermore, Australia also has a civil penalties scheme.
Background
In the 1980s, Hustler magazine began a monthly feature of reader-submitted images of naked women called "Beaver Hunt". Beaver Hunt photographs were often accompanied by details about the woman, like her hobbies, her sexual fantasies, and sometimes her name. Not all of the women featured in Beaver Hunt submitted their own images and several women sued the magazine for publishing their photographs without their permission, or without verifying information on forged consent forms.
Two decades later, Italian researcher Sergio Messina identified "realcore pornography", a new genre consisting of images and videos of ex-girlfriends distributed through Usenet groups. In 2008, amateur porn aggregator XTube began receiving complaints that pornographic content had been posted without subjects' consent. Several sites began staging consensual pornography to resemble revenge porn, as well as hosting "authentic" user-submitted content.