Law Commons^™

The New Pornography Wars, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

The world’s largest online pornography conglomerate, MindGeek, has come under fire for the publishing of “rape videos,” child pornography, and nonconsensual pornography on its website, Pornhub. As in the “pornography wars” of the 1970s and 1980s, lawyers and activists have now turned to civil remedies and filed creative anti-trafficking lawsuits against MindGeek and third parties, like payment processing company, Visa. These lawsuits seek not only to achieve legal accountability for online sex trafficking but also to reframe a broader array of online harms as sex trafficking.

This Article explores what these new trafficking lawsuits mean for the future regulation of …

Addressing The Harms Of Pornography, Gillian Allison

Honors Theses

Within this paper I look at the existing philosophical work on pornography, from scholars like Catherine MacKinnon, Ronald Dworkin, and Rae Langton to show the current state of the pornography debate that I intend to enter by presenting my own argument about the morality of pornography. I argue that while pornography is harmful, these harms are best resolved through increased sexual education and the popularization and production of more inclusive pornography. The harms pornography causes are so great because pornography is where a lot of people learn about sex. Pornography was never designed to depict an average sexual experience. If …

Images Of Harassment: Copyright Law And Revenge Porn, Ari Ezra Waldman

Other Publications

Nonconsensual pornography, commonly known as “revenge porn,” usually occurs when an individual (usually a man) publicly posts online sexually explicit images of his former partner (usually a woman). Although normally the stuff of tort law, revenge porn offers copyright attorneys opportunities to help victims, as well: the offending images are often selfies taken by the victim and thus covered by the victim’s copyright. There is, to date, no Second Circuit case law on the subject, making this area uniquely suited to creative social impact litigation. Until state legislatures or Congress pass well-drafted criminal revenge porn statutes, copyright law remains a …

From Peer-To-Peer Networks To Cloud Computing: How Technology Is Redefining Child Pornography Laws, Audrey Rogers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article traces the history of the child pornography laws and sentencing policy in Part I. Part II explains the technologies that have caused some of the current controversies, and then Part III describes how these technologies have blurred the offenses. Finally, Part IV makes suggestions as to how the law could better reflect technology and comport with a refined harm rationale. Courts, legal scholars, and medical experts have explained the harm includes the sexual abuse captured in the images and the psychological injury the victim endures knowing the images are being viewed. This Article further develops the harm rationale …

Copyright Law And Pornography, Ann Bartow

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Sex-for-hire is usually illegal, unless it is being filmed. Debates about pornography tread uneasily into legal terrain that implicates freedom of expression under the First Amendment, the specter of censorship, and genuine concerns about the function and role of pornography in persistent gender inequality. It is less common for conversations about pornography to include a discussion of copyright law. Yet copyright law is a powerful tool that operates to protect the financial interests of pornographers. Owners of copyrighted pornography frequently threaten public exposure of an alleged infringer’s consumption habits in order to force a financial settlement. Thus copyright law operates …

Sexting And Teenagers: Omg R U Going 2 Jail???, Catherine Arcabascio

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Internet Sexual Predators: Protecting Children In The Global Community, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

The Internet, serving as the largest network of computers in the world, has provided the horizontal parallax over which all can participate in communication and transaction, education and entertainment4 It also serves a community of participants and beneficiaries whose goals are not always shared or legal. The rise of this advanced technology has led to a new "red light district."

Unlike the physical spaces available for the distribution of pornography and sexual favors for money, the Internet, with its lack of structure, has led to an unimaginable amount of pornography available for any on-line spectator.' Information necessary for consummation of …

International Human Rights Standards On Sexual Violence Against Women As They Apply To Pornography, Claudia Giunta

LLM Theses and Essays

The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing in September 1995, and represented an important step towards the achievement of equality for women. At the Conference, the progress made towards equality was acknowledged, but it was also acknowledged that many goals have not been achieved yet, and that cultural changes of fundamental importance remain to be made. Indeed, in many countries the cultural approach to violence and discrimination against women is quite fatalistic; they believe violence against women cannot be solved by laws. However, this approach overlooks the role played by societies in tolerating practices of …

Reclaiming Sex From The Pornographers: Cybersexual Possibilities, Carlin Meyer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Sex, Sin, And Women’S Liberation: Against Porn-Suppression., Carlin Meyer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Impending Legal Issues For Integrated Broadband Networks, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

Given human nature, computer networks are prone to many of the same legal problems that have affected earlier forms of communication. The insatiable human appetite for mischief, information, pornography, and anti-competitive activity guarantees that the many legal conflicts that afflict computers, telephones, cable television, and broadcasting will be visited upon IBNs. This article focuses on several of these legal problems. By examining the history of controversies involving the electronic media and breaches of security, protection of privacy, regulation of sexual material and refusals to deal, this article attempts to outline some ways to think about applying the lessons from the …

Law And Sex, Christina B. Whitman

Reviews

In Feminism Unmodified, a collection of speeches given between 1981 and 1986, Catharine MacKinnon talks of law from the perspective of feminism. MacKinnon does not approach her topic as a lawyer with a uniquely legal perspective on feminism; she brings, instead, a distinctively feminist approach to law. Nor is the feminism from which she speaks grounded in the standard political theories: MacKinnon disclaims and attacks the Marxist approach to feminism, the socialist approach to feminism, and, most emphatically and repeatedly, the liberal approach to feminism that has been embraced by many lawyers in their effort to use law to eliminate …

The Right To Speak, The Right To Hear, And The Right Not To Hear: The Technological Resolution To The Cable/Pornography Debate, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

The advent of cable television presented a new opportunity to consider the competing interests on each side of the free speech/pornography debate. This Article attempts to construct an analysis that will be consistent with Supreme Court teaching on how government, under the first amendment, may constitutionally regulate legal obscenity, particularly in the name of protecting those who wish to avoid exposure to such material.

The Article shows how, unlike earlier battles over technology and pornography, cable television presented the novel opportunity to have a technological rather than a censorial solution to this difficult problem.

Marks V. United States, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.