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I’ve Got to Copyright My What?

We live in a strange age, ladies and gents. It’s a time of Snapchat, selfie sticks and smartphones that come packing multi-megapixel cameras and infrared sensors. Sadly, this is also an age of something called “Revenge Porn.”

Now, if you have absolutely no idea what that is (lucky you), it’s essentially nonconsensual pornography. Say, for example, a young woman (and in many cases it’s a teen girl) believes herself to be head-over-heels in love with the most wonderful guy. And during the course of their relationship she snaps a few “private” smartphone photos of herself in the mirror—snapshots or videos that aren’t, shall we say, demure—just to send to that one great guy.

OK. That’s a problem in and of itself, of course. But now suppose that the fabulous fella, uh, isn’t. And when they break up, he starts posting those revealing pics of his ex all over the Web. Well, that 21st-century girl is now a victim of revenge porn. And as hundreds or even thousands of Internet strangers start looking at her au naturel form, this young victim has very little recourse.

Yes, if she finds out about a site carrying her photo (and there are many, many Web stops that trade these pictures like baseball cards), she can go to the expense of hiring a lawyer. And that lawyer can file a legal take-down notice. But that doesn’t mean the site will comply. And if Ms. Exposed wants to sue the site—which will again entail lawyers and another sizable chunk of cash—she’ll actually have to be able to prove that she owns the photos of her naked self.

How?

Well, she’ll have to send the images of her body or body parts to be registered for copyright in Washington, D.C. In other words, to stop strangers from gazing at her lasciviously, she’ll have to actually spread the embarrassing images around for more eyes to see.

That’s not even considering that the images may have been stolen, say, from the young woman’s inbox or cloud storage—which is yet another growing trend in our high tech new age. This CNN Money story tells, for instance, the tale of a mom who took on a notorious revenge site that bought a stolen photo of her daughter from a hacker.

One of most compelling moments in that clip is when the female journalist connects with the hacker himself and asks questions about the whys and hows of his theft of young women’s naked images. “I mean, it doesn’t feel real,” the guy said of his slip-through-the-Internet-backdoor larceny. “When I’m in my room … lights off … door locked … drinking, you know, I don’t feel the consequences.”

That, it seems, is the very thing that everyone tends to overlook at some point in this awful mix of crime, lust and questionable choices: consequences. In the rush to take, then steal, then post these pictures, no one seems to ask or care where it all might lead—or what the costs might be.

In a way, the dark cover-up, empathy-robbing aspect of the Internet itself seems to promise that there is really no cost to worry about in any of this revenge porn messiness. But it’s a lie. The young girl with a smartphone in her hand … well, she pays a very harsh price, indeed.