Revenge porn — or what, more accurately, should be called non-consensual pornography (“NCP”) — has been in the news lately. Massachusetts recently became the 49th State to enact a law banning and punishing NCP (leaving only South Carolina as the outlier). See news report here.

Moreover, the push to create a federal law banning NCP continues with First Lady, Melania Trump, joining the efforts. In early March 2025, the First Lady spoke on Capitol Hill joined by young victims of NCP and several Senators and Members of Congress. She was promoting a bill called the Take It Down Act which would punish NCP at the federal level and which would also punish creation and distribution of explicit-image AI-generated deepfakes.

The Take It Down Act has been sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. They sponsored similar legislation in 2024. The Senate has already passed the Take It Down Act and, now, the House of Representatives must also pass the bill. As noted, the proposed law would ban NCP and impose punishments from one to three years in prison for sharing non-consensual intimate images depending on the age of the person in the images. The Take It Down Act is being “marketed” as an attempt to protect minors and young adults, but the act also punishes NCP involving adults.

The proposed law would also require social media platforms to put procedures in place to remove such content within 48 hours of notice from the victim. This has been one serious limitation of the State-level statutes that have been enacted. Under various State laws, it has become very cumbersome, difficult and expensive to get the NCP removed from the internet.

The Take It Down Act attempts to solve that problem because the Take It Down Act places the onus on social media companies to take the offending images/video down. The procedurally complex DMCA takedown procedure is replaced. Plus, the Act will have nationwide applicability.

“Revenge porn” is, of course, the popular term used for sexually explicit imagery that was stolen, shared, or otherwise distributed without the person’s consent. See here. A common mental image is, after a breakup, one of the ex-lovers posts on social media sexually explicit photos or videos of the other to take revenge, to embarrass, to harass or to extort them.

Likely, the images and/or video were taken with consent but with the expectation that the images/video would remain private. However, it turns out that NCP is a form of business where criminals gain access to explicit images and upload — or threaten to upload — the images with the intent of extorting money from the victim. In other words, NCP often does not involve a jilted lover. A similar effect can be created using AI-generated images. Usually, this is done by manipulating images to replace a person’s face with the face of the intended victim.

The Take It Down Act does not make changes to the civil aspect of NCP. Aside from the criminal charges that are discussed above, victims have the ability to sue guilty parties for various civil actions. These include:

• Possible copyright infringement claims
• Intrusion upon seclusion
• False light invasion of privacy
• Harassment
• Stalking
• Intentional infliction of emotional distress
• Negligent infliction of emotional distress
• And more

If you are the victim of revenge porn, contact an NCP attorney to learn your rights and how the guilty party can be punished under the civil laws.

Contact the NCP Attorneys at Revision Legal

For more information, contact the experienced NCP Lawyers at Revision Legal. You can contact us through the form on this page or call (855) 473-8474.

State Non-Consensual Pornography Laws: What They Cover and Where They Differ

With Massachusetts joining the list in 2025 and 49 states now having non-consensual pornography (NCP) statutes on the books, victims have more legal tools available than at any prior point. But those tools vary significantly from state to state — in scope, in criminal penalties, in whether civil claims are available, and in how effectively they address the internet distribution problem. Understanding what your state’s law covers is the first step in knowing your options.

Criminal vs. Civil Remedies

Most state NCP statutes are primarily criminal in nature — they define the offense, set forth penalties, and create a framework for prosecution by the state. The severity of the criminal penalties varies considerably. Some states — including California, Texas, and New York — classify NCP as a misdemeanor for first offenses, with felony charges available for repeat violations or when the victim is a minor. Other states have elevated NCP to a felony offense regardless of whether it is a first offense, reflecting the serious and lasting psychological harm that victims experience.

Criminal prosecution depends on law enforcement and the discretion of the local prosecutor. Victims do not control the criminal process. A victim who reports an NCP incident to local police may find that law enforcement lacks the resources or expertise to investigate digital crimes effectively, or that the prosecutor declines to pursue charges for various reasons. This is why the civil remedies available under state NCP statutes — and the common law claims identified in the original article — are so important. Civil claims are controlled by the victim, proceed on the victim’s timetable, and can result in damages awards that criminal prosecution cannot produce.

The AI Deepfake Problem

The Take It Down Act’s inclusion of AI-generated deepfakes addresses a gap that most state NCP statutes have not yet filled. Deepfake technology allows a bad actor to create sexually explicit synthetic images — placing a real person’s face onto another person’s body or generating entirely synthetic explicit content using real identifying features — without any actual intimate images of the victim ever existing. The reputational and emotional harm to the victim is equivalent to traditional NCP, but many state statutes drafted before the AI era do not clearly cover synthetic images.

A handful of states have proactively amended their NCP statutes to cover AI-generated deepfakes. Virginia, California, and Georgia are among the states that have passed deepfake-specific legislation in addition to or as amendments to existing NCP laws. But the majority of state statutes still contain language tied to the disclosure of “intimate images” that were actually taken of the victim, creating a potential gap for deepfake content. The Take It Down Act’s federal coverage of deepfakes is significant precisely because it fills this gap nationwide, regardless of whether a state has updated its own statute.

Platform Removal: The 48-Hour Standard

One of the most practically significant provisions of the Take It Down Act is the requirement that social media platforms and online services establish procedures to remove NCP — including deepfakes — within 48 hours of receiving notice from a victim. This is a dramatic improvement over the current legal framework. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a copyright holder can obtain a takedown by submitting a notice meeting the requirements of 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3). But most NCP victims are not the copyright holder of the images used against them — the person who took the photo or created the deepfake holds the copyright, not the subject of the image. This means the DMCA’s streamlined takedown procedure is generally not available to NCP victims.

Absent a dedicated removal mechanism, victims have had to rely on platforms’ voluntary policies, state court orders, or DMCA workarounds — all of which are slower, more expensive, and less reliable than a federally mandated 48-hour removal requirement. The Take It Down Act’s removal provision, if enforced consistently, would represent the most significant practical improvement in NCP victim protection since the first state NCP statutes were enacted.

What Victims Should Do Now

If you are a victim of non-consensual pornography, your first steps are to document the infringement (screenshots, URLs, platform details), preserve any communications from the person distributing the images, and contact an attorney immediately. An NCP attorney can advise on your criminal reporting options, assist with platform removal requests, and evaluate whether civil claims — including those identified in the original article, such as copyright infringement, intrusion upon seclusion, and intentional infliction of emotional distress — are viable in your jurisdiction.

Time matters. Images spread rapidly online, and the longer NCP content remains accessible, the harder it is to contain. Many victims hesitate to take legal action out of fear of further publicity, but experienced NCP attorneys know how to pursue removal and legal relief while protecting the victim’s privacy as much as possible. The NCP attorneys at Revision Legal are available to advise victims confidentially. Contact us as soon as possible after you discover that your images have been shared without consent.