Pre-filed bills keep landing ahead of this year's Alabama state legislative session.
Among measures already awaiting committee action is a Senate bill that would include the use of "revenge porn" as a sexual-extortion crime, reports AL.com's Heather Gann.
Sexual extortion currently applies to cases where someone knowingly causes or attempts to cause another person to engage in a sexual act or product sexual content under the threat of physical injury or damage to property or reputation. A conviction can mean up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $30,000.
"Revenge porn" is yet another ugly byproduct of the digital revolution. It often refers to situations in which intimate photos or videos taken during a relationship outlasts that relationship and then are shared to nefarious means by one of the parties involved.
It again brings to mind the warning: Don't ever put anything on the Internet or in the digital world unless you're prepared for your grandma, next-door neighbor, boss, pastor, teachers and future spouse to view it the rest of your life, because there's a chance they might.
But that's a warning for potential victims. The warning for potential offenders lies in those 20 years in prison. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Gerald Allen, a Tuscaloosa Republican, broadens the sexual extortion law to include anyone who “knowingly threatens to release or transmit any photograph, digital image, video, film, or other recording of any individual, whether recognizable or not, engaged in any act of sexually explicit conduct in order to compel or attempt to compel the victim to do any act or refrain from doing any act against his or her will.”
