There are a lot of great things about the internet. Seriously, all of the world’s information in right at your fingertips — I cannot imagine how people owned houses and were able to fix a single thing without YouTube how-to videos. But there’s also a dark side.
One of the most pernicious negatives of online life is revenge porn. That is, sexual explicit images or videos posted online without the subject’s permission. The Data and Society Research Institute estimates that 1 in 25 Americans are threatened by or victimized by revenge porn. And one Biglaw firm is doing something about it.
Ten years ago, K&L Gates founded the Cyber Civil Rights Project. Since then, 400 volunteers from 33 of K&L Gates’ global offices have logged 28,000+ hours to the effort. Program co-founder David Bateman told Law.com there were some challenges starting the practice, “There were two concurrent problems at the time: there really were no laws and no lawyers with expertise on how to deal with social media. It sounds like, ‘Well, it was only 10 years ago,’ but a lot happens in the technology world and legal world in 10 years. Now we have really robust revenge porn statutes and people are more familiar with it, but at the time no one really knew what to do. Victims had nowhere to go and didn’t have lawyers to go to.”
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But 10 years later, the scourge of revenge porn continues. Bateman said, “The reason it has lasted so long is that the behavior has not gone away. People are still doing the same thing. As with all internet bad behavior, you never stop it by litigation. You can’t sue everybody, you can’t arrest everybody. The reality is, the only thing that changes behavior is education.”
The firm’s pro bono committee vice chair Amy Groff says they receive an average of 33 requests for help a week. K&L Gates attorneys are able to meet the demand for their services, in part because the firm allows pro bono hours to count towards billable hour targets.
And Bateman says the firm’s experience in this area allowed them to devise a system for dealing with the issue.
“We go in order of priority. No. 1 is to get things taken down. The longer they stay up, the more likely the images will be copied, go viral, and stay on the internet forever,” Bateman said. “No. 2 is getting to the poster and getting him to stop. It usually is a him. This is not a gender-neutral problem. … Getting them to stop and making sure they’re not reposting the images and destroying all of our efforts.
“That’s more of an art than a science,” he continued, noting that the act of posting revenge porn is typically rooted in a sudden sense of anger. “Often … upon reflection the guy decides to behave better. Sometimes with a letter of a large law firm that says, ‘Hey, we’re representing this woman, you better stop or you’ll be in trouble.’ … The cease and desist letters are surprisingly effective in changing people’s behaviors.”
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Beyond that, there are a variety of potential criminal or civil remedies a victim can pursue, which have been bolstered by an increase in laws against revenge porn. As Bateman notes, “These days, [civil litigation] is just a lot easier now that there are so many state and federal statutes that give very concrete and positive relief to a victim who wants to be a plaintiff.”
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].