Dear Friend,

On Monday, we celebrated a monumental victory: the TAKE IT DOWN Act being signed into law. The TAKE IT DOWN Act combats image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) by making it a federal crime to upload or distribute sexually explicit material of someone without their consent. It also requires tech companies to remove IBSA within 48 hours of it being reported by a survivor. 

This was truly a historic step forward in the fight against the rampant crime of IBSA. And there is still more we can do! Two other bills are currently pending before Congress which are complementary to this new law: The DEFIANCE Act and the NO FAKES Act and . Read more about them below! 

DEFIANCE Act Gives Survivors of AI-generated IBSA Path to Justice

NCOSE is pleased to support the DEFIANCE Act, which was introduced into the U.S. Senate and U.S. House last week.

The DEFIANCE Act establishes civil liability for AI-generated IBSA, allowing victims to seek justice in civil court. This legislation addresses not only the publication of such content but also its creation, distribution, and possession with the intent to distribute (which includes sextortion). 

“Anyone who posts a photo online can be the target of deepfake pornography, but there’s currently no federal law giving victims a path to justice. The DEFIANCE Act complements criminal penalties in the TAKE IT DOWN Act by providing civil remedies. Our nation needs to hold perpetrators of this abuse accountable,” said Dr. Marcel van der Watt, president, National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

📣ACTION: Ask Your Congressional Representatives to Pass the DEFIANCE Act!

NCOSE's Christen Price Testifies Before Congress in Favor of NO FAKES Act

Christen Price, senior legal counsel at NCOSE, testified before Congress this past week about the intersection between AI. and sexual exploitation. Price offered testimony in favor of the NO FAKES Act, which creates a private right of action against using A.I. to replicate someone's likeness or voice without their consent. This will protect victims of AI-generated IBSA, as well as artists and content creators.

In her testimony, Price states: 

"98% of all deepfake videos are pornography-related and 99% of those who are targeted are women."

Price describes testimony from a woman who had horrific, AI-generated image-based sexual abuse made of her using photos from her private social media account.

"My only crime was existing online and sharing photos on Instagram," the woman said. "The person who did this was not a stranger. I was not hacked. And my social media has never been public."

Multi-platinum country singer, Martina McBride, also testified at the hearing, saying:

“The NO FAKES ACT is a perfect complement to [the TAKE IT DOWN Act] by preventing AI deepfakes that steal someone's voice or likeness and use them to harass, bully and defraud others.”

Podcast: Porn Companies Sued Over Age Verification Laws

On this week's episode of the "Ending Sexploitation Podcast," Haley McNamara and Dani Pinter discuss the groundbreaking lawsuits against multiple pornography websites that were recently filed in Kansas.

These cases are the first of their kind as the new Age Verification Law was allegedly violated when a minor was able to access sexually explicit content without any age verification efforts from multiple websites. Haley and Dani talk about the real people affected in this case as well as the larger effects of pornography on children. 

New York Times: The Delusion of Porn's Harmlessness

"These days, virality is difficult to achieve. But the British OnlyFans creator Lily Phillips managed it this winter, when she appeared in a documentary titled 'I Slept With 100 Men in One Day,'" writes Christine Emba, author of “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation” and a contributing Opinion writer for the New York Times.

Emba continues: "The film followed Ms. Phillips as she planned for and executed the titular stunt, capturing everything from the shuffling feet of the men waiting outside her rented Airbnb to her shaken visage in the aftermath of the deed. ('It’s not for the weak girls,' she tells the filmmaker Josh Pieters, with tears in her eyes. 'I don’t know if I’d recommend it.')

Excessive? Certainly. Off-putting? To some. But perhaps not unexpected, if one considers how inured American society has become to women’s sexualization and objectification — so much so that extremism seems like one of the few ways for an ambitious young sex worker to stand out.

Pornography floods the internet. A 2023 report from Brigham Young University estimated that pornography could be found on 12 percent of websites. Porn bots regularly surface on X, on Instagram, in comment sections and in unsolicited direct messages. Defenders of pornography tend to cite the existence of ethical porn, but that isn’t what a majority of users are watching. 'The porn children view today makes Playboy look like an American Girl doll catalog,' one teenager wrote in 2023 in The Free Press, and it often has a focus on violence and dehumanization of women."

📣ACTION: Ask Your Legislators to Protect Children from Online Pornography!

Sincerely,