Revenge smut bullies who send 'grossly offensive' messages WILL be prosecuted

the growing problem faced by adult women in this country who have had sexually explicit pictures of themselves posted online

Why say "adult women", when revenge porn can affect anyone, adult, child, man or woman? Is it because you actually don't give a fuck about it and just blather about whatever mumsnet are lobbying on this week?

UK based global policy?

"If revenge pornography were clearly illegal, they would, I am sure, ensure that such sites could not be promoted through their search engines."

So just because you make someone in the UK doing something illegal you want Google et al. to stop including sites in other countries where this is perfectly legal (like the UK currently) in their results?

Idiot.

Off topic, but to anyone considering committing their nude selves to electronic storage, especially while performing any kind of "act" or whatever: apply a common sense algorithm. Don't do it.

Electronic pictures and movies can be circulated, copied and broadcast without limit, including accidentally. Revenge is one possibility but there are many others: a computer can be discarded, go to a repair shop, be infected with malware, backed up, an SD card or phone can be lost, forgotten about, stolen, discarded in error. Even if you encrypt, delete or "shred" the pics, copies can still hang around. Don't. Do. It.

Change in the law?

"These are ordinary women who have been in loving relationships in which nude or sexually explicit pictures have been taken in private, something that is not YET illegal..."

There fixed it.

"mainly used against women"

Because most blokes wouldn't care.

So which half of the equal sexes is wrong - blokes should care more or women less?

This is a copyright issue

If you posed for the picture but someone else took the photo, it's not your photo to complain about if it is shown around. By all means take selfies (keeping the copyright to yourself, store them on a non-networked product and avoid saving them to the Cloud, natch) but don't let someone take pictures of you in the nud if you aren't sure you trust/want someone/anyone else to have them. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

I suppose this really comes down to basic common sense. Once that photo is taken you have no control on what happens to it. As have been proven by the recent splash of celebrity nude pics, if you put something online including storage, there is no guarantee that it will not be misused by some one else. The proposed guidelines seem great in theory, but how can they be implemented; when privacy is so weak? And there are many people out there who are ignorant about the security safeguards.

For the real paranoid NSA employees routinely pass around nude pictures (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/snowden-nsa-employees-routinely-pass-around-intercepted-nude-photos/); and as for being able to trust your partner well Ashley Madison made $40M profits last year (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/02/adultery-site-big-in-japa_0_n_5078470.html); so not all partners are trust worthy.

Also how does copyright law affect this, are these orphaned works so essentially public domain?

Will this only effect those who post photo's along the line of 'My name is <insert name>, and these are photos of my ex <insert name>.

Apologies for the rambling but I'm cuddled up to a lemsip atm and writing this between red dwarf episodes

'Indecent'

That 1988 law actually sounds fairly suitable. Revenge porn is indecent and has intent to cause distress. But if anything, the 2003 law tends to undermine that by banning all 'indecent' messages. If Alice sends Bob a naked selfie, either that's a crime, or it's not a crime when Bob posts it online. It sounds like they're trying for some wiggle room by talkijg about considering the "whole message", but if the photo is simply passed on with minimal commentary, I don't see how that will help.

Difficult to see how you could make a law against this

Children don't even need to be mentioned, explicit pictures of underage people are already carrying some pretty stiff penalties so there's no need to codify it into a separate revenge porn law.

But how exactly does it work if a woman consents to having her picture taken by a guy, they later break up, and the guy still has those pictures. Should it be illegal for him to show them to his friends? Illegal to post it on a personal web site? Illegal to send to her parents and boss? Where do you draw the line?

You obviously have to stop it being used as blackmail ("agree to sole custody of our kid or I'll send all these pictures to your family, your minister, and everyone at your workplace") but should it be illegal for him to even show them (not send, show) to his best friend?

If the law is written too tightly mere possession of the images could be criminalized, and you could have the reverse problem of the woman using it against the man figuring he probably didn't think to delete them.

They definitely shouldn't get into the business of deciding how "offensive" the images are. A swinger may not care if pictures of her having sex are posted all over the internet, and more women wouldn't be bothered by nude pictures of themselves. Others might be horrified by the thought of people seeing that picture of her that shows a hint of nipple, or when she was caught in a rainstorm and you can see her underwear through her dress.

It should be seen as an asset. Like other things are when it comes to divorce sold and the proceeds added before the women gets the best deal anyway.

More Rotherhams

Meanwhile, real criminal activity like Rotherham child sexual exploitation was allowed to flourish, and most internet fraudsters go largely scott free.

The police have latched strongly onto easy/lazy internet crime, whereas this has been going on since the days of AOL and dial up.