Mass. Senate advances bill that would ban 'revenge porn'

Senators agreed unanimously Thursday on legislation that would make Massachusetts the 49th state to enforceably ban revenge porn, teeing up fresh negotiations on a topic where lawmakers failed to complete their work last term.

All 40 senators voted in favor of the bill that would create a new criminal offense for disseminating sexually explicit material without the subject's consent, craft new education and diversion programs to deal with teen sexting, and crack down on "coercive control" by abusers.

Backers said they are optimistic the measure can finally close a legal "loophole" that leaves Massachusetts and South Carolina as the only two states where law enforcement is unable to respond forcefully to revenge porn, a practice that has become more common and subjects survivors to major emotional, psychological and financial harm. The House unanimously approved its own revenge porn bill in January and top Democrats have said the branches are more closely aligned on the issue than in the past.

Sen. John Keenan, who filed standalone legislation to crack down on the behavior, turned his eyes toward the Senate gallery during Thursday's session and thanked survivors in attendance for coming forward with their personal stories.

"Today, let us close this loophole. Let us give closure to people who have been victimized by this crime but have been survivors and have contributed to making a difference," the Quincy Democrat said. "Let this legislation make a difference so that everyone knows this is not acceptable, it is criminal, and there will be a consequence."

Senators adopted nine of the 32 amendments they had filed to the bill that emerged from the Senate Ways and Means Committee last week, addressing pre-trial probation, abuse of harassment orders, reporting requirements and more.

One of the adopted amendments, from Sen. Michael Moore, calls for the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence to be included in the education and diversion program curriculum called for in the underlying bill. Moore mentioned "deepfakes" — AI-created images or videos that often depict situations, actions or speech that never really happened — and said the technology is increasingly used to create nonconsensual pornographic images.

Sen. Julian Cyr had an amendment that also addressed deepfakes, by establishing a task force to "begin to address problems that are closely related to revenge porn but are not revenge porn." He said the task force could wrestle with the legal implications of things like impersonation, deepfakes, and sexting.

"While the commonwealth has laws that are dedicated to various forms of identity theft, there are no current laws addressing these issues and we felt that it made sense to begin to take a look at the myriad of other instruments on the internet that could cause headaches and distress and worse to residents here in the commonwealth," Cyr, a Truro Democrat, said.