A group of over 200 victims of picture-based sexual abuse across the globe has signed a new letter of support for the brand new legislation brought forward by a Republican legislator last month which required both age and consent verification of those shown in all sexually explicit or intimate materials on the web.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) brought forth The Preventing Rampant Online Technological Exploitation and Criminal Trafficking Act, otherwise known as the PROTECT Act, just as legislators and various victims search for solutions to deal with the issue of the child sexual abuse imagery epidemic that has continued to grow, almost exponentially, since back in the late 1990s when the internet first became a staple throughout most households in the country.
“Pornography sites need to do more to prevent the exploitation that is occurring on their platforms and allow individuals to remove images shared without their consent,” stated Lee in a release. “The PROTECT Act is a step in that direction.”
The release from Lee also sported a series of recent data sets from Utah Law Enforcement that reported an almost 600% spike in cases that involve child pornography and sexual contact with minors since 2020.
A total of 46 of the 50 states in the union have explicit laws blocking the production and distribution of nonconsensual sexual content, the federal law has stayed helpless for victims.
Reports concerning child sexual abuse materials have increased exponentially since the inception of the Internet, which has changed the way the entire pornography industry works, and as a side effect spawned a massive breeding ground for more illegal materials.
As expressed by the new bill, various reports of child sexual material grew from roughly 3,000 reports back in 1998 to well over a million in 2014 and then more than 19 million in 2018 throughout the country.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which stand behind the new bill from Sen. Lee, has also reported well over 29 million reports of possible child sex abuse material were given to its CyberTipline for 2021, marking the highest number it has gotten in a single year, ever.
Currently, the survivors of these incidents have no rights under federal law to call for the removal of the material from the Internet. This proposed legislation would be the very first time in the history of federal law that would protect victims of all ages that have been made subject to image-based sexual abuse from websites monetizing and distributing their abuse.
If the legislation is passed, the new law would let victims force the sites to remove their iamges and block their re-upload, including all versions that have been altered or edited.while utilizing the law to carry out civil action in district courts to seek damages.
Any website shown to have allowed such uploads and fail to remove the reported content could see penalties to the tune of over $10,000 per day.