Slate has an excellent piece on “revenge porn” as an act of stalking.

Revenge porn is, as I blogged earlier, very similar to the crime of acid-throwing. It is essentially a crime of force and aggression. Someone wishes to control a woman’s behavior or “punish” her for leaving them.

In other cases, someone wants her to say nothing and uses some information to threaten her to shut up (blackmail) or to do something other than what she wants (coercion):

“There’s a growing body of evidence showing that the key to battling domestic abuse is to get into the assailant’s head, figure out what motivates his behavior, and tailor the legal response accordingly. Even though revenge porn website purveyor Hunter Moore may pretend the motivation is nothing but an opportunity “to look at naked girls all day,” in reality, the act of uploading a nudie picture to punish a woman for leaving you is less an erotic act and closer to the criminal behavior of stalking. Despite the word porn, it’s clear the point is to humiliate and dominate and to send the message to the victim that she is not allowed to leave you just because she wants to. With that in mind, we should amend stalking and other anti-harassment legislation to reflect our new digital lives. Just because the abusive acts are happening in “virtual” spaces doesn’t mean the terror of being stalked and harassed by a man who thinks that he has a right to punish you is any less terrifying. Our laws need to reflect this new reality.”

I can’t tell you how happy I am to read about the new legislation. It is surely inadequate but a step in the right direction. I have signed Ms. Jacob’s petition, and I urge any reader who can to do so.

My life from about 2008 onward has been overshadowed by cyber-stalking, electronic snooping, covert threats via the internet, some delivered in the most sophisticated and untraceable fashion.

[Added: I should make it clear that my case had nothing to do with “revenge porn” but involved hacking into personal emails and then deliberately falsifying the content  to threaten me.  But the principle is the same and tackling the issue led me to understand just how difficult it is to enforce existing laws with regard to cyber-harassment. The motives of my harassers were related to professional concerns, not personal. But the techniques and the goal of coercion/infliction of distress were the same.]