BILL NUMBER: S5583
SPONSOR: SCARCELLA-SPANTON
 
TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the penal law, in relation to establishing the crime of
aggravated harassment by means of electronic or digital communication;
and to amend the civil rights law, in relation to providing for a
private right of action for the unlawful dissemination or publication of
deep fakes
 
PURPOSE:
To prevent the malicious dissemination and/or publication of material
that is digitally altered or produced to look like a person that has in
engaged in lewd activity or a sex act as defined in the penal law or a
graphic act of violence. This legislation also provides for a private
right of action against the party for damages resulting from the unau-
thorized dissemination of such material.
 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
§ 1- adds a new section 240.78 of the penal law - Precludes a person
from producing or disseminating material, a picture, image, or deep
fake, into which the image of a person is digitally incorporated into
the image of another to for no other legitimate purpose other than to
cause harassment, annoyance or alarm of the person. Violations of this
law would be punishable as a Class misdemeanor.
§ 2 - amends section 52-b of the civil rights law to provide for a
private right of action as the result of the dissemination or publica-
tion of an intimate image or a deep fake.
§ 3 - amends section 52-c of the civil rights law to provide for a
private right of action for the unlawful dissemination or publication of
a sexually explicit depiction or deep fake of an individual.
 
EXISTING LAW:
Section 1 of this act addresses an evolving harm involving the dissem-
ination of digitized material involving a lewd sex act or graphic
violence of a person with an intent to harass, annoy or alarm that
person. This new penal law section specifically addresses the modern
methods of criminal harassment involving material that is digitally
altered, or a deep fake, and disseminated to harm a person.
Section 2 of this act provides for a private right of action as the
result of becoming victimized by the unauthorized dissemination of lewd
or graphically violent material that interposes a person's likeness or
deep fake material into the public domain, which causes damage to the
person.
Section 3 of this act provides for a private right of action for the
unlawful dissemination or publication of a sexually explicit deep fake
of an individual.
 
JUSTIFICATION:
With the advent of social media platforms that provide for open sources
of information which many times includes disinformation, there has been
a proliferation of digitized images, audio and video that is dissem-
inated in the public domain for no legitimate purpose other than to
belittle, embarrass and dehumanize a person. The result of publicizing
sexually explicit, lewd or graphically violent information on the public
social media platform has resulted in suicide, violence and permanent
damage to a person's reptitation without any recourse under state law.
Even more disturbing is the use of deep fake technology to digitally
incorporate an individual's persona or likeness into graphically
violent, or sexually explicit or lewd images to scare or terrorize the
individual into action such as paying a fee to be released from the
public dissemination of such digitized images. This legislation provides
for an avenue to seek redress against those bad actors engaged in such
nefarious actions.
 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
None.
 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act provides for a private right of action for the unlawful dissem-
ination or publication of a sexually explicit deep fake of an individ-
ual.

Statutes affected:
S5583: 52-b civil rights law, 52-c civil rights law