Feminist legal geographies of intimate-image sexual abuse: Using copyright logic to combat the unauthorized distribution of celebrity intimate images in cyberspaces

Women’s rights are often curtailed online due to the pervasive internet atmosphere of cybermisogyny.Extreme examples include ‘image-based sexual abuse’, a term which encompasses thenon-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images. The harms attached to thisphenomenon are well documented. In this paper, we explore how copyright logic, despite itsmale-centric and property oriented worldview, presents one legal solution to this problem. Weassert that Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notices, a copyright mechanism that notifieswebsites they are hosting infringing content and requires the prompt removal of the content,represents a novel legal mechanism to force websites to remove image-based sexual abuse fromwomen’s online spaces. By using critical discourse analysis to review how Digital MillenniumCopyright Act Takedown Notices attempt to provide solutions to the socio-spatial problem ofimage-based sexual abuse, we argue that copyright can subvert its current leanings to return to itsoriginal purpose: supporting creativity. Supporting creativity also helps to protect against thereproduction of gendered harms, from the real world to virtual spaces. This theorization represents not just legal geography but a feminist legal geography, in that it recognizes the internetshould be a safe and legal space for women. In endorsing a pragmatic legal solution for women toregulate the sexually violent and nonconsensual distribution of their intimate images online,copyright is one mechanism that affirms women’s right to cyberspaces.