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Degrading cyber images to be illegal in SA

The South Australian government wants to make it an offence for people to film and post degrading images of people on the internet.

The South Australian government wants to make it an offence to take degrading or humiliating pictures or video of people and then post them on the internet.

Attorney-General John Rau said the government's draft bill followed the growing use of the internet and social media as tools to humiliate and degrade victims.

Rau said it was not designed to impact legitimate journalism but rather discourage the disgraceful trend of people deliberately setting out to humiliate another person and filming the act.

"This sick form of entertainment causes enormous and often enduring distress to the victims," he said.

Among a number of cases in SA recently, a high school student in Adelaide was filmed being bullied and king hit by another student with the video being widely distributed on the internet.

Rau said once a prosecution was launched it would be up to the courts to determine exactly what types of videos or pictures were degrading or humiliating.

But he conceded the new laws would not give the government power to have images or videos removed from cyberspace, including from sites like You Tube or Facebook.

He said the SA government would be interested in having talks with the federal government about introducing powers to remove such items from the web.

Under the proposed SA laws, the maximum penalty will be a two-year jail sentence.

Rau said videos posted online for legitimate purposes, such as a news broadcasts or security footage would not be illegal.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

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