Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world.  It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments  in the field.

When Indian journalist Rana Ayyub discovered a pornographic deepfake targeting her, she started throwing up. “I just couldn’t show my face,” Rana told HuffPost in 2018. “You can call yourself a journalist, you can call yourself a feminist but in that moment, I just couldn’t see through the humiliation.” Years of abuse followed that incident, turning Rana into a symbol of online harassment against women in the press today.

Over time, cyberviolence – and image abuse in particular – has evolved. Non-consensual dissemination of intimate images (NCII) is one form of it, constituting online gender-based violence. Research shows that 90% of NCII’s victims are women and notes the vulnerability of LGBTIQ+ individuals and people with disabilities. AI technology only exacerbates the problem: What journalist Rana Ayyub experienced is yet another form of online image-based violence disproportionately affecting women.

This week, we are featuring courts’ decisions on NCII. One comes from the US, where last month, President Trump signed the Take It Down Act – a federal ban on NCII, both real and AI-generated. Despite being a seeming cause for cheers, the Act received criticism from digital rights groups. “[It] pressures platforms to actively monitor speech, including speech that is presently encrypted,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned. “The law thus presents a huge threat to security and privacy online.”

On a brighter note, CGFoE continues to support academic spaces that promote freedom of expression and legal dialogue across systems. Last week, our Associate Director, Dr. Hawley M. Johnson, and the Legal Team joined the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) Law School for a special class on freedom of expression as part of the International Human Rights Law course taught by Lautaro Furfaro, Adjunct Professor at UBA and Senior Legal Researcher at CGFoE.

The three-hour session with over thirty students featured presentations by Dr. Johnson, Senior Legal and Policy Consultant Anderson Dirocie, Senior Legal Editor Juan Manuel Ospina, and Prize Manager Alejandra Negrete, alongside Prof. Furfaro. They explored regional and universal standards, key jurisprudence from the UN Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court and Commission, and the African Commission and Court. The class also discussed the “chilling effect” doctrine and violence against women journalists.

We are preparing another joint CGFoE-UBA seminar, which will be open to the public – stay tuned.

Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈 Celebrating inclusivity this month and always, we at CGFoE reaffirm our commitment to advancing freedom of expression for all. Photo Credit: Columbia Pride

European Court of Human Rights
Volodina v. Russia (no. 2)
Decision Date: September 14, 2024
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section) held that Russian authorities violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to protect Anastasiya Volodina from acts of cyberviolence and by conducting a delayed and ineffective investigation into her complaints. In 2016, Volodina reported to the police that her intimate images had been published online without her consent, but it took nearly 2 years to open a criminal investigation. The Court found that the delay and procedural failures amounted to a breach of the State’s positive obligation to safeguard her right to private life. While acknowledging that Russian law formally includes civil and criminal provisions protecting individuals against the non-consensual dissemination of personal data, the Court concluded that these legal safeguards had not been effectively implemented in practice in Volodina’s case, thus creating a climate of impunity. The judgment also highlighted the broader implications of cyberviolence, particularly as a form of gender-based abuse. Drawing on international sources, the Court discussed various forms of cyber violence against women and girls (VAWG), including “revenge porn,” and emphasized the serious impact such abuse can have on victims’ physical and psychological integrity. It stressed the duty of States to take proactive measures to prevent and respond to such harm.

United States
Indiana v. Katz
Decision Date: January 18, 2022
The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a statute criminalizing the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images, reversing a trial court decision that found the law overbroad and unconstitutional under both the Indiana Constitution and the First Amendment. The case arose after a man secretly recorded an intimate video of his girlfriend and shared it without her consent, leading to criminal charges. The man challenged the constitutionality of the criminal provision. The Court held that the statute was a content-based restriction on speech but survived strict scrutiny due to the State’s compelling interest in preventing the serious harm caused by non-consensual dissemination of intimate images.

United Kingdom
Reid v. Price
Decision Date: March 13, 2020
The British High Court of Justice Queen’s Bench Division held that a martial artist was entitled to damages for the wrongful retention and disclosure of his private information by his former partner. The Court found that the partner had deliberately disclosed intimate videos and images of the martial artist’s sexual activity without his consent, sharing them with friends, strangers, and others. The Court found that her actions – particularly providing details about the intimate video to a media publisher – led to widespread discussion of his sex life, which was demeaning and caused “a real loss of personal dignity and harm to his self-esteem.” The Court described the partner’s behaviour as “persistent, flagrant, arrogant, high-handed, and inexcusable,” which aggravated the harm and caused significant distress, and awarded £25,000 in damages.

European Parliament Briefing Cites CGFoE’s Special Collection Paper. This week, in its briefing on Hate Speech: Comparing the US and EU Approaches, the European Parliamentary Research Service referenced our Special Collection Paper on Hate Speech Case Law. The paper’s author, Natalie Alkiviadou, Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech Project, welcomed the attention of policymakers to this critical discussion: “My report digs into how courts – especially the European Court of Human Rights – have struggled to define when expression becomes unlawful,” Alkiviadou wrote in response to the citation. “But in trying to draw that line, we often risk turning vague norms into tools for censorship that silence dissent and minority viewpoints.”

● Unwillingly Naked: How Deepfake Pornography Intensifies Sexualised Violence against Women, by Katharina Mosene. Writing for the Digital Society Blog of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Katharina Mosene unpacks the “particularly insidious” violation of privacy through image abuse: pornographic deepfakes. Mosene underscores how easily accessible deepfake creation tools are and cites data indicating that almost 100% of pornographic deepfakes target women, with those marginalized – queer individuals, women of color, trans women – more at risk. “While national legislation lags behind, developments at the EU level are gaining momentum,” Mosene argues, referring to the Digital Services Act, the European AI Act, and the recent EU directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence.

● Bangladesh: Draft Data Protection Law Must Protect Freedom of Expression. ARTICLE 19 regards the 2025 Bangladesh Data Protection Ordinance as an urgent opportunity to advance digital rights provided that its implementation fits into a strong human-rights framework. Yet, as ARTICLE 19 demonstrates in this chapter-by-chapter analysis, the current draft law points to serious shortcomings: Some of them include the absence of clear definitions, weak procedural protections, power concentration in the hands of the government and law enforcement, and lack of explicit constraints and independent regulatory oversight, among others. ARTICLE 19 calls on the Bangladesh authorities to ensure that the Ordinance does not enable arbitrary surveillance, discrimination, suppression of dissent, or control of expression online.

● Hungary: Supreme Court Rules Police Ban of Pride March Unlawful, by Lilian Trickey. The JURIST reports that last Saturday, the Supreme Court of Hungary held that a police ban on a June 1 Pride march in Budapest lacked justification: “It was not evident to the court how the Pride parade in particular endangered the safety of children.” Invoking “the protection of children,” the police relied on the amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, passed earlier this spring and effectively prohibiting LGBTIQ+ public gatherings. This Tuesday, the Budapest police denied the request of Pride organizers to hold the annual parade on June 28. Responding to Hungary’s laws targeting LGBTIQ+ people, last week, twenty EU Member States signed a declaration stating that Hungary violated the EU’s fundamental values and urging the Hungarian government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to urgently reverse course.

This section of the newsletter features teaching materials focused on global freedom of expression which are newly uploaded on Freedom of Expression Without Frontiers

● The ‘Cost of Doing Politics’? Gendered Abuse and Digital Platforms’ Role In Undermining Democracy, by Paula-Charlotte Matlach and Charlotte Drath. In this study for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Paula-Charlotte Matlach, Analyst at ISD Germany, and Charlotte Drath, Research Consultant at ISD, examine online gender-based violence on TikTok, which is becoming an important space for political expression. Matlach and Drath have conducted an audit of the platform’s search algorithm and its content moderation on sexual violence and analyzed the harmful gendered content in Hungary and Germany, as well as within the contexts of the 2024 European Parliamentary and French legislative elections. ISD’s key findings show “how digital platforms like TikTok shape the landscape of gendered violence and how online manifestations of discrimination threaten individual rights while undermining democratic principles and institutions.”

● The Evolution of International Protection Mechanisms for Musicians at Risk: A Historical Perspective Exploring Pau Casals’s Legacy, by Laurence Cuny. Published with the support of the UNESCO Pau Casals Chair, a joint initiative between the Pau Casals Foundation and the Open University of Catalonia, this research paper explores the legacy of Pau Casals, renowned Spanish cellist, composer, and advocate for peace, freedom, and democracy, who was forced into exile due to war in 1939. Human rights lawyer and researcher Laurence Cuny breaks down international protection mechanisms for artists at risk through a historical perspective: Part I unpacks the protection of artists as a human rights matter; Part II relays the contributions of Casals as a cultural rights defender; and Part III assesses the present-day structures of protection, their gaps, and ways that the role of Casals “continues to be of value to address these gaps.”

● Context, Content, and the ‘Threshold of Severity’: ECtHR’s Jurisprudence on Satire vs Hate, by Sarthak Gupta. In a blog for EJIL: Talk! of the European Journal of International Law, Sarthak Gupta, Legal Researcher and Editor at CGFoE, zooms in on Yevstifeyev v. Russia, a case concerning homophobic hate speech directed at LGBTIQ+ activists. Gupta argues that while the ECtHR’s approach in the first application is progressive (finding violations of Article 14 and Article 8 of the Convention), “the second application reasoning raises significant questions about the Court’s approach to hate speech, particularly regarding the distinction between context and content, intent and effect, and the application of the ‘threshold of severity’ test.”

● OSB’s Call for Public Comments: Case on Political Expression in Kenya. The Oversight Board (OSB) just announced a new case for consideration: Citing a violation of the Hateful Conduct Community Standard, Meta removed a comment responding to a post about former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s candidacy in the African Union’s Chairperson election. The OSB picked this case to examine the company’s “respect for political expression in countries with a recent history of intercommunal violence” and is inviting public comments on the matter. The deadline is June 17, 2025. Learn more here.

This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression.  For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.