%0 Journal Article
%T Feminist legal geographies of intimate
%A Elizabeth Farries
%A Tristan Sturm
%J Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
%@ 1472-3409
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0308518X18786964
%X 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 the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images. The harms attached to this phenomenon are well documented. In this paper, we explore how copyright logic, despite its male-centric and property oriented worldview, presents one legal solution to this problem. We assert that Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notices, a copyright mechanism that notifies websites 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 from women¡¯s online spaces. By using critical discourse analysis to review how Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notices attempt to provide solutions to the socio-spatial problem of image-based sexual abuse, we argue that copyright can subvert its current leanings to return to its original purpose: supporting creativity. Supporting creativity also helps to protect against the reproduction 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 internet should be a safe and legal space for women. In endorsing a pragmatic legal solution for women to regulate the sexually violent and nonconsensual distribution of their intimate images online, copyright is one mechanism that affirms women¡¯s right to cyberspaces
%K Nonconsensual pornography
%K copyright
%K cybermisogyny
%K Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown
%K notices
%K legal geography
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X18786964