The Executive Yuan is to speed up legislative work on proposed amendments to the Criminal Code targeting the creators of deepfake and “revenge” porn, Cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said yesterday.
Lo’s remarks came a day after prosecutors questioned a New Taipei City man, Raphael Lin (林秉樞) — the former boyfriend of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜) — over allegations of physical abuse and threats to distribute explicit photos or videos to intimidate women.
The Ministry of Justice last month submitted the proposed amendments to the Executive Yuan and officials are working toward presenting a bill to the legislature as soon as possible, Lo told a press conference after the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Government ministries and departments are coordinating their efforts to draft policies and regulations that must be implemented if the proposed bill passes into law, he said.
Asked whether Kao’s political status has influenced prosecutors’ handling of the case, Lo said the government enforces the law fairly, expeditiously and without regard to social status or fame.
Meanwhile, DPP lawmakers — including Kao, Mark Ho (何志偉), Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘), Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文) and Chiang Yung-chang (江永昌) — have proposed a separate bill to combat deepfakes that seeks to punish creators by amending forgery laws under Chapter 15 of the Criminal Code.
The proposed bill states that using technology to manipulate visual or audio recordings in a way that damages credibility on the Internet or harms a person’s reputation would be punished via a proposed clause under Article 220 of the Criminal Code.
The bill is to criminalize the unauthorized distribution of the recording of another person and the manipulation of a sexual recording — acts that are not defined as crimes under the current law.
In addition, the bill bans the use of sexual recordings that had been digitally or technologically manipulated.
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