Fake Porn Videos Are Terrorizing Women. Do We Need a Law to Stop Them?

"This raises the question of whether Congress could draft a law narrow enough to help victims of deepfakes without such unintended consequences. As a cautionary tale, Annemarie Bridy, a law professor at the University of Idaho, points to the misuse of the copyright takedown system in which companies and individuals have acted in bad faith to remove legitimate criticism and other legal content.

Still, given what’s at stake with pornographic deep fake videos, Bridy says, it could be worth drafting a new law.

“The seriousness of the harm from deep fakes, to me, justifies an expeditious remedy,” she says. “But to get the balance right, we’d also need an immediate, meaningful right of appeal and safeguards against abusive notices intended to censor legitimate content under false pretenses.”"