theregoesdave

Scotland has become the first country to address harassments and pornographic text messaging in their legal code, with stiff penalties for those that send unwanted indecent messages. This is a timely move as people come to rely on text and email messages more and more to interact. We’ve seen a lot of interest lately in dirty texting and believe that it’s a good way to extend intimate interactions to times when you can’t be near your partner. However, as people rely on texting for intimate interactions, there comes a need to protect people from unwanted indecency or harassment.

The Register helps define the broadly worded legislation saying that, “The offence will be committed if someone sends an unsolicited text message to someone else which a court finds was designed to give the sender sexual gratification or to humiliate, distress or alarm the receiver.” It seems that this would include pornographic spam as well as unwanted dirty texts.

The penalties for this new law can range up to 10 years in prison for improperly soliciting text sex or harassment via sms. I think that one of the most important keys here is that the messages are unwanted, similar to how we generally classify sexual harassment. This falls right in line with our Tips for Dirty Texting in terms of starting slow to see how your partner feels about sending naughty messages and making sure they feel comfortable along the way.

• Text Sex: Dirty Texting Comes of Age
• What’s Your Favorite Dirty Text Message?
• Americans Prefer Texting to Talking: Is Text Sex to Blame?