Our member Irene Kamara published a new article titled ‘Image-based sexual abuse of minors on online gaming platforms: Between punitive and preventive regulatory responses in the EU’ in the journal of Cahiers Politiestudies.

The article encompasses perspectives upon image-based abuse, which often targets vulnerable groups such as children. She continues to discuss how the abuse may vary from unsolicited obscene materials sent to children to online incitement for sexual acts and self-generation of abusive material. The article explores punitive and preventive regulatory responses to image-based abuse of minors on online gaming platforms, focusing on criminal liability and online platform accountability in the EU, and assesses the relevance and applicability of those instruments to image-based abuse of minors in online gaming environments.  While the combination of existing and proposed legal frameworks in the EU cover from a substantive law perspective several image-based abuse crimes, such as child pornography, it is questionable whether other crimes or abusive behaviors in the cyberviolence continuum are sufficiently addressed, for example when it comes to virtual crimes conducted within the gameplay.

Further, more attention should be paid to the cumulative harm suffered by the individuals, and how this is accounted for by the existing EU legal framework. As regards online platform regulation as a preventive approach to combat online image-based sexual abuse, the current EU legislative initiatives such as the Digital Services Act and the CSAM Regulation Proposal demonstrate a political intention to combine different strategies and regulatory targets (e.g. service providers, offenders). However,  points of attention in platform regulation endeaviours include the scope of obligations of service providers, as well as ad hoc balancing tests often based on suspicion of crime, instead of evidence. The article concludes that despite their weaknesses both punitive and preventive approaches are necessary to pursue the regulatory goal of combatting image-based abuse on online gaming platforms.