Hollywood's lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America, is opposing a proposed Minnesota revenge porn law on grounds that it could overly restrict speech. This is the same MPAA that fiercely supported the Stop Online Piracy Act of 2012. Known as SOPA, many claimed that legislation would also curtail free speech because SOPA could lead to the removal of domains that host infringing material.

In a letter to Minnesota lawmakers, the MPAA said HF 27411 "could limit the distribution of a wide array of mainstream, Constitutionally protected material, including items of legitimate news, commentary, and historical interest. These items are part of news, public affairs, entertainment or sports programming, and are distributed in motion pictures, television programs, audiovisual works of all kinds, via the Internet and other media." The group added that "images of Holocaust victims, or prisoners at Abu Ghraib, or the Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph entitled 'Napalm Girl'—which shows a young girl running screaming from her village, naked, following a Napalm attack—could be prohibited under the terms of this legislation."

The bill cleared a House committee on Friday. If approved, it would add to the growing number of revenge porn bills nationwide—now at 27. There is no federal revenge porn law, and to varying degrees, these state revenge porn laws prohibit sharing sexually explicit photos of people without their consent. The MPAA's bone of contention on Minnesota's bill is that the person who releases the explicit photos or videos doesn't have to mentally want to harm or humiliate the person in the images.

The MPAA told Minnesota lawmakers that "we urge the inclusion of an 'intent to harass' requirement in the definition of the crime. Six other states have included 'intent to harass' in their statutes dealing with this issue."

The bill's chief sponsor, however, isn't biting.

"I do want to get this through without the requested intent to harass language insisted upon by the media coalition, because that effectively kind of guts the bill," state representative John Lesch, the bill's backer, told Vocativ. “You could just suggest it was for some reason other than harassment or humiliation and the state would not be able to effectively prosecute a crime. It would be dismissed at initial hearing.”

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a group dedicated to combating online abuse and harassment, said the MPAA's position is a "callous disregard for the victims of this gratuitous and unjustifiable form of voyeurism."

The group added:

Adding an “intent to harass” requirement would mean that the people who distributed the private, intimate photos of celebrities, including Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence, would be free to do so with impunity because they were merely providing “entertainment.” It would mean that revenge porn site operators would be free to destroy the lives, careers, reputations, and personal relationships of thousands of people, mostly women, because they are not motived by a desire to harass but by a desire to make money. It would mean that rapists who distribute the recordings they made of their sexual assaults on social media in order to brag about their exploits would be free to continue to do so.

On the other side, Scott Greenfield of the Simple Justice blog applauded the MPAA, saying that the group "is the voice of reason, defending free speech."

"Who could have seen that coming? It's like the whole world's gone crazy," he wrote.