Sometimes, members of Congress say they’ll do something and never get around to it. Rep. Jackie Speier’s long-announced plan to introduce legislation criminalizing revenge porn was beginning to look like just such a case – but behind the scenes, she’s been busy.

Two and a half years after saying she would try to make sharing revenge porn a federal crime, the California Democrat introduced the bill Thursday, touting endorsements from Twitter, Facebook and a constitutional thumbs up from scholar Erwin Chemerinsky.

The bones are similar to the legislation’s form last summer, with a maximum five-year sentence for bitter exes or hackers who maliciously share nonconsensual nude images without the subject’s consent, though the standard for conviction has been lowered from proof of intent to showing a "reckless disregard" for the subject's lack of consent.

Speier believes it’s narrowly crafted to efficiently nab the guilty. ”It has a broad – no pun intended – it’s a widespread support,” she tells U.S. News.

“It’s a complex issue and we wanted to get it right,” Speier says about the long drafting process. “There were plenty of laws passed in states around the country that were problematic in nature. We wanted it to pass constitutional muster.”

In Arizona, one of 34 states with a revenge porn law, state officials last year agreed not to enforce the local ban after civil liberties activists sued, saying it inadvertently and unconstitutionally criminalized sharing bathtub baby photos and historical images such as the famous war image “Napalm Girl."

Speier’s bill, just four pages long, would make it a crime to distribute a “visual depiction of a person who is identifiable from the image itself or information displayed in connection with the image and who is engaging in sexually explicit conduct, or of the naked genitals or post-pubescent female nipple of a person, with reckless disregard for the person’s lack of consent to the distribution.”

Addressing major concerns, it contains carve-outs allowing distribution in the public interest, or if the images are taken in public or voluntarily in a commercial setting. It also allows their use in the legal system, including by people reporting crimes and says websites and social media companies aren’t liable unless they “intentionally promote or solicit” revenge porn.

In not requiring malicious intent for conviction, a press release says, "the bill recognizes that the distribution of nonconsensual pornography is a privacy violation, as nonconsensual pornography is not always about revenge or harassment.”

The legislation significantly would force revenge porn off U.S.-based websites that currently cannot be forced by state laws to remove content because Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act grants internet companies legal immunity if third-party content doesn't violate federal copyright or criminal law.

Anti-revenge porn activist Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and an advocate for federal legislation since before Speier stepped forward, says drafts of the bill were distributed widely to tech companies and civil liberties advocates so legitimate concerns could be resolved.

“We did try in good faith to take any substantial disagreement very seriously,” she says.

But the final product hasn’t mollified everyone.

Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Lee Tien, for example, offers a full-throated denunciation, saying its definition of revenge porn and the carve-out for tech companies are imprecise and that the bill’s lack of a requirement that a perpetrator have the intent to harass or humiliate, as do some state laws, creates potential problems.

“It defines revenge porn in a way that doesn’t match very well with what revenge porn actually is,” he says. “It’s reaching stuff that’s not actually the problem.”

Tien says the bill could chill constitutionally protected speech and frighten companies into removing content that is not actually revenge porn.

“It’s never a good idea to create a rule that could go pear shaped if you can do a better job,” he says.

Tien says the lack of required intent for offenders could ensnare someone who hypothetically shares an image of a person who has since died because they would not have provided their consent. He says he’s concerned about the protection for companies that do not “intentionally promote or solicit” the content, saying what that means is unclear.

He adds if images are obscene, their distribution already can be prosecuted under unrepealed but rarely used federal laws that formerly were used by prosecutors to go after distribution of consensual adult pornography.

Speier says she’s not particularly concerned about criticism, and feels the measure has a shot at passing after its introduction with bipartisan co-sponsorship – from Reps. Katherine Clark D-Mass., Ryan Costello, R-Pa., Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and Thomas Rooney, R-Fla.

“There will be certainly those who find a reason to criticize, but it really is a finely crafted bill,” Speier says. “This is something that destroyed lives and has caused many women in particular to attempt suicide. … Bills occasionally do pass in Congress and this has been one that's been finely crafted over a long period of time.”

Speier says the problem is widespread and that 3,000 websites are making money off distribution of revenge porn.

“Frat boys are taking photographs of unconscious girls and sharing them,” she says, adding there are many alarming reported cases – such as California law enforcement officials sharing arrestees’ racy selfies and nursing home employees posting to Snapchat explicit photos of elderly patients.

If the bill does pass, foreign websites will remain untouchable. But Franks says the law still would make a serious dent.