In a move sure to break the hearts of pathetic, miserable SOBs throughout the land of Lincoln, the state of Illinois is moving to ban revenge porn.

The bill, introduced by state Sen. Michael Hastings on Wednesday, would amend the criminal code to make it a felony to "knowingly place, post, or reproduce on the Internet a photograph, video, or digital image of a person in a state of nudity, in a state of sexual excitement, or engaged in any act of sexual conduct or sexual penetration, without the knowledge and consent of that person."

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In case the name doesn’t make the concept pretty clear, revenge porn is photos or videos distributed without the consent – or often even knowledge – of one or more of the participants. In the past several years, it has become a big business for entrepreneurs like, most famously, Hunter Moore – who was indicted last week on felony charges including "conspiracy, computer hacking, aggravated identity theft, and aiding and abetting." Another revenge porn kingpin, Kevin Bollaert, was arrested in California in December on similar charges. Revenge porn is a popular ploy of unhappy exes and mischief-making hackers and their voyeuristic fans, a great many of whom apparently find a thrill in pleasuring themselves to purloined images of "cheating whores" and "nasty sluts." When porn involving consenting, fully aware participants just won't get you off, revenge porn gives that bit of extra hatred and disgust to do the job. As an ex on one site explains, above a woman's name, town and a series of photos of her in all manner of sexual positions, "I want her to be embarrassed more than she already is once she finds herself on here."

Incredibly, in most places, this tactic is totally permissible. As PolicyMic explained earlier this week, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act states that "websites are not deemed directly responsible for user-submitted content," which translates roughly into, if the act itself wasn't illegal, hey, do whatever you want. But that's changing.

We all make choices in life, and once you choose to share something, you no longer have control over where it's shared in the future. But high-profile stories like that of Amanda Todd -- the British Columbia teenager who committed suicide after topless photos she'd taken in seventh grade were distributed widely and repeatedly by the man she sent them to -- make it clear that abuse of privacy is abuse. And the consequences can be devastating. There are, horribly, many more stories like Todd's, mostly of young girls harassed and bullied after compromising images of them were strewn around the Internet.

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Currently just two states have any laws directly addressing revenge porn. New Jersey's 2003 invasion of privacy law, which prohibits "selling, providing, publishing, distributing, or otherwise disseminating nude or sexual photos of another person without that person’s permission," became one of the linchpins of the case against Dharun Ravi, whose Rutgers roommate Tyler Clementi killed himself in 2010 after Ravi posted a video stream of Clementi's encounter with another man. Last year, California enacted a law to make it disorderly conduct to distribute an image taken with "a reasonable expectation of privacy" "with the intent to cause serious emotional distress."

Such laws are tricky to enforce, and some say they don't go far enough. The California law, for instance, doesn’t protect anyone who has taken or sent the image him- or herself from any malicious redistribution of it. But measures like these, and now the Illinois bill, send the message that a campaign of sexual vindictiveness should have consequences. And those consequences should not be for the person some angry, messed-up creep is no longer having sex with.