Background
In May and August 2018, Mr. [V] voluntarily filmed himself and transmitted sexually explicit videos to Mme [E] using an ephemeral-messaging format — the kind that permits only a single viewing and then automatically deletes the content. Without [V]’s knowledge, [E] covertly copied those videos onto her mobile phone and personal computer. The material subsequently appeared on a website called “Pornopolitique.com” and was circulated on social media. On 15 February 2020, [V] filed a criminal complaint for invasion of private life and for the retention and distribution of recordings obtained through such an invasion, both offences under Articles 226-1 and 226-2 of the French Penal Code.
A judicial investigation was opened on 18 February 2020 against [E] and a co-defendant, Mr. [H]. After the investigation concluded, both were committed for trial before the criminal court (tribunal correctionnel), which on 11 October 2023 found them guilty and awarded civil damages to [V]. All three parties — [E], [V], and the public prosecutor — appealed.
On 31 January 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal (chamber 2-7) acquitted [E] of the criminal charges. It reasoned that strict construction of the criminal law precluded extending Articles 226-1 and 226-2 to cover the saving of videos that [V] had himself filmed and voluntarily transmitted to [E]; because the videos originated with [V] and were sent by him, the court held that capturing and retaining them on a phone or personal computer fell outside the statutory prohibition. As a consequence of the acquittal, the court dismissed [V]’s civil claims against [E]. [V] then petitioned the Court of Cassation.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Cassation granted a partial cassation. It confirmed the foundational rule derived from Article 226-1(2°) of the Penal Code: any recording or transmission of an image of a person in a private place is a criminal offence if carried out without that person’s knowledge — and this is so even if the image was originally captured with the person’s consent. Consent to the initial creation of an image does not carry over as consent to subsequent covert recording or retention by the recipient.
Applying that principle, the Court held that the Paris Court of Appeal had erred in law. The appeal court had itself found that [E] copied the videos without [V]’s knowledge, and that [V] had transmitted them only for a single, ephemeral viewing followed by automatic deletion. Those findings necessarily established that [V] had not consented to [E]’s covert recording operations. Having made those factual findings, the appeal court could not then acquit [E] of the recording offence, and — more importantly for the present cassation — could not dismiss [V]’s civil claims on that basis.
Because [E]’s criminal acquittal had become final and was not subject to challenge in these proceedings, the cassation is limited to the civil-law portion of the judgment. The Court annulled the appeal court’s dismissal of [V]’s civil claims and remanded the civil matter to the Paris Court of Appeal, differently constituted, with instructions to determine whether [E] committed a civil fault, assessed on the basis of — and within the limits of — the facts that formed the subject of the prosecution.
Key Takeaways
- Sending an intimate image voluntarily does not amount to consent to the recipient covertly recording or retaining a copy; each act requires its own consent under Article 226-1 of the Penal Code.
- The ephemeral, self-deleting nature of the transmission format is legally significant: it is evidence that the sender specifically withheld consent to any permanent capture of the image by the recipient.
- Even where a criminal acquittal has become final and cannot be revisited, a civil-party claimant may still obtain a finding of civil fault from a remand court based on the same underlying facts, pursuant to Article 4-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
- The Court of Cassation rejected the Paris Court of Appeal’s strict-construction rationale: the principle of strict interpretation of criminal law does not require courts to read privacy-protection statutes so narrowly that they fail to cover covert screen-capture of ephemeral intimate content.
Why It Matters
This decision addresses a rapidly growing category of harm — the covert capture and subsequent misuse of intimate images that the subject transmitted in the expectation they would disappear after viewing. By clarifying that the sender’s consent to a one-time, ephemeral share cannot be bootstrapped into consent to permanent retention, the Court of Cassation closes a gap that lower courts had left open through overly restrictive statutory interpretation. The ruling aligns French law more closely with the positive obligations on states under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, an argument that the civil party had explicitly advanced and that the Court implicitly endorsed by finding a violation of the domestic privacy statute.
For practitioners, the case establishes that victims of so-called “screenshotting” or covert recording of disappearing intimate messages have a viable path to civil redress in France even when a criminal conviction cannot be secured or has been overturned on appeal. It also signals to lower courts that the strict-construction principle in criminal law is not a licence to immunise deliberate privacy violations simply because the victim originally chose to share the content.