The Polish Senate has passed legislation imposing prison sentences of up to five years for broadcasting online content that depicts violence, animal cruelty, or the degrading treatment of others. <\/p>\n
The amendment to the Penal Code establishes that distributing online content featuring crimes against personal dignity, violence toward animals, or degrading treatment of others will carry a prison sentence of up to three years, even with the victim’s consent. If the content involves a person under the age of 18, the penalty increases to a range of three months to five years.<\/p>\n
The bill includes specific exemptions for activities conducted for artistic, educational, journalistic, or scientific purposes, as well as actions taken to protect the public interest. These regulations were supported by 52 senators, while 26 voted against, with no abstentions.<\/p>\n
The law emerged from the merger of two separate member-sponsored bills, one submitted by the PiS party and another by KO. During the plenary session, Senator Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, acting as the reporting senator, emphasized that patostreaming negatively impacts youth. He noted that during the investigation phase, the prosecutor’s office will determine whether content falls under the artistic or educational exemptions, with the court making the final determination during judicial proceedings.<\/p>\n
MP Monika Rosa, who managed the KO version of the bill, clarified that the law does not target the underlying criminal acts themselves, but rather the act of broadcasting them for profit and reach. The term “patostream” combines “pathology” and “stream,” referring to the live broadcast of vulgar, obscene, or brutal content.<\/p>\n
The legislation now moves to the desk of President Karol Nawrocki, who has 21 days to sign it, veto it, or refer it to the Constitutional Tribunal. Should it be signed, the regulation is set to take effect 30 days after its publication in the Journal of Laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Polish Senate has passed legislation imposing prison sentences of up to five years for broadcasting online content that depicts violence, animal cruelty, or the degrading treatment of others. New Penalties for Online Content The amendment to the Penal Code establishes that distributing online content featuring crimes against personal dignity, violence toward animals, or degrading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}