ADAPTING TO THE HYSTERIA: Male Students Using Texts, Videotapes, Facebook to Beat Rape Charges.

News reports indicate that videotapes can often provide a successful defense to rape:

• Four students at Hofstra University were accused of gang raping a fellow student, but were freed when a cell phone video indicated that the sexual encounter was consensual.
• A San Francisco lawyer, charged with raping three women, had the charges regarding two women dismissed because he had videotaped those encounters.
• A man was found not guilty of an alleged gang rape after a Cook County, Illinois, jury was shown a videotape arguably showing some signs of consent as pointed out by an expert witness.

Although the Federal Wiretapping statute prohibits audio recording, it does not limit recording of video-only images. Moreover, the great majority of the states also do not criminalize videotaping.

In any event, the few state laws which criminalize it are full of restrictions and loopholes so they may not apply where a man videotapes his own sexual activities in his own room, not for sexual gratification, but rather as a legal defense to rape.