Sweden, Sex Work, Screens

Sweden has quietly taken a radical step: it is now illegal to purchase online sexual acts. This move advances Sweden’s long-standing “end demand” policy model for tackling sexual services from the physical realm, into the digital. Yet it seems to overlook the significant differences between the two spheres – in terms of behaviour models, profiles, and market dynamics – and how such differences may be taken into account when determining the persuasiveness of the law’s rationale. This becomes especially clear when measured against the protections enshrined under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and recent Strasbourg case law.

While the criminalisation of the purchase of in-person sexual services has been judged to be compatible with Article 8, the underlying reasoning rests on factors that do not translate to the online sphere: combatting prostitution and human trafficking, a lack of consensus on sex work policy across Europe, and an inability to parse the harms caused by the law from the harms caused by sex work itself. Sweden’s extension of its “end demand” policy into digital sex work thus risks overstepping the boundaries of Article 8 of the ECHR and reveals how laws that are directly transplanted from the offline to the online sphere without due thought may lead to the erosion of private digital rights.

Sweden’s new law

After a one-year legislative process, Sweden passed a law that took effect on 1 July 2025 and expands the criminalisation of the purchase of sexual services made in the physical domain to those made in the digital domain – such as webcam performances, sexual video chats, and personalised sexual videos. The new provisions, part of the legislation “Stricter Approach to Sexual Violations, Fraud Against the Elderly, and Gender-based Hate Crimes”, enacted through Proposition 2024/25:124, were apparently motivated as a natural expansion of existing law and as a means of combatting human trafficking and prostitution. The legislation amends Section 6.11 of the Swedish Criminal Code, changing the terminology therein, so that rather than criminalising the purchase of sexual “services” it instead criminalises the purchase of sexual “acts”, making specific reference to the provision of sexual services through remote (and thus digital) means. Under the law, clients face up to one year in prison; facilitators or profiteers up to four years; and landlords who knowingly lease spaces for such acts up to ten years.

Sex workers’ rights organisations, such as the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) and Red Umbrella Sweden, strongly opposed the law, criticising it as classist, anti-feminist, and dangerous. These views were echoed by human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, as well as by various digital sex workers interviewed for major publications, who reiterated these concerns, criticising the lack of proper consultation about the law with the people it would affect most.

The Strasbourg benchmark: M.A. and Others v. France

In M.A. and Others v. France (no. 63664/19, 25 July 2024) a large number of sex workers sought to overturn a law criminalising the purchase of sexual services, codified in Articles 611-1 and 225-12-1 of the French Penal Code. The applicants argued the law interfered with their capacity to engage in consensual sexual activity, reduced their income, diminished their negotiation power, and increased their exposure to various harms, in a manner that ultimately violated Article 8. While the Court agreed there had been an infringement of sex workers’ private lives (§ 136-138), they stated this had been balanced against a legitimate aim: combatting prostitution and human trafficking. The Court emphasised the infringement could be deemed necessary, given the lack of European consensus on how to address this issue, and France’s consequent entitlement to a wide margin of appreciation (§ 147-153). The Court furthermore stated that the infringement could be deemed proportionate, as it was unclear whether it was the new law, or the conditions of selling sex, that had produced the harms in question (§ 154-155), and that the law also contained universally supported provisions – such as the decriminalisation of sex workers – that showed respect for the needs of all relevant parties (§ 158-162). The Court thus reached the unanimous decision that there had been no violation of Article 8.

Legitimacy under scrutiny: from streets to screens

In the eyes of the ECHR, for the aim of a criminal law to be legitimate, it must seek to achieve security, crime prevention, public safety, the safeguarding of health, or the protection of human rights. The criminalisation of the purchase of in-person sexual services was thus found to be legitimate in M.A. and Others v. France as the law sought to combat prostitution and human trafficking (§ 140-145). Yet this justification cannot be applied to the online domain: as far as our evidence goes, sex workers on platforms such as OnlyFans are there of their own volition. Online sex work has proven to be well paid, autonomous, and professional (Sanders et al., 2017) – and up until this law, not formally associated with criminal activity. Without preventing any substantive harms it is difficult to envisage how the infringement of online sex workers’ private lives could be justified as part of a legitimate aim. This points to a problem of direct translation: the logic of the law governing the physical realm is applied directly to the digital, with little thought to the substantive distinction between the two spheres. Digitalisation does not merely shift pre-existing conduct into the online space — it fundamentally transforms its nature.

European consensus: Sweden’s isolation

When there is European consensus regarding a moral or ethical issue, the ECHR generally expects states to accede to the norm (see Goodwin v. The United Kingdom, 28957/95, July 2002, and  Alekseyev v. Russia, no. 4916/07, § 83-85, October 2010). For online sex work, this is currently the case: in every European country other than Sweden the purchase of digital sexual acts is not criminalised. Sweden’s new law thus sets a dangerous precedent by encouraging the extension of harms caused by the criminal law to a sphere that, by the existing European standard, has no need or justification for it. This legislative trajectory follows a familiar pattern: Sweden pioneered the “end demand” model for in-person sex work, and others – Norway, Iceland, France, and Ireland – followed. At the moment, Sweden’s divergence from the European norm proves a clear legal weakness. Yet as time goes by, if this law goes unchallenged, and others adopt the same, the margin of appreciation granted to Sweden (and other states) may widen, potentially opening up new avenues for the infringement of private digital rights.

Proportionality: clear harms, no benefits

The infringement of the law upon private rights for the public interest can be seen as a kind of cost – a necessary harm to prevent one all the greater. The ECHR thus takes pains to ensure that private rights and public interests are balanced proportionately, including direct reference to how the law causes harm. In M.A. and Others v. France, the ECHR emphasised the ambiguity within the complaint posed by the applicants; it was difficult to determine to what extent the negative outcomes suffered by sex workers were a result of the law or simply the sex work itself. Online that ambiguity vanishes: even if current evidence of harm is limited, the law is likely to lead to significant negative consequences. Such harms include law enforcement monitoring of digital spaces, home investigations, eviction, income loss due to departing clients or deplatforming, and the arrest of partners or relatives accused of profiting from sex work; unsurprising consequences being emigration, destitution, loss of interpersonal relationships, and engagement in riskier forms of sex work. These potential harms are not offset by any corresponding benefits. There are no accompanying measures intended to improve sex worker safety or wellbeing. Set against the backdrop of conduct that is otherwise lawful and causes no apparent physical harm, it is difficult to see how such a law could be deemed proportionate.

Sweden’s inadvertent warning

The extension of Sweden’s “end demand” policy model for combatting sexual services into the digital realm marks a significant overreach. The law cannot avail of a legitimate aim to justify the interference, stands firmly against the European consensus, and will most certainly do more harm than good. In light of the application of Article 8 of the ECHR by the Strasbourg Court, the law’s interference with the private lives of digital sex workers is thus difficult to justify and should be strongly opposed.

Yet the case also serves as a warning: as states continue to regulate digital spaces, the temptation to simply transplant offline laws into the online sphere should be resisted. The digital and physical realms are fundamentally different, and laws must reflect these differences to avoid an unwarranted erosion of private rights.