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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading an article in Encyclopedia Dramatica (I won’t link to it, as it’s fairly NSFW), in which they posted a bunch of really tasteless pictures of some poor girl’s body, after a horrific auto accident. These were taken by a first responder at the scene.

She came from a prominent family, and the family hired one of these firms to “clean up” the images.

It did not seem to work. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect (see “Streisand Effect”). Trolls tend to take this kind of thing as a challenge.

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"Trolls" (not sure if that's the correct term in this case) can only cover a small part of all the reputation repairs. Most of them stay below the radar, so nobody will even know it's been done.

I've seen it fail as well, an old friend had some rather intimate pictures leaked. They sank a lot of money into suppressing them but ultimately it seems to be a fruitless endeavour.

You cannot guarantee suppression but you can discreetly reduce frequency until very few available versions exist, and hope they quietly die in the long run. You see this happening with certain videos and pictures, typically sex-related.

I hear Elon Musk does this with old articles about his history. The skeptic community actively tries to archive the old stuff. Furthermore he also seems to employ SEO techniques to stay on top of any negative stories. For example, there was a Tesla Whistleblower story about some FSD controversy (the millionth one). Next thing you know he releases a literal Tesla Whistle on the company store and all of a sudden when you search Tesla Whistleblower....you are inundated with articles about Tesla's contribution in the field of human powered audible alert systems.

> all of a sudden when you search Tesla Whistleblower....you are inundated with articles about Tesla's contribution in the field of human powered audible alert systems.

If that was a genuine effort to bury news articles it seems to have backfired. Search results are full of information on actual whistleblowers and news articles returned that were written about the whistle seem to have no issue bringing up the actual whistleblowering

Maybe now but when the article dropped was around the time he announced the cyberwhistle. He has probably gone past the initial newsworthy window.

Whether or not it's a prominent family, the continued distribution of ghoulish photographs of a dead young girl should come with substantial criminal penalties. There is no possible justification for it - it's not like it's a free speech issue. No family should have to deal with this along with the grieving process.

it's not like it's a free speech issue

Why is it unrelated to free speech? It seems like it would be a free speech issue if pre-accident images weren't allowed to be published, e.g., in a news article about the accident. I don't see a material difference that would take accident photos out of the domain of free speech.

For my part, as a parent, I would never want to look at such photos. I would however be alright with their use, for example in safe driving campaigns in drivers ed courses. I believe some driving courses (specifically against drunk driving) have done exactly that. I'm sure other families would feel differently, but I don't think there's a prima facie case to be made that no family ever would be okay with this and that it would always increase the emotional toll, or never have any benefit.

I certainly don't like them being published merely to satisfy the morbid curiosity of random internet folks, but I also don't see how you ban that without potentially running afoul of (US) free speech rights that have strict limits on speech restraints. Obscenity is one of those limits, but the law has continually struggle to find a bright line rule by which to measure such things. At a minimum, that lack of clarity still places this sort of image within the domain of free speech issues.

I don't think a problem with generalizing should get in the way of recognizing what is clearly the case: as described, what happened to that girl and her family was clearly wrong. It was not a free speech issue and no-one claimed it was. The photo was shared simply for ghoulish sensationalism. Under these conditions, this sharing should be harshly penalized. I agree there are problems generalizing, and I'm not trying to write a law. I'm just saying that in this particular case the sharers of that picture are clearly in the wrong, and they should stop or face consequences.

If there is any suspicion that the prominent child's death was not an accident, it can very quickly become a free speech issue.

This story is also mentioned in Lo and Behold, the Werner Herzog documentary about the creation and effects of the Internet.

Can’t she DMCA their host providers? Unless it’s on the dark web or some sort of self hosting.

Good luck making a case that you have the copyright to some picture of you taken by someone else. If anyone, the picture taker may have the copyright.

Some jurisdictions have the concept of a "right to your own image" if you are relatively unknown or if the image does not have sufficient content to suggest public interest, but afair, the US does not.

ED is a fairly notorious site. I suspect they have 3 lawsuits on the front burner, on any given day.

Also, she (of course) did not take the picture, nor did anyone in her family. I suspect the FR that took the picture was fired with extreme prejudice. It may have even been illegal to take them. It was certainly a fairly abhorrent thing to do.

But it wasn't a copyright violation.

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