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Comment by discountgenius | Hacker News Reader

It seems like a DMCA takedown request should probably do the trick. As much as I think what sites such as Texxxan.com are doing is sleazy and classless, I don't think it should be illegal. We have to protect the rights of sites with user-submitted content.

Edit: Also, digitized nude pictures of yourself are basically always a bad idea.

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From the article:

Ms. Toups said she was “in a straight panic” for days after discovering the photos, and emailed the site’s owner to try to get them taken down. “They replied and said they would be happy to remove the pictures for me if I would enter my credit card information.”

Sounds like that sort of behaviour ought to be illegal to me...

That doesn't sound like the whole story, but if it is then their takedown request system needs to be fixed. I guess what I'm saying is I'd be interested in knowing what steps if any occurred between her emailing the website and her suing the website.

Of course it sounds like the whole story. Their business model is based on extortion, like several other sites. Usually they try top make the hosting and removal seem like separate companies, but this is entirely believable.

"That doesn't sound like the whole story"

It IS the story. This is their entire business model.

"their takedown request system needs to be fixed"

You are under the mistaken conclusion that these are legitimate businesses.

What about protecting the rights of people to their privacy? The world does not live and die on protecting the particular business model of user submitted content. Their protections must be balanced against the existing rights people have.

Exactly. This has nothing to do with user submitted content per se. It's the type of content that should be regulated at least.

We shouldn't be able to prosecute revenge porn on the annoyed ex's blog (as long as he's hosting it himself, I imagine porn would violate public blog sites TOSs)

But we should be able to go after for profit, privacy invading sites that allow anonymous uploading.

This reminds me, why did Google Maps remove the faces from their street view? Only public outrage? or was there a law behind?

I'd be pretty comfortable with something similar to the DMCA takedown procedure, where a person can certify that they appear in a photo and that they did not give permission to publicize the photo. It would be fine if photos taken in public were treated differently. I do wonder if 'outdoors' would have to be public, or if there would still be grey areas (I think it would be fine to err in favor of respecting the wishes of the person depicted, but lots of people are pretty set on public is public, never mind wild changes in our ability to create and distribute recordings).

That it would be inconvenient for big companies that host lots of photos doesn't really bother me any.

It's considered general good behaviour to blur the faces of bystanders, license plates (and I know at least in the UK they attempted to algorithmically blur windows).

However, there are no laws involved (at least in the UK). The people involved are not the subject of the work nor do they have any reasonable expectation to privacy on the street. Windows were another issue and I do remember some outrage over it. Google said they were trying to blur it and people went "Okay" and then it died down.

I assume the majority of the pictures were taken with consent and trusted to a boyfriend, etc. If you don't like what your boyfriend did with the picture you sent him, file a DMCA request.

If the pictures were not taken with consent, then it's a law enforcement issue. Voyeurism, hacking, etc. are already illegal.

>If the pictures were not taken with consent, then it's a law enforcement issue. Voyeurism, hacking, etc. are already illegal.

It's a law-enforcement issue with the boyfriend. There's nothing in place to force a website to take these photos down is the problem. Perhaps there should be.

There's a big difference between "consent to take" and "consent to distribute and use commercially". I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that in this case it's more in the public interest to require models' consent to distribute (as in commercials and commercially-produced adult material) whereas in other cases (e.g. documentaries and news media) it's in the public interest to presume in favour of allowing the material to be widely disseminated

You're wanting to have your cake and eat it too. People say: crimes should not be treated differently just because you use a computer to do them. I agree! If I was running a bar where I solicited jilted ex-boyfriends to send in naked pictures of women, and then plastered them all over the wall and purposefully profited from the business they brought in, then you can bet I would be charged with a crime! Acting in concert with someone else to violate someone's rights makes you liable in meat space, and the same should be true in digital space.

With your bar example what crime could you charge the bar owner with? It's a very sleazy thing to do but I don't know of any laws in the United States that it violates. If the ex-boyfriends took the photos than they own copyright to them and as far as I know the subject has no rights to them.

All states have privacy-related torts that could be leveled directly at the bar owner, as the publisher of the pictures.

See: http://blog.internetcases.com/2012/05/21/social-media-legal-...

Specifically: http://blog.internetcases.com/2009/10/07/group-sex-photos-ca...

Disclaimer: this is not a legal opinion.

> ...then you can bet I would be charged with a crime!

What crime? I can't think of one that would apply.

> Acting in concert with someone else to violate someone's rights makes you liable...

This might be where our opinions diverge. To what rights do you refer? I think your right to privacy may be waived when you consent to have the pictures taken and sent to a third party without a written contract.

Your right to privacy is not waived just by disclosure. If I tell my girlfriend I have VD, and she e-mails my whole office that fact after we break up, that is an invasion of privacy and is not waived because I told her in private. If I announce I have VD at the office party and then she sends the e-mail, that's different.

This is common sense stuff.

I totally agree that that is a moral invasion of privacy. I'm just not convinced it's a legal one.

It is a legal one. See my other post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092699

Forget the DMCA, a site hosted in the USA that hosts pornographic content without proper documentation that the models are over 18 is in for a world of hurt. We forget because there's so much porn online but these people operate on very shaky legal ground.

"It seems like a DMCA takedown request should probably do the trick"

This is happening because such requests are ignored.

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