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Comment by discountgenius | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

>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.

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