California Arrests the Owner of a Revenge Porn Site
slate.com
slate.com
Worth reading if only for extreme schadenfreude value.
http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/30/the-takedown-lawyer-lets-h...
Then to stretch a bitter point.......
Failing all that, of course we know the US will kidnap.... sorry, "render" people.... All that's needed there is for them to define blackmail as a form of terrorism. Heh, then I suppose one could justify a drone strike!!!
While that's not how copyright works and many of the photos on his sites were stolen it seems to be enough to hold up DMCA's.
The interview is interesting, I don't think I've ever heard an NPR interviewer speak with such derision towards their interviewer.
Edit: for the downvoters, he was and is hired on this issue by a network of sites called ViaView Inc; most news coverage mentions their site Bullyville. Substantially all of the ads on that network of sites are either for other sites in the network - especially Cheaterville.com - or for services offering to remove "defamatory" content from Cheaterville for fees in excess of $1000. (For a while early on in his crusade, there were no other external ads on any of the sites and no information on how to advertise with any of them.)
I don't suppose anyone knows what happened to Craig do they?
We will never get rid of assholes, but that apparently her job was in jeopardy because of this - and that this is seemingly accepted as okay as it isn't even questioned - was the real WTF realization for me. That is not the work of an asshole, it is the work of a truly degenerate society.
I wasn't questioning or trying to diminish the violation or how she and her family perceived it. I was just sickened by the fact that it was seemingly entirely normal that her job was on the line because of the violation she was a victim of and that this wasn't called out at all. That is a violation not from a single asshole but from an entire society. While we may take the fight and perhaps score wins on the assholes perpetrating this, what is that worth if we silently acknowledge their line of reasoning?
It was a more than reasonable explaination for why they felt physically unsafe. This isn't just about her damn job, they changed their locks.
And there will always be a line in the sand somewhere, unless we completely abandon the very notion of privacy. It just so happens that line happens to be somewhere around "nudity" right now.
So don't get caught up in where the line is. For can you not picture the exact same story in Victorian times? "Oh, but if only we as a people were not so prudish, to be upset about an ankle..."
I could be mistaken, but even in Victorian times, I think many people felt that being bothered about showing ankle was dumb, but didn't stand up because, hell, "everyone seems to be disgusted by it, don't they?"
I still believe the media should start emphasizing how dumb it is to pester and punish people whose nude pictures got leaked instead of essentially saying, "ooh, careful with your nude pictures or they might end up on the internet!!!".
Is that not intrinsically obvious to everyone? Is there anyone saying, "We must shut down Hunter because he is publishing nudity"? I thought we were all angered because of the lack of consent, aggression, and humiliation?
http://www.onthemedia.org/story/revenge-porns-latest-frontie...
(EDIT: originally misattributed this interview as the guy arrested today; I was wrong.)
I decided then that he was either stupid, sociopathic, or both. In any case, you can't be sincerely sorry about that sort of behavior, and still do it regularly for fun.
The fact that Garfield didn't try to understand his motivations was what shocked him. Garfield's attempt at painting him as a sociopath was a wonderful piece of editing (and frankly defamation). Unfortunately OTM does this all the time. They feign objectivity for most of the interview, and then generally towards the end they editorialize in some small way so that they don't come off as sympathetic.
I think consent is the issue, not whether you would want it done to yourself.
Garfield's point was that this is the thoughtless sadism of a cruel child, not that the guy is somehow worse because he's unwilling to inflict the same pain on his family that he inflicts on strangers.
If I steal a candy bar and you ask me why I did it and I said "Well I felt bad, but it looked tasty and I really wanted it". Asking me then if it's okay for other people to steal stuff from me is a dumb question to ask. The only goal of the question it to try to shame me. The awkward silence was awkward b/c Garfield asked a dumb question. It was trying to shame the guy and show some hypocrisy. But there is no hypocrisy. He's fucking people over, and making himself rich. The guy already knows he's mistreating others.
Bob Garfield's interview with Hunter Moore was haunting. If there's a definitional interview of a psychopath, I can't think of a better instance.
It's easy enough to send a picture to the wrong person, to lose your phone, to have your SO open the picture in a compromising social situation (in a meeting, public places, etc...), in addition to the 'revenge' scenario.
It's easier to simply not take the picture than to assume your ex won't be a douchebag after you break up.
It's simply stating that in complicated relationships where feelings are likely to get hurt and people do enact various forms of vengeance (women included), it's best to have a little vigilance.
Expecting that no former lover will ever act out against you is unrealistic.
The 'sexting' thing has gotten out of hand, to the point where kids are being put into jail for having photos of underage kids of the same age, celeb photos are leaked all the time, etc... It's better to avoid taking the photos than to try avoid the consequences later.
Someone having their email account compromised is not acting foolishly - they are not acting. The hacker is. They're a victim, and by that point have very little they can do about it. Acting foolishly is not the same as inviting crime or violent acts; the victims should not take any blame for that - although they may seek advice to prevent or mitigate similar attacks in the future.
This is ridiculous. A very good solution to the "revenge porn" problem is for people to not cavalierly take naked pictures of themselves.
So, I take a naked picture, share it, sharee shares again, <step>, <step>, revenge porn upload.
I am appropriate in my action, and then the propriety drops as the chain goes on. But why is it unfair to say, don't take the pic in the first place and you can avoid what (may) come next.
If people are getting attacked in the streets, warning everyone to stay indoors only redirects the problem. To really stop it, you need to find and arrest the perpetrators. Saying "it's your own fault for being out after dark" does not cut it.
Did I ever say anything condoning revenge porn? No, just a bit of social commentary and a suggestion that sexting has gotten out of hand. And at least in a photoshop scenario, you have deniability to protect your reputation.
Extortion of course is a crime, and those who engage in it should be prosecuted.
> If people are getting attacked in the streets, warning everyone to stay indoors only redirects the problem. To really stop it, you need to find and arrest the perpetrators. Saying "it's your own fault for being out after dark" does not cut it.
I've spent time in countries where I've had to hide in the back of vehicles at police checkpoints, and where I couldn't let anyone know where I was staying, or go out after dark.
Where people were shot dead in the streets by police 2 blocks away from the house at which I was staying during a blackout.
While it's nice to say that you should be able to go anywhere you want at any time you want, when it's actually your life on the line you take the safe route...
Both seem like good ideas, with the second of course being a higher priority, receiving more funding.
Universities in cities frequently send texts and emails to their students warning them of recent muggings/shootings at such-and-such street. That doesn't mean those universities think that those messages are "the solution"; thinking that would be rather foolish. They also invest in more security, assist police investigations however they can, etc.
In this case (http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/charlotte-laws-hunte...) the "Jack" person apparently gave the family some advice for securing their computers... that wasn't Jack saying that securing computers was the solution, or saying that the victims were at fault because they had insecure computers.
Yes, we should find and prosecute people who do things like this. On top of that, it's reasonable to tell people to exercise prudence and caution. As long as the U.S. has a puritanical bent, and a sexist bent, as a woman it's giving a lot of power to a man to send him naked pictures of yourself. This is true, to a lesser degree, if you're a man as well (see Anthony Weiner).
Prosecuting the perpetrators and berating coworkers for their puritanical views won't undo the impact of their seeing photos of you with your breasts or penis exposed. This is just acknowledging reality.
Victim-blaming is victim-blaming, regardless of context. The person who behaved wrongly in these circumstances is the person who uploaded the pic to a revenge porn site, not the person who took it, full fucking stop.
So, to exaggerate to illustrate.... It is a woman's right to walk down a dark ally in a dangerous neighborhood, dressed provocatively, how ever you define that, but, lets fact it, it isn't wise.
So, in some contexts, yes a woman should think twice about what she is wearing, where she is going or that guy she might be meeting. And frankly, so should men. No so much the clothes, but there are places I would avoid at certain time, and yes, there a some women I'd want to avoid.
As for "victim blaming", well, sorry, some victims are partly to blame, and should shoulder some of the responsibility. That does not excuse the offender, but it does have relevance. Both exist. And if you think that is wrong, then tell insurance companies and courts about limiting damage. "Was you car locked where you left it before it got stolen, sir?"
Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Did those fucks make me any more correct?
Your example about insurance companies is specious. They aren't trying to apportion blame; they're trying to find any grounds they can on which they can avoid paying out. I'm also pretty sure that leaving your car unlocked neither excuses its being stolen, nor mitigates the insurance carrier's obligation to make you whole, in the slightest.
"Rape Shield" laws are fairly common in the United States and elsewhere which prevents cross-examining rape victims about their past sexual history or submitting such things as evidence at trial.
This is done precisely to combat victim blaming and is much more relevant than your hypothetical "unlocked car" metaphor.
Obviously the fault doesn't lie with the victim, but since the world can be dangerous it's important to be aware of that reality when making choices. If certain actions increase your risk (walking alone at night, taking naked pictures etc.) then it's better to consider that when making a choice in order to avoid potentially becoming a victim.
You're only in control of yourself - while we can and should strive to make changes to our culture and the system, that doesn't mean individuals should be blind to how their own choices may contribute to increasing their risk of being victimized.
Re: walking down the street at night... The moral righteousness of being right doesn't undo the trauma of being raped. We should be able to trust people with the private information we share with them, but people are assholes and we can't. All the moral righteousness in the world won't change that.
And yeah, moral righteousness doesn't undo trauma, but that's, again, completely orthogonal to victim-blaming.
Net, your comment seems like a bunch of "technically correct is the best correct" and not much else.
You're missing the essential significance of the dress example. It's broadly understood to be a sigil for victim-blaming precisely because it's totally disconnected from the actual nature of rape and won't actually reduce your risk of rape. Therefore, it's presumed to be pretext. But that doesn't mean that every advice to exercise caution is pretext for victim-blaming.
> And yeah, moral righteousness doesn't undo trauma, but that's, again, completely orthogonal to victim-blaming.
You're the one who brought up victim-blaming, in response to post that simply gave cautionary advice. Telling someone to exercise caution, because being right doesn't undo the trauma of victimization, is also orthogonal to victim-blaming.
Let's recap:
"You deserve to be victimized because you took that photo/used a weak password/gave out your SSN over e-mail" is victim-blaming.
"Be careful who you give nude photos to/use a strong password/don't give out your SSN over e-mail" is cautionary advice that is orthogonal to victim-blaming.
More to the point, saying that the world should be a certain way does not make it that way. You should be able to drive on New Years Eve without being victimized by a drunk driver. But the world is not that way and it's prudent to exercise extra caution on holidays because there are more drunk drivers on the road. You should be able to walk down the streets of Wilmington, DE without being mugged. But the world is not that way and I still drive my wife home from work each night. You should be able to trust people with private information. But the world is not that way and it's prudent to keep anything that could be used against you close to your vest.
Being morally in the right does not erase the trauma of victimization, and giving advice that might reduce the chance of victimization is not automatically pretext for victim-blaming.
Asking people to choose a complicated password [1] is a pain, but it's nowhere near as much an encroachment on meaningful freedom than asking them to not have political opinions, or to modify their sexual practices.
[1] I'd argue that our password situation is terribly broken right now, actually, and the fact that so much crime revolves around stolen passwords is as much an indictment of the technical systems we have as the criminals who exploit it.
Powerful and/or controversial politicians always have lots of security for this reason.
> "Maybe gay people should just stop having so much gay sex if they want to stop being victimized by society"
Poor example. They're victimized for being gay, not for the type and quantity of sex they're having.
Yes, and I'd argue that goes with my point. As a society, we never say "well, they sort of had it coming when they were a hack for the socialists/capitalists/whites/blacks/misogynists/feminists/whatever"; we condemn the assassin, and on top of that provide extra security to the politician. In the same way, if a woman goes out in public and gets raped (which is surely more risky than staying indoors all day), we don't condemn her for doing something that statistically increases her chances of becoming a victim of sexual violence, but condemn the rapist and, on top of that, try to build government policies and social practices that decrease the chance of her becoming that victim.
Yes, if only things were so cut and dry. I won't disagree that the person who behaved wrongly was the person who put the photo on the site, just as I would never say it's a rape victim's fault they got raped, or someone's fault they were murdered.
That being said, we don't live in a perfect world or society, and we should take reasonable precautions.
It's all good to tell the police to do their fucking job and protect citizens, but I've been in places where you simply don't go out at night, where the police will rob you and leave your body in a field, and where you won't even tell anyone what neighbourhood you're staying in... Where women are raped and have no chance of justice ever, where men are murdered simply for walking down the wrong road, or sometimes simply for living in the wrong house. I personally know/knew some victims. I don't think its unreasonable to suggest exercising caution...
Long before she met me, my fiancee had an extremely abusive bf. He'd drug her then take pictures and videos of her. When she wanted to leave he threatened to release those pictures to her family. When she finally did (after he assaulted her and her parents), he kept his word.
I won't go into the profanities that accurately express my visceral emotions, but I think a law like this is long overdue. It's wrong that people who take pictures of themselves are being blackmailed to stay with those same pictures, but with the focus the media has on teenagers sexting inappropriately, I feel people forget there are others out there who had these materials taken against their will.
The identity theft is listed in the complaint as "did willfully and unlawfully obtain personal identifying information of Jane Doe #1 and used that information for an unlawful purpose to wit, to harass and annoy, without the consent of Jane Doe", about 25 separate counts. It's not quite clear to me what behaviour this covers, but I think it's adding identifying info to the photos - and if just that was illegal, that would be a pretty good change it sounds like.
What about facts like her home address, home telephone number, and social security number? Does Moore need the right to publish those things if she wants to keep them private?
(I say "nominally" because like the address of assorted gun owners and revenge porn victims, these things are a matter of public record.)
Send the editors to jail?
These revenge porn sites are journalism. And apparently we are all now cheering the government as it shuts down publications whose motives and views we disagree with.
http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/defending_hunter_moor...
Why would someone with the ability to "hack" a large number of gmail accounts choose nude photos to make their money with? I can't imagine the payoff is comparatively good and large-scale blackmail is a pretty good way to get targeted for prosecution.
Further, aren't these pictures in their email because they were sent to someone? How would the average person distinguish between their account being "hacked" for the purpose of retrieving the picture opposed to the receiver sharing it? It sounds more like the instinctual "my account was hacked!" response to something embarrassing.
edit to add: wow. From the xojane link it appears that's actually exactly what everybody does. I'm at a loss for words.
[1] http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/charlotte-laws-hunte...
"In most cases, the scam began through Facebook and ended when “Gary Jones” gained access to the victim’s email account."
Unfortunately it doesn't make a lot of sense without context that I can't fine in the article. Was it phishing?
All 3 of those things were already illegal, and had legal remedies.
(a) is a valid product of journalism; (b) probably isn't.
We think (b) is, though, because one way that media outlets secure power for themselves in the market and elsewhere is by exploiting (b) to inflict punishment on the targets of their stories. They don't like Anthony Weiner (no surprise), so they're happy to torture him to get extra pageviews.
Most of us would probably agree that paparazzi publishing pictures of celebrities naked in their back yard with telephoto lenses is not okay. Publishing pictures of Rob Ford smoking crack? That seems more than reasonable. Publishing pictures of Rob Ford smoking crack, naked in his backyard? I don't think that Rob Ford's attire changes the situation (does it really matter if he's wearing a t-shirt, a business suit, or his birthday suit? Either way, he's smoking crack), but how do you encode that in the law? I am not convinced there is a good way, even if we just say "lets hash it out on a case to case basis in courtrooms, then you have to consider SLAPP concerns.
I don't know. Like you said, it's not simple.
But the fact that it's not simple gives lie to the idea that persecution of revenge porn sites somehow impinges on the civic function of "journalism".
I'm also not sure I trust the media in the role of verifying and then hiding evidence. Far better to just do full data dumps and let us figure things out for ourselves.
As a basic example, someone who is a "normal person" might have a photo leak that goes so viral the photo leak itself makes them a "public figure" by the old celebrity definition. What then?
Is pax dickinson a public figure? How about joe the plumber? Both have been the subject of journalistic investigation.
To the extent that Anthony Weiner's mistakes in his personal life does impact his job, which is in the public interest, that can qualify as journalism and separate him from the common case of a typical victim of these sites.
If you oppose contemporary journalism as well and favor a more Chinese approach to free speech, I will be unpersuasive.
http://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-kamal...
Candidly: the publication of the Weiner "selfies" wasn't a high water mark for "journalism" anyways. Media outlets could have authenticated the photos and then published the simple facts of what had happened. Instead, those outlets applied their own morals and judgement to the situation, made their own decision that Weiner was an asshole, and punished him by repeatedly and gratuitously humiliating him. Maybe that shouldn't have been O.K. The public interest in the actual photos was, let's be honest, pornographic.
I would say that releasing true facts about people with documentary evidence is journalism. What else would it be?
(2) If it is, so what? If any kind of publication is "journalism", than "journalism" isn't a free pass.
The reality is that to the extent that lascivious photos are "journalism", then we recognize different degrees of "journalism"; it's not a binary state.
Moreover, between laws against theft, and laws against copyright violation, I'm unsure how this isn't a solved problem, or why "revenge porn" sites are deserving of special legislation.
What is true is that speech and expression must receive enormous deference, and what is also generally believed to be true is that the content and ideas animating speech can't be the basis for allowing or denying it.
It could potentially be categorized as 'obscene', but that's true (or false) of a given image regardless of how it was obtained or how it's distributed. If porn sites are still legal in the state of California (they are, right?), then so should images on this site be. If they're being displayed unlawfully, on grounds that they were illegal obtained, or are being illegally distributed, then I don't understand why a successful prosecution couldn't be had on those grounds already.
Different states, different extortion statutes, but the California construction seems to be a common one.
The crime isn't "speech"; it's coercion.
Similar dumbasses who are more sly about extracting money from their sites might be undone by other simple legal issues, such as red-flag knowledge that the content they're hosting is stolen, or (as mentioned upthread) that the content itself is facially illegal, for instance because it depicts minors.
Criminalizing or otherwise prohibiting revenge porn sites on a conceptual level, rather than targeting the sites dumb enough to try to cash in, is a trickier issue that's currently being confronted by state legislatures; it wouldn't be shocking to see one of the resulting statutes eventually end up before SCOTUS, sad as that sounds.
From reading the Slate article, they mention the new "revenge porn law" specifically, and then list other charges. The contents of the site could have been anything -- credit card numbers, blackmail information, etc., etc., and the CA legislature would still have the exact same case that they have -- extortion.
I suppose I glommed onto your argument because I assumed (from your other post) that you'd been following it, but I think that the implications of a 'revenge porn' law didn't actually come into play here, which sort of makes whatever point I had -- that there's no purpose for it.
Whatever implications the first amendment has here, origination shouldn't play a part in it. If the images are obscene, that can be determined independently of how they were obtained or distributed. If they violate someone's personal copyright, that's an independent claim. If they violate local pornography statutes, that's again, a separate crime.
What it seems to me is that we've taken a number of things that were already illegal and drafted up a new set of feel-good measures that make them illegal under a different heading. Perhaps the net result is in sentencing, but that seems about as efficient to me as "hate" crime sentencing, where we'll end up with mandatory minimums and such.
Anyway, sorry for pestering, you just seemed to have more knowledge on the matter than the Slate article, and I thought you'd implied that there were free speech implications.
But I'm not seeing other issues you mention as being relevant, stolen material in particular. Weren't the pentagon papers, wikileaks and snowdens NSA files all stolen material?
While I think this case had mitigating factors and the guy could have been charged anyway, I certainly don't trust the jerks in the DA's office to decide who the other jerks are.
Absolutism may work wonderfully in a fantasy universe, but it has no place in reality. There is a huge difference between the non-consensual posting of someone else's pictures (i.e., revenge porn) and Anthony Weiner, a politician running for office, posting his own pictures of his own privates to women he had just met or not even met. (Hint: in one situation, the subject of the photo did not consent to the distribution of the photo, and may not even have consented to the photo itself. In the other situation, the utter stupidity of the actions calls into question Weiner's judgment and demonstrates a propensity for making rash decisions, both of which are important to know when electing a representative.)
Nonsense. I read your blog post; you begin by asking readers to imagine an alternative reality where someone engaged in briebery is expose d by a journalist (despite the briber wishing that such activity would remain private), and then draw a false equivalence between bribery and exposure of one's body in a photograph. The differentce is that while bribery is a crime in most jurisdictions, taking a revealing photograph (or being the subject of one taken by someone else) is not a crime in any of the jurisdictions that apply here. So your public interest argument goes up in smoke.
You go on to draw a comparison with Anthony Wiener. But given that a) he is occupying public office while b) sending unsolicited pictures of a sexual nature to random women he encountered on the internet, that isn't equivalent either. There is a public-interest argument to be made about the unwisdom of him sending out sexy pictures of himself (albeit a limited one; I think most people were more offended by his persistent cheating on his wife than being a horny guy, and this might not have been such an issue if he was single), but you seem to have forgotten that the story first made headlines because he mistakenly posted pictures to his public Twitter account and then organized a wild-goose-chase investigation by falsely claiming his Twitter account had been hacked. This is very different some third party making public a picture of him that he had anticipated would be kept private.
Now I like a good contrarian argument as much as the next guy but this isn't a well-formed argument; it's irrational on its face and degrades the subject of the story in the process of trying and failing to make a point.
An act doesn't need to be criminal to be of journalistic interest. And a public figure is just a person that reporters take an interest in.
And a public figure is just a person that reporters take an interest in.
There is a difference between a merely famous person (eg Kim Kardashian) and a public figure like an elected official, in whose good behavior the public has an interest (as distinct from being interested in it in the colloquial sense). I mean this in the sense of the word republic which is a contraction of the Latin res publica or 'public matter.' This is why private individuals enjoy a right of publicity to their own likeness and copyright protection for their public performances, but the identity and doings of legislators and government officials (within the scope of their official activities) are in the public domain.
Here are photos of someone naked vs here are photos of someone naked along with workplace, home address, home phone, etc.
Yelling fire isn't protected as it insights panic.
Doxing/revenge porn should be protected as it insights harassment.
Revenge porn is definitely not just a male vs female thing. IIRC IsAnyoneUp had a large portion of male victims.
Bollaert just showed us the new reality: You can't stop the internet from trolling. Everyone missed the moral of the story and just sent the law after him.
(I think if he played this off as a social experiment to expose the world we live in, he'd have gotten a lot more slack )
Ask you self whats the different between anonib.com and revenge porn site?
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/shortcuts/2013/aug/06...
However, you can't use the subject to advertise or endorse something w/o their consent iirc (ianal).
Are you sure? I remember reading about a bunch of lawsuits against people that had taken photos of iconic shapes (coke bottle, certain cars) and the maker of the iconic shape claimed copyright. (I can't find a link right now)
You could take a picture of a random person in public and publish it in a gallery, but you couldn't use that image to sell your brand of pop, iirc and ianal. Sorry I can't find a good link right now.