Is Michael Clasen first person charged under new revenge porn law? | Hacker News Reader

Is Michael Clasen first person charged under new revenge porn law?

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My biggest problem with this? As a resident of Colorado, I have never heard of this law.

The article suggests that the law was passed like many Colorado criminal statutes exclusively in the state house, never being asked for, voted on, or necessarily seen by any Colorado resident who doesn't have direct involvement with the law. Furthermore, LexisNexis: "Official Publisher of the Colorado Revised Statutes" has no record of a C.R.S. 18-7-107 code even existing. (http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/Colorado/)

Regardless of subjective arguments of morality, how can people be charged with criminal laws that they have no way of knowing exist?

This page is prominently linked from colorado.gov and sort of undermines your argument (at least how you have stated it):

http://tornado.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/olls/digest_of_bi...

Then 2014, then Criminal Law and Procedure and it is listed.

You could narrow things down and complain that the official public record of law is not updated fast enough, or that too much law is created for a single person to keep up with. But there is a pretty easy way to find ongoing changes to Colorado law.

As a fellow resident, as a person, I agree about the access to law issue. Its such a problem that there is an entire political movement dedicated to the issue: the Free Access to Law Movement. (That website is not free; the notion that my rights[1] are worthless is quite offensive to me.)

[1] http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/

I think you hit the heart of my concern, even with access to the law, most people need a lawyer to translate the laws into something that can be understood.

Not to mention that the comments to the article prove that when many see one case where the defendant was quite obviously being an asshole and see a law like, "prosecute people for posting nude images to hurt a person without their consent" would just say, "Hey yeah, screw those assholes!"

But there is no mention of the civil and constitution rights quagmire that a law like this can create. Not to mention that most people would likely read this and think it only applies to revenge porn and doesn't have implications to content published in a mutually consensual nature, where the consent was later revoked. Or where a person has their data hacked and leaked and the ex jumps to the conclusion that the content was posted by the creator to hurt them.

It's nice that they protected minors by only including people over the age of 18 in the definition, but to me, the issue is that laws like this allow for potential abuse by former romantic partners and prosecutorial abuse if charges are ever pressed and that isn't at all clear in the way the law is written.

And the article also doesn't stipulate that the damages guaranteed by this law are not only the fines of up to a $10,000 which just goes to the court but also the right of the victim to file a civil suit with a minimum $10,000 + legal fees. So basically, they have created a major incentive for unscrupulous people to turn former lovers in regardless of whether or not they have actually been harmed in any way or had given consent to post the content or whether or not the person charged was even involved with the distribution.

In this case, yeah, the guy needs some reform. But in any other case, all that would likely be needed for a conviction is a sexually explicit video that features both parties with a profile with the picture of one party and the other as the crying victim.

Sir William Blackstone said, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." I believe laws like this are designed to harass innocent people, whether intentionally or not.

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