'Revenge porn’ site runner gets 18 years in prison
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
edit: it is an injustice that people are jailed for minor crimes, it seems wild that this is longer than some murderers receive, but recognize that what effectively happened here's was the monetization of widespread psychological and social abuse. 18 years is likely less than the sum time his victims have spent trying to deal with the abuse he inflicted, willingly and for profit.
edit 2: removed downvote gripe, in response to feedback, previously the first paragraph ended with "Let the downvotes flow."
Sorry, but that's an automatic "stop reading and downvote" in my book.
See the last two items: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>it only reinforces how reactionary people can be
You're calling raldi reactionary even though the downvote was not for your 'meaningful comment', but because you literally asked to be downvoted?
Edit: on inspection of your profile you seem intimately aware of the gratuitous downvotes on HN. Why is pointing it out considered a faux pas? Why should we be goaded into not bringing it up?
People commenting are asking you to not do it.
Saying thigs like "I expect I'll get downvoted for this" guarantees downvotes - but those votes are for that part of the comment and not for the rest of the comment.
I've seen people say "I expect I'll get downvoted for this" but then say something bland and uncontroversial.
I will add that in practice, adding this defensive layer has had the opposite effect, it has resulted in more compassionate voting, rather than more downvotes, on my comments, which reinforces why I did it here and have done it in the past, so I question why it's such a big deal, to me, the big deal is the fact that there is an expectation of surprise downvotes, that you can't expect a discussion without driveby negative feedback is a sign of a very toxic community.
Since this is a point of contention, though, I'll try to resist in the future, but I still call out to anyone to ask of the community – why do you downvote so readily, rather than upvoting equally as readily? Check out the Wikipedia article for critical positivity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_positivity_ratio – there's no reason we can't make HN a positive environment.
They don't. The vast majority of users have positive karma scores, including yourself. You just can't see positive votes for other users, as they're invisible. You're arguing from selection bias here. If you are interested in a higher quality conversation, then try out those guidelines.
You may also want to find better links when you want to support your argument - that wiki page starts out "The critical positivity ratio ... is a largely discredited concept", and most of the article is spent arguing against it.
I didn't force anyone.
I didn't say you did. If force is involved, it's not an 'invitation', but a 'summons'. In any case, if you think you can pass off "Let the [X] flow" as being something other than an encouragement for people to do X, perhaps you should consider a career in politics.
Yeah, it would be funny to read a business plan or YC application. How could anyone think this type of "business" was a good idea?
edit: Actually a Judge must sentence a non parole period of at least 10 yrs and up to 25, but it differs between states.
That cruelty might not be a crime on its own (sometimes it is) but the logic is that deeply antisocial criminals should be kept away from society for longer. Or they need more time for rehab, or they should just be punished more harshly. Whichever explanation you accept.
Also, extortion has never been a minor crime. A long history of psychologically cruel extortion? It's hard to have sympathy for people who flaunt their own lack of it.
18 years is absolutely insane. Utterly, terrifyingly insane. That's more than murder gets in many countries. That's more than rape gets. That's more than terrorism gets.
How long before someone just automates building these sort of websites on a prepared template. Who'll be punished then?
Having said that, 18 years does seem unusually harsh, as I know countries where the maximum penalty for murder is 25 years, 7 over and above what this guy got. Chances are the sentencing will be appealed and/or he will be able to get out on parole probably within a fraction of his sentence.
You conflate justice with punishment, when the whole premise of the parent comment what that such a term is not "just".
They are necessarily conflated.
If embarrassing people was a crime, the ex-partners who gave him the photos would be charged too. Those people are even more at fault than him.
It is a crime (disorderly conduct). See California Penal Code 647(j)(4). California Senate Bill No. 1255 made this into law.
> Any person who intentionally distributes the image of the intimate body part ... under circumstances in which the persons agree or understand that the image shall remain private, the person distributing the image knows or should know that distribution of the image will cause serious emotional distress, and the person depicted suffers that distress.
Convictions for the people who gave him the photos probably won't be news.
I feel like we've seen so many (genuine) cases of government overstep that we've been sensitized to see any crime involving the internet as "blown out of proportion." What this guy did was no better than a stereotypical Mafia protection racket.
To be fair, rape convictions result in a lifetime sentence in the US, with no chance of parole. The fact that convicted sexual offenders only spend a portion of their sentence in jail (the sad irony being that we send them there to be raped and beaten) does little to commute the effect of these lifetime sentences.
Why exactly are you terrified?
> That's more than murder gets in many countries. That's more than rape gets. That's more than terrorism gets.
Orange and Apples.
In my understanding Kevin Christopher Bollaert developed a business case where he invited people on a global scale to harm other people. Then in a second step he took advantage of the miserable situation of those victims.
Why do you and other people in this thread fail to see the highly destructive element of this crime? The problem is not just the quality of the crime, where victims experience severe violations of their privacy, it's also the potential quantitity because this business model is only successfull if a lot of people participate.
> Why exactly are you terrified?
Because disproportionate punishment on one crime could result in disproportionate punishment on another. In particular with how the US has been fearmongering "cybercrime" recently, before we know it someone gets a 10+ year sentence for an SQL injection.
> That's more than murder gets in many countries.
>> Orange and Apples.
Indeed it is. So why is apples getting a similar punishment to orange? That's the problem, that they are orange and apples, but yet get punished the same. Where is the logic in that?
> Why do you and other people in this thread fail to see the highly destructive element of this crime?
That's a strawman. Nobody is arguing that he shouldn't have been jailed, nobody. Therefore there is no way you can claim that people think what he did isn't "highly destructive." They just don't think it is on the same "level" as murder, multiple rapes, or beating two people to within an inch of their lives.
You know what else was highly destructive? Wallstreet fraud. How many people lost their jobs? Lost their homes? Literally committed suicide? And how many of them went to jail for a single year let alone eighteen? None.
The legal system is corrupt and inconsistent. That's a genuine problem and one people are right to complain about.
Since there were thousands of separate victims, I think that thinking of it as "one crime" doesn't really do it justice.
"For the lulz".
What was the nature of the counts for identity fraud?
Soliciting compromising photos, and then extorting people to have them removed. He effectively started a criminal organization. A stupid, poorly hidden white collar criminal enterprise, but one nonetheless. Not much different from sending muscle to collect protection money.
But this isn't that long, in relation to others, if you consider that this amounts to a criminal enterprise with many multiple, provable victims.
He wastes government money, he will come out without job or ability to be reintegrated into the society ...
Viewed in this light, the 18 year sentence (ensuring that with parole opportunities and overcrowding he will stay in prison at least 4-9 years), sees that he is "appropriately" punished, and others who might try and follow in his footsteps are deterred for fear of getting the same punishment.
The guy definitely deserves jail, no doubt about that. But for 18 years he literally could have killed someone or committed roughly three rapes.
It is also worth considering that the people actually doing the literal posting deserve some of the "credit" for the crime also. He facilitated, and that definitely can be illegal, however they too deserve culpability here.
I'd say this was a 1-3 year crime. With the people doing the literal postings also getting 6 months to 1.5 years a each.
PS - Maybe I lack the full facts of the case.
edit: Appears like some of the victims were under age and he used a "hacker" to steal revealing images somehow(?) from victims which got him 15 charges under CFAA.
Pay attention to the extortion aspect of it. Identity fraud and harassment are one thing, but directly extorting people has never been something you get off with a slap on the wrist.
That said, the guy really did a lot of damage to a lot of people who will never get their life back the way they want too, and this has to weigh on the judge's mind as well.
[1] http://blog.la-criminal-defense.com/how-credit-for-time-serv... -- note he doesn't have to register as a 'sex offender'
so about 8 months each, if you want to think of it that way. He'll be up for parole in 6 or 8 years - I think, but it's late and I don't feel like reading through the rules now.
It's not murder, each incident is a lesser crime, but by replicating it manifold with the tool of the internet he magnified its impact by several orders of magnitude. He's responsible for using that tool and allowing it to grow to an extraordinary level of criminality and grief.
authorities say he ran afoul of state laws against identity theft, which prevent even simple personal information like names and addresses from being used "for any unlawful purpose, including with the intent to annoy or harass."
Sounds like the legislature mixed in some privacy crimes and gave them a misleading name.
When you do think about legally risky startup ideas, one way to figure out the "badness" is to use the old world analogy: Let's say you ran a company in 1960 that accepts nude photos of your ex by postal mail and makes call to your ex that if they don't pay $300 then the photos would be in newspaper. Would you be punished for running such company? Of course, you will. However 18 yrs is insane. Looking at his income of $30,000 looks like he probably managed to get money from 100 victims. Considering 1 week of pain to get it removed, this still would come out to ~2 years in prison. To compare, people doing Enron billion dollar frauds got less than that.
I think you haven't really been following these cases. To his victims, it was far from "1 week of pain"... his actions cost people their jobs and damaged their relationships. 100 victims only counts the ones who paid, I suspect many wouldn't. You can argue that the posters should pay the price, and they should, but Bollaert is also culpable. Just like I would be culpable if I offered a "bank robbery getaway driver" service.
And let's be honest here, the masterminds behind Enron didn't get the punishment they were due. But they were rich and well-connected. Miscarriage of justice, sure, but a bad comparison.
It's 18 years because US prosecutors want to set an example for a new category of cases, and this guy is neither rich nor well-connected.
His platform was merely an enabler and the nude photos could have been also posted elsewhere.
Bollaert earned about $900 a month in website ad revenue and collected about $30,000 from victims.
Ha ha ha. Yelp and the Better Business Bureau laugh at him. This guy was an amateur in the extortion business, that's for sure. And he's paying for it with 18 years! Can you believe it? 18 years! He should have raped a nun while he was at it and got 19 years instead.