Victims Push Laws to End Online Revenge Porn Posts

[Syt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/victims-push-laws-to-end-online-revenge-posts.html?smid=tw-share?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=US_VPL_20130924&_r=0

This may or may not be relevant to Languishites.

Victims Push Laws to End Online Revenge Posts


Marianna Taschinger, 23, in Groves, Tex., is suing her ex-boyfriend and a Web site known for "revenge porn" where nude photographs of her were posted.

He was a muscular guy with "kind of a nerdy kind of charm," Marianna Taschinger recalled, a combination that proved irresistible to an 18-year-old girl in a small Texas town.

They dated, broke up, dated again. He asked her to pick out a wedding ring. He also made another request — that she take nude pictures of herself and send them to him.

"He said if I didn't want to send them to him, that meant that I didn't trust him, which meant that I didn't love him," Ms. Taschinger said.

The photos would never be shared with anyone else, she remembers him promising. And she believed him — until last December, more than a year after the couple broke up, when a dozen nude images of her popped up on a Web site focusing on what has become known as revenge porn. She is suing the site and her ex-boyfriend.

Revenge porn sites feature explicit photos posted by ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands and ex-lovers, often accompanied by disparaging descriptions and identifying details, like where the women live and work, as well as links to their Facebook pages. The sites, which are proliferating, are largely immune to criminal pursuit. But that may be changing. California lawmakers this month passed the first law aimed at revenge porn sites.

With cellphone cameras ubiquitous and many Americans giving in to the urge to document even the most intimate aspects of their lives, revenge porn has opened up new ways to wreak vengeance.

The effects can be devastating. Victims say they have lost jobs, been approached in stores by strangers who recognized their photographs, and watched close friendships and family relationships dissolve. Some have changed their names or altered their appearance.

"Sometimes I want to get into a fetal position and cry," said Ms. Taschinger, 23, who added that she gave up her job at a restaurant and was stalked by a man who sat outside her house in a car.

But when victims call the police, they are invariably told there is little to be done. Lawsuits sometimes exact payments from men who post photographs or succeed in shutting down a site. But once the images are online they spread, picked up by dozens or even hundreds of other Web sites.

When Holly Jacobs, a woman in Florida, changed her name to dissociate herself from the photos posted by her ex-boyfriend, she found them linked to her new name. And the owners and operators of the Web sites are in most cases protected by federal law, which largely absolves them of responsibility for material posted by third parties.

"It's just an easy way to make people unemployable, undatable and potentially at physical risk," said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland, who is writing a book on online harassment.

As the sites have increased, legal scholars and women's advocates have begun to push for criminal penalties for people who post on them. Only New Jersey has a law that would allow for criminal prosecution, although it was not written with revenge porn in mind.

But proposals have met opposition from critics who worry that such laws would infringe on the First Amendment. A bill addressing the issue failed in the Florida Legislature this year.

And even California's law, which on Monday was awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature, would make only some forms of revenge posting a misdemeanor punishable by jail time or a hefty fine — applying only to photos taken by others and posted with an intent to cause serious distress.

"It has been watered down again and again as it has weaved its way through Sacramento," said Charlotte Laws, who began pushing for legislation after pictures of her daughter, Kayla, 26, were posted on a site.

"What we really need is federal legislation," Ms. Laws said.

Women who have been victimized by disgruntled exes have filed civil suits based on claims of copyright infringement, invasion of privacy or, in some cases, child pornography.

In Michigan, a federal judge last month issued a default judgment for more than $300,000 in a suit filed by a woman whose photos appeared on yougotposted. The Web site continues to operate despite at least four lawsuits filed against its operators, including one that alleges that the site published images of under-age girls. The alleged owners and operators of yougotposted have either not responded to the lawsuits or have denied the allegations.

Ms. Taschinger is one of 25 plaintiffs, five of them under age, who are suing Texxxan.com, along with its operators GoDaddy, the company that hosted the now-defunct site, for invasion of privacy.

Ms. Taschinger's ex-boyfriend, Eastwood Almazan, is also named, along with seven other men who the suit claims uploaded photos of plaintiffs. In a telephone interview, Mr. Almazan, 35, denied posting the images of Ms. Taschinger or any other women. He said he was not familiar with the Texxxan.com Web site and did not own a computer at the time the photographs appeared.

"I don't know where they're getting this information from," Mr. Almazan said.

John Morgan, a lawyer in Beaumont, Tex., who represents Ms. Taschinger and the other plaintiffs, said that Texxxan.com is under investigation in Texas by the F.B.I.'s cybercrimes division and the Orange County Sheriff.

Aaron McKown, a lawyer representing GoDaddy, which has filed an appeal contending that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act exempts it from liability for posted material, said in an e-mail that the company does not comment on pending legislation.

Messages left for a lawyer representing Hunter Taylor, the operator of the Web site, were not returned. (In a document filed with the court denying the allegations in the lawsuit, Mr. Taylor said, "Attempts to contact Hunter T. Taylor by the press will be of no use, as there will be no comment.")

Revenge porn first drew public attention in 2011, when Hunter Moore, the unapologetic creator of a site called isanyoneup.com, said in a television interview with Anderson Cooper that he had no qualms about profiting from public revenge.

"Why would I?" Mr. Moore said. "I get to look at naked girls all day."

Mr. Moore — who shut down the Web site in 2012 but was reported to have earned $10,000 a month in advertising when it was operational — drew outrage, including from the hacker collective Anonymous. In a video announcing the creation of "Operation Hunt Hunter," the group called Mr. Moore a capitalist who "makes money off of the misery of others" and said, "We will hold him accountable for his actions." Mr. Moore is under investigation by the F.B.I.

Not everyone agrees that criminalizing revenge porn is the best strategy. Marc Randazza, a Nevada lawyer who represents plaintiffs against yougotposted, says that he thinks civil remedies are preferable.

"As horrible as I think people are who do this," he said, "do we really need another law to put more people in jail in the United States?"

And some experts, like Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, have said that any state law would be vulnerable to First Amendment challenges.

But Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he saw no constitutional obstacle to a law written narrowly to address naked or sexual images distributed without permission.

"I think that's a kind of invasion of privacy that the courts would say can be prohibited," he said.

An example of what such a law might look like has been drafted by a law professor at the University of Miami, Mary Anne Franks, and posted on the Web site endrevengeporn.org, founded by Ms. Jacobs.

Professor Franks said that opposition to legislation often stems from a blame-the-victim attitude that holds women responsible for allowing photographs to be taken in the first place, an attitude similar in her view to blaming rape victims for what they wear or where they walk.

"The moment the story is that she voluntarily gave this to her boyfriend, all the sympathy disappears," she said.

Ms. Taschinger said even now, her friends continued to send nude pictures of themselves to their boyfriends.

"You don't want to really think that five years down the line, your boyfriend at the time could be your not-boyfriend and do something really bad to you," she said.

[garbon]

I've mixed feelings. I understand how this can be devastating but then on the flipside, these aren't secret cam photos and the victims either took the photos themselves or allowed them to be taken.

[derspiess]

"He said if I didn't want to send them to him, that meant that I didn't trust him, which meant that I didn't love him," Ms. Taschinger said.

 

Gee, I wonder what she could have done to prevent this from being an issue in the first place...

[Jacob]

I agree that you should be careful about what pictures you take and where you send them; and I agree that you're better off adopting a "whatever" attitude to intimate pictures being shared if possible.

Nonetheless, if no consent has been given to publish or otherwise disseminate private photographs then I'm perfectly okay with douchebags who post nudies of their exes being smacked down.

[crazy canuck]

"He said if I didn't want to send them to him, that meant that I didn't trust him, which meant that I didn't love him," Ms. Taschinger said.

 

Gee, I wonder what she could have done to prevent this from being an issue in the first place...

Exactly.  If he had kept his implied promise that she could trust him then this would never have been an issue.

I agree with Jacob that people need to be vigilant about posting anything about themselves online.  But that does not mean that people who abuse the trust of others should not also be held liable for that breach.

[Berkut]

"He said if I didn't want to send them to him, that meant that I didn't trust him, which meant that I didn't love him," Ms. Taschinger said.

 

Gee, I wonder what she could have done to prevent this from being an issue in the first place...

Exactly.  If he had kept his implied promise that she could trust him then this would never have been an issue.

I agree with Jacob that people need to be vigilant about posting anything about themselves online.  But that does not mean that people who abuse the trust of others should not also be held liable for that breach.

Agreed. My only concern is about how such a law could be used in ways not intended.

And how do you prove that someone never gave consent for the images to be publicly available?

[garbon]

Agreed. My only concern is about how such a law could be used in ways not intended.

And how do you prove that someone never gave consent for the images to be publicly available?

[crazy canuck]

Agreed. My only concern is about how such a law could be used in ways not intended.

And how do you prove that someone never gave consent for the images to be publicly available?

I agree those would be the main issues.  To deal with the second issue there would probably be a reverse onus requirement similiar to what photographers must do now - ie obtain express written consent that the image may be used.

[Tamas]

Agreed. My only concern is about how such a law could be used in ways not intended.

And how do you prove that someone never gave consent for the images to be publicly available?

It wasn`t nice of you to post your ex`s pics, garbon.

[DGuller]

I have a feeling that in the long run, something will be done to hem in the power of the Internet to destroy someone's life, which may or may not be abused to censor Internet in general.

[derspiess]

But that does not mean that people who abuse the trust of others should not also be held liable for that breach.

I never said that.  I just said that by using a tiny bit of common sense & caution, you can prevent yourself from becoming a victim.

[Tamas]

I have a feeling that in the long run, something will be done to hem in the power of the Internet to destroy someone's life, which may or may not be abused to censor Internet in general.

if there will be an effective way of stopping the Internet being potentially harmful, then it WILL be used to censor it. It is an inevitability

[crazy canuck]

But that does not mean that people who abuse the trust of others should not also be held liable for that breach.

I never said that. 

Then you should make your meaning more plain since that is certainly the implication I took from your post.

[derspiess]

But that does not mean that people who abuse the trust of others should not also be held liable for that breach.

I never said that. 

Then you should make your meaning more plain since that is certainly the implication I took from your post.

No.  You should stop trying to put words into my mouth. 

[crazy canuck]

But that does not mean that people who abuse the trust of others should not also be held liable for that breach.

I never said that. 

Then you should make your meaning more plain since that is certainly the implication I took from your post.

No.  You should stop trying to put words into my mouth.

This isnt a case of putting words in your mouth.  This is a case of you making an absurd remark blaming the victim and then having to say that isnt what you meant.