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Should revenge porn web sites be made illegal?

Should revenge porn web sites be made illegal?

  • Yes, make them illegal. They're harassment, not protected free speech

    Votes: 22 42.3%
  • No, they should be legal. They're in bad taste, but they're legal.

    Votes: 30 57.7%

  • Total voters
    52
Ideally, yes, those type of sites should be illegal. I just think that it's going to be almost impossible to enforce that. It's one reason that I will never ever take any pictures/videos of myself...once those images are out, they're impossible to get back. For most men (including myself), I think we'd find it mildly embarrassing, so we find it hard to understand the way women feel about it. I can only imagine that it would be 100x worse for a woman if compromising images got out, than it would be for a guy.
 
He is also a beauty school "drop out" and took a job doing hair styling for porn shoots.

Karma seems to come in many forms...
Moore has "been hounded by his victims on US TV and even stabbed by someone he featured on the site, but nothing, it seems, can stop him from invading people's privacy."
Sexting Website: Nude Photos Of Ex-Lovers A Nastier Type Of Porn




huntermooremain2-200x0.jpg

Moore says he was stabbed in the shoulder by someone who he featured on the site.
 
It is legal, imo, and should stay legal.

When an individual knowingly participates in the photo or video and gives it to someone, they have conceded any rights to it. If I give someone else a car, it is now theirs and I have no say in what they do with it. Same with these photos and videos. A woman breaking off an engagement is not legally required to return the engagement ring, so, to me, if there are photos or videos were given to the other party, then they do not have to be returned either.

If you don't want nude or sexually explicit photos or videos of yourself put onto the net, then don't allow them to be made and don't give them to anyone. When you do, the rights to that photo/video are transfered with the photo/video and the owner of the rights to it can basically do anything they want with it.

Videos/photos that display persons who did not voluntarily participate in making them are, of course, a completely different matter.

That is not the issue at all. The question is whether I can secretly put a video camera in your bedroom and then upload the video onto that website. CONSENT of the recorded party is not a requirement of the website. The "victim" didn't allow anything.

Per the website practice, if I knew your address I could plant a video camera in your bedroom and later upload whatever I recorded, regardless of whether I had consent of either of you. Since I could upload it anonymously, you would not any recourse against me. Because of unique federal law that ONLY protects the Internet and not any other publication method, there is nothing you could do about it.

In those videos, I could put video up of you using or smoking dope, any crap talk you said about others - about your parents, spouse, GF/BF, children, boss, other people - maybe catch you masterbating to put online FOREVER - and anything else done and said in your house. While I as a 3rd party could be prosecuted IF you can prove I did it, how are you going to do that? And even if somehow you did, those videos would still be there forever. You'll never be president, will you?

I could then post links to that video all over the internet and send letters, texts and emails to everyone you know of the video location only limited by how much time I cared to do so. So could then everyone else. And those videos - visual and audio - would be there forever.

IF the other person(s) you were with at the time made the video secretly, there is NOTHING you could do about it, period. The "theory" of the website is to allow getting revenge against a GF or Spouse. BUT that is NOT the only potential and real usage of it.

"Free speech?!" This has NOTHING to do with free speech. It is the ultimate invasion of privacy for the specific purpose of destroying the other person's life and nothing else. In fact, that is the stated purpose of the website - to allow you to destroy someone else by secret invasion of their home and even bedroom with a secret video camera. "Consent" specifically is NOT involved.

I started a thread on this topic long ago I think after we had such a scare. Someone has secretly (hidden pin camera) made such a video of my wife "for his own usage." Fortunately we learned and fortunate for him, some other friends of ours got to him first. Beat the crap out of him enough until they were certain he had told them all the copies he had of it - and fortunately not circulated. It was on a fluke and some people putting together pieces of things he said that we learned.
 
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He is also a beauty school "drop out" and took a job doing hair styling for porn shoots.

Karma seems to come in many forms...
Moore has "been hounded by his victims on US TV and even stabbed by someone he featured on the site, but nothing, it seems, can stop him from invading people's privacy."
Sexting Website: Nude Photos Of Ex-Lovers A Nastier Type Of Porn




huntermooremain2-200x0.jpg

Moore says he was stabbed in the shoulder by someone who he featured on the site.

Wish he had died from it.
 
Ideally, yes, those type of sites should be illegal. I just think that it's going to be almost impossible to enforce that. It's one reason that I will never ever take any pictures/videos of myself...once those images are out, they're impossible to get back. For most men (including myself), I think we'd find it mildly embarrassing, so we find it hard to understand the way women feel about it. I can only imagine that it would be 100x worse for a woman if compromising images got out, than it would be for a guy.

The sites only provide a venue, not content. If the material is copyrighted, then they have a legal obligation of remove it. If it is posted by the person who owns the rights to the photo, be it the individual pictured or the person that the individual in the picture gave it to, then the owner of the rights is free do with it what they want, even posting it on a public website.

As to it being far worse for a woman, I don't see it. If a photo got out of some guy who is, shall we say, small in size and everyone who seen it started calling him tiny, I'm fairly certain it would be devastating to him. I know from experience that getting tagged with nicknames based upon your "size" can be terribly embarrassing, I still blush and stammer whenever someone who knew me back when refers to me as "meat" in front of women. I don't see that someone making a reference to a womans sexual attributes based upon a released photo is any different that what a man feels.
 
The woman (or man in some cases) makes the choice to send these pictures to the other individual. Unless there is a contract or any other binding legal document the picture is now property of the receiver, just as much as it is the sender. Sending photos like this is a choice, and therefore the receiver has the choice to do whatever he/ she feels needed. Don't want to end up on the internet, don't send them. Simple as that.
 
That is not the issue at all. The question is whether I can secretly put a video camera in your bedroom and then upload the video onto that website. CONSENT of the recorded party is not a requirement of the website. The "victim" didn't allow anything.

Per the website practice, if I knew your address I could plant a video camera in your bedroom and later upload whatever I recorded, regardless of whether I had consent of either of you. Since I could upload it anonymously, you would not any recourse against me. Because of unique federal law that ONLY protects the Internet and not any other publication method, there is nothing you could do about it.

In those videos, I could put video up of you using or smoking dope, any crap talk you said about others - about your parents, spouse, GF/BF, children, boss, other people - maybe catch you masterbating to put online FOREVER - and anything else done and said in your house. While I as a 3rd party could be prosecuted IF you can prove I did it, how are you going to do that? And even if somehow you did, those videos would still be there forever. You'll never be president, will you?

I could then post links to that video all over the internet and send letters, texts and emails to everyone you know of the video location only limited by how much time I cared to do so. So could then everyone else. And those videos - visual and audio - would be there forever.

"Free speech?!"

Yes you could. Of course, you could just post it on facebook, and even if they did then take it down, it would be out there, is facebook responsible for it or are you? Is the person running these kinds of websites sleaze-bags, I think so, but being one is not illegal. While I don't think they should be made illegal, I do think they should have to remove any photo/video and links to them where the ownership of rights to the photo/video are in question and only be allowed to repost the links, etc after legal rights to the material have been established. If the material in question resulted from something like you described, then the site should be required to release any information, under warrant from a court, to law enforcement.
 
The sites only provide a venue, not content. If the material is copyrighted, then they have a legal obligation of remove it. If it is posted by the person who owns the rights to the photo, be it the individual pictured or the person that the individual in the picture gave it to, then the owner of the rights is free do with it what they want, even posting it on a public website.

As to it being far worse for a woman, I don't see it. If a photo got out of some guy who is, shall we say, small in size and everyone who seen it started calling him tiny, I'm fairly certain it would be devastating to him. I know from experience that getting tagged with nicknames based upon your "size" can be terribly embarrassing, I still blush and stammer whenever someone who knew me back when refers to me as "meat" in front of women. I don't see that someone making a reference to a womans sexual attributes based upon a released photo is any different that what a man feels.

What it means is that forever your wife will be seeing full length secretly taken video of you screwing other women and all your words of undying love to those women/other people, among other things - video you never consented to or know was being made.

I do recall suicides where this was done to a couple college kids having gay sex via secret video planted in the room.

There is still another aspect, this is EXTREMELY supportive of retaliatory violence by the "victim" who may not limit him/herself to videos. If some man posted videos of a woman he had sex with and secretly videoed - really only having sex with her to obtain the video for the purpose of humiliating her for some reason, and she shot him dead, I'd vote "temporary insanity" and give her a pass if I were on that jury - because I'd be glad that asshole was dead. Regardless, I can see such practices leading to violence and other counter retaliations.

To the opposite, I believe MANY privacy-protections laws should be passed - both in relation to government and other people. Foremost, these should protect your privacy in your own residence.
 
Who took the photo?

Barring previous agreements otherwise, the moment the photo is taken the copyright of said photo belongs legally to the person who took it. Doesn't matter if they provided a copy to another person, they still own the photo. All they gave was a copy and publishing rights are not included. Just like you can't buy a music CD then think you have the right to broadcast said music on your new radio station. Given that money is being made off said photo, and most likely withOUT the appropriate and legal consent of the rights holder (person who submitted photo doesn't count), it is possible that civil damages could be sought.
 
The sites only provide a venue, not content. If the material is copyrighted, then they have a legal obligation of remove it. If it is posted by the person who owns the rights to the photo, be it the individual pictured or the person that the individual in the picture gave it to, then the owner of the rights is free do with it what they want, even posting it on a public website.

Websites are made to police other illegal content even if they're just providing a venue. YouTube takes down copyrighted material because if they didn't, the law would be breathing down their neck. 4Chan and Reddit take down child pornography because if they didn't, the law would be breathing down their neck. I don't see any reason we couldn't have the same kind of laws in place for "revenge porn," and put the onus on the website to police itself or be forcibly shut down.

As to it being far worse for a woman, I don't see it. If a photo got out of some guy who is, shall we say, small in size and everyone who seen it started calling him tiny, I'm fairly certain it would be devastating to him. I know from experience that getting tagged with nicknames based upon your "size" can be terribly embarrassing, I still blush and stammer whenever someone who knew me back when refers to me as "meat" in front of women. I don't see that someone making a reference to a womans sexual attributes based upon a released photo is any different that what a man feels.

Meh, I don't think occasional comments about "size" are really on par with what women go through. Guys generally don't have to worry about it affecting their employment or their reputation. A lot of women would be mortified to have nude pictures of themselves online because they could come back to haunt them, in a way that I think most guys (myself included) don't truly comprehend.
 
In case you're not familiar with the case, there was a web site run by a sleazy and unethical man named Hunter Moore in which people angry at their ex's would post nude photos of them against their will, photos that were originally intended to be private. They were photos that usually resulted from "sexting." Very often the victims of the unwanted uploads protested and tried to get their photos removed. Moore, predictably, refused. That site was called Isanyoneup. I can say that because it's since been taken down. Moore had been confronted by some of his victims and had always shirked responsibility with the line, "I didn't upload those photos. Someone else did." Yeah, but you set up the site that encouraged them to. Fortunately, his site is now gone. He chose to get rid of it, maybe because of pressure or guilt or legal threats. I'm not sure. That's the good news. The bad news is someone else put up the same kind of site to replace it. I won't say that site's name. The twist with the new site is it includes a link to a "lawyer" that can help them get their photos removed. Of course it's not a real lawyer. It's just the site owner getting people to pay hundreds of dollars to get the photos removed that belong to them anyway and that they never authorized being published.

The poll is whether it should be illegal to put up revenge porn sites like this. "Yes" means they should be made illegal. "No" means they should be legal.

Nope. I have no problem with those sites at all. If you're stupid enough to pose nude in a photograph for your husband, your significant other, anyone? You sows whatcha' reap.
 
The woman (or man in some cases) makes the choice to send these pictures to the other individual. Unless there is a contract or any other binding legal document the picture is now property of the receiver, just as much as it is the sender. Sending photos like this is a choice, and therefore the receiver has the choice to do whatever he/ she feels needed. Don't want to end up on the internet, don't send them. Simple as that.

The website is specifically about photos and videos made secretly without consent. His is NOT the only "revenge site" and those include full sound video and specifically encourage secret video taping.

This was Moore's perspective:

“If somebody killed themselves over being on the site do you know how much money I’d make?” he said in an interview with Gawker. “At the end of the day, I do not want anybody to hurt themselves. But if they do? Thank you for the money.”
 
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The website is specifically about photos and videos made secretly without consent.
Well that changes morally what I think about it, though it does not effect how I feel the legality of it should be. Thanks for clarifying though.
 
What it means is that forever your wife will be seeing full length secretly taken video of you screwing other women and all your words of undying love to those women/other people, among other things - video you never consented to or know was being made.

I do recall suicides where this was done to a couple college kids having gay sex via secret video planted in the room.

There is still another aspect, this is EXTREMELY supportive of retaliatory violence by the "victim" who may not limit him/herself to videos. If some man posted videos of a woman he had sex with and secretly videoed - really only having sex with her to obtain the video for the purpose of humiliating her for some reason, and she shot him dead, I'd vote "temporary insanity" and give her a pass if I were on that jury - because I'd be glad that asshole was dead. Regardless, I can see such practices leading to violence and other counter retaliations.

To the opposite, I believe MANY privacy-protections laws should be passed - both in relation to government and other people. Foremost, these should protect your privacy in your own residence.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

I am referring to those photo/videos that were voluntarily participated in and you keep equating it to a potentially illegal activity. For the potentially illegal ones, I am all for taking down the site if they do not only remove the pictures/video when notified or do not report the potential illegal activity and hand over any information to help trace the perpetrator. We don't need new laws for that.

The case you brought up with the homosexual college students, If I remember correctly, there was/is criminal charges against the ones who filmed/distributed it.

I equate you desire to punish the website, if they behaved within legal bounds as stated above, as you wanting to shoot the proverbial messenger instead of the originator.
 
The website is specifically about photos and videos made secretly without consent. His is NOT the only "revenge site" and those include full sound video and specifically encourage secret video taping.

If these photos are made without the consent of the woman involved, the person posting them should be held civilly liable and, if they've broken any laws (which they probably have), should have the book thrown right in their face. That's completely different from what I thought -- I thought these women posed.

If the website owner is knowingly posting this stuff (without permission), then he should be held criminally liable as an accessory or some-such. How would he know it was a pose rather than a secret photo? I think he could tell. (And be willing to give up the IP address if anyone complains -- without a court order.)

I didn't understand that when I originally answered the question. If, however, a woman willingly poses and gives the photo to someone? I have no sympathy.

A civil court is not going to find against someone who posts a posed photo, as scummy as it is. That's not going to happen. And the person who "has" the photo? "Controls" the photo. Period. (As long as it was taken with the permission of the "model.")
 
The website is specifically about photos and videos made secretly without consent. His is NOT the only "revenge site" and those include full sound video and specifically encourage secret video taping.

This was Moore's perspective:

“If somebody killed themselves over being on the site do you know how much money I’d make?” he said in an interview with Gawker. “At the end of the day, I do not want anybody to hurt themselves. But if they do? Thank you for the money.”

Ok, this is not what I interpreted from the OP, apparently you know more about the referred to site than I do. I knew such sites existed, but any content in them I always assumed was not all "voyeur" photos. The few sites that I have seen that advertise themselves as "Revenge", the content looked like the women involved participated in the filming voluntarily, no eerie "secret" photos/videos that I saw. But then, I usually end up on such sites because of broken/hijacked links and have not explored them thoroughly.

The so-called voyeur sites, those dedicated to only secretly taken photos/pictures is another story. While still find them disgusting, I still don't believe in shooting the messenger, so the person who is responsible for taking/posting the material is still the responsible party. All sites that allow the posting of photos/videos should be under the same restriction I have previously mentioned.
 
Websites post all kinds of things, from exposés, to national and military secrets, and people defend the sights and people who do that as essential bastions and martyrs of freedom and rights. It's not until people actually see that such crap can personally effect them that it becomes a "problem". So keep the sites up, keep them legal, as long as they don't commit illegal acts. The freedom of speech is a double-edged sword.

in the US free speech is heavily tied to the idea that the content has some political or social value.
 
In case you're not familiar with the case, there was a web site run by a sleazy and unethical man named Hunter Moore in which people angry at their ex's would post nude photos of them against their will, photos that were originally intended to be private. They were photos that usually resulted from "sexting." Very often the victims of the unwanted uploads protested and tried to get their photos removed. Moore, predictably, refused. That site was called Isanyoneup. I can say that because it's since been taken down. Moore had been confronted by some of his victims and had always shirked responsibility with the line, "I didn't upload those photos. Someone else did." Yeah, but you set up the site that encouraged them to. Fortunately, his site is now gone. He chose to get rid of it, maybe because of pressure or guilt or legal threats. I'm not sure. That's the good news. The bad news is someone else put up the same kind of site to replace it. I won't say that site's name. The twist with the new site is it includes a link to a "lawyer" that can help them get their photos removed. Of course it's not a real lawyer. It's just the site owner getting people to pay hundreds of dollars to get the photos removed that belong to them anyway and that they never authorized being published.

The poll is whether it should be illegal to put up revenge porn sites like this. "Yes" means they should be made illegal. "No" means they should be legal.

I say yes. It should be illegal to put someone's nude pictures up for the whole world to see without the consent of the individual who is in the picture if it already isn't illegal.
 
The site should be legal.

What goes on on it is another matter and should be handled on a case by case basis.
 
"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

I am referring to those photo/videos that were voluntarily participated in and you keep equating it to a potentially illegal activity. For the potentially illegal ones, I am all for taking down the site if they do not only remove the pictures/video when notified or do not report the potential illegal activity and hand over any information to help trace the perpetrator. We don't need new laws for that.

The case you brought up with the homosexual college students, If I remember correctly, there was/is criminal charges against the ones who filmed/distributed it.

I equate you desire to punish the website, if they behaved within legal bounds as stated above, as you wanting to shoot the proverbial messenger instead of the originator.

I do openly oppose exemptions to liable, slander, copyright violations and illegal privacy violations being given to websites that are not allowed to print and television media publications, yes. In all printed publications and television the messenger is often very liable, because the messager is the knowing or reckless vehicle of it.
 
Ok, this is not what I interpreted from the OP, apparently you know more about the referred to site than I do. I knew such sites existed, but any content in them I always assumed was not all "voyeur" photos. The few sites that I have seen that advertise themselves as "Revenge", the content looked like the women involved participated in the filming voluntarily, no eerie "secret" photos/videos that I saw. But then, I usually end up on such sites because of broken/hijacked links and have not explored them thoroughly.

The so-called voyeur sites, those dedicated to only secretly taken photos/pictures is another story. While still find them disgusting, I still don't believe in shooting the messenger, so the person who is responsible for taking/posting the material is still the responsible party. All sites that allow the posting of photos/videos should be under the same restriction I have previously mentioned.

With this topic, I did some searching and it does appear most really are fake secret revenge videos and really are just consentual porn movies.
 
If these photos are made without the consent of the woman involved, the person posting them should be held civilly liable and, if they've broken any laws (which they probably have), should have the book thrown right in their face. That's completely different from what I thought -- I thought these women posed.

If the website owner is knowingly posting this stuff (without permission), then he should be held criminally liable as an accessory or some-such. How would he know it was a pose rather than a secret photo? I think he could tell. (And be willing to give up the IP address if anyone complains -- without a court order.)

I didn't understand that when I originally answered the question. If, however, a woman willingly poses and gives the photo to someone? I have no sympathy.

I'm a little maybe overly sensitive as we had a scare about that once. The reality is that once circulated, anyone could make and circulate more copies and it unstoppable once that happened, something then extremely embarassing. That, however, was secret and not consentual by anyone.

The extreme abilities of the Internet to anonymously totally trash someone else's reputation for which there is no defense and no stopping it is concerning. Newpapers, magazines, TV, and even letters

A civil court is not going to find against someone who posts a posed photo, as scummy as it is. That's not going to happen. And the person who "has" the photo? "Controls" the photo. Period. (As long as it was taken with the permission of the "model.")

You do raise a different senario - that the person obtained the photos or videos voluntarily - and then had them published on a website.

That is not AS offensive, but I would like to see it interpreted that those are presumed "copyrighted" and then copyright laws would apply. That would do little to stop it, though, and i don't think such a website was doing anything illegal. I would think that the submitter should have to declare the photos do not violate a copyright.

Yes, everyone should be careful about what they give anyone or ever put online. Schools should do more to educate children about that.
 
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I'm emotional because we had a scare of that. Once ever circulated, such pictures or videos could be copied and circulated forever. No lawsuits, no court orders, could even stop or undo it. This would have been intensely humiliating and the worst possible violation of privacy. Fortunately that was not the person's goal and the material taken away. None of it was consentual by anyone.

The extreme ability to be able to trash someone's reputation via the Internet is alarming. I know of a situation on another now-defunct forum in which personal conflict between a member and a moderator went beyond the forum and increasingly personal, when the moderator sent real threatening emails anonymously to that member - who happened to be the wife of an extremely wealthy man - he went absolutely ballistic - and had the resources to learn who had sent the emails and to find out exactly who that person was. Now a mega wealthy man was out to destroy that young offender. He hired a team to do exactly that - and to attack the forum too - which ultimately was shut down.

They used the Internet to post all personal information - SS#, address, DL number, phone number, of him and all relatives of his. They engaged in an unlimited smear campaign on the Internet to everyone at his university, every professor, everyone in their community, even relatives businesses and customers, scandalizing the entire family with little concern for truth. This put the police all over the person they were going after, the FBI seized that person's computer, he was thrown out of the college etc. To enter his name on the Internet was page after page after page of horrific accusations and personal attacks - all presented as facts. There was nothing he could do to stop any of it. Most will be there forever against him. He has no way to have any of it ever removed.

Newspapers, magazines and TV networks are VERY liable for "publishing" statements that are slander or liable. You are if you personally circulate or repeated libel or slander about another person - even if just repeating gossip. But the federal government - for whatever reason - passed a unique law ONLY for the Internet granting total exemption for all libel and slander laws IF they are merely being the vehicle of it being published - such exemption not granted to any other communication network.

I believe libel and slander laws should not be exempted from the Internet.
 
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Porn is 99% faked, so no. But in the event of the 1% crime should be addressed case by case.
 
People should ALWAYS assume that every picture that anyone ever takes of them WILL end up on the internet.

No matter how much you think you can trust the person taking the pics/vid.
 
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