Revenge porn: the fight against the net’s nastiest corner

Apr 12, 2013
Adult Business News
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A jilted ex-paramour seeks vengeance on a former lover. His trump card is a nude photo he acquired in happier times. In the dark corners of the internet, revenge porn sites are happy to help out, posting these photos alongside the subject’s full name, address and even phone number. The result for the victim can be anything from terrible embarrassment to potential job loss, and all accompanied by threats and harassment from people whose greatest contribution to society is usually surpassed by the average YouTube comment.

Revenge porn website

While ex-lovers act out of malice, the site operators act with sociopathic greed. With embarrassing photos often featuring prominently in Google results, the sites often advertise “independent” takedown services charging upwards of $300 (£195) to quickly remove photos – cheaper and faster than hiring a lawyer. Those extortionate services usually turn out to be fronts run by the site owners themselves. One even concocted a fake lawyer (“David Blade III, Esq”) to give his business a more legitimate face.

While the people who upload the photos can almost certainly risk significant civil liability, revenge porn sites are protected in the United States by the Communications Decency Act. The CDA requires that responsibility for tortious acts online (like defamation or invasion of privacy) lie with whoever created the content, not those who facilitate its dissemination.

If not civil law, what about criminal law? Florida is considering a proposal that would make it a felony to post nude photos along with identifying information for the purpose of harassment. But the law as proposed is toothless. Not only is it mired in unclear definitions, but it is unlikely to have any impact on the site operators themselves: the CDA exempts website operators from both civil and state criminal laws. While the law may make felons of those who submit the photos, the operators will remain unscathed.

All this legal uncertainty isn’t helped by the inability (or refusal) of the site operators to defend themselves. While all but one revenge site has been sued, only one operator has bothered to respond – and he’s acting without an attorney, which bodes quite well for his prospects of success. The others, lacking legitimate advertisers to fund a defence, have simply ignored the lawsuits. Revenge porn kingpin Hunter Moore’s sole response to legal threats was to send the plaintiff’s attorney a picture of his penis before quietly removing the contested content after being held in contempt by a federal court.

What, then, is the solution? Often, it seems that the best weapon against these sites is public condemnation. Mainstream advertisers and webhosts don’t want to be associated with these sites or their operators, and the operators themselves are only fairweather fans of the first amendment. When they’re exposed, they often quit: one owner abruptly retired hours after I learned his identity, another bailed after he was sued and his own pornographic past exposed, and Drew Myers ended his site after an online community was incensed by his suggestion that his site would get great exposure if one of his victims killed herself. With condemnation, these sites will eventually disappear, but Google will forever memorialise their names and deeds. The operators of revenge porn sites should know better than anyone how powerful online humiliation can be.

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