11 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 42.5 ms ] thread
two ways this will play out: 1. people simply stop sexting 2. one day there will be pics of everyone online and nobody will care anymore (+ because no one will care anymore, google might eventually tweak PageRank so that if you're only searching a name (without words like 'naked') those pics dont even make it to the to top results)
(comment deleted)
Can piracy be stopped without stifling a free and open web? Can information be stored digitally while maintaining the tangible qualities of property? Can a global data network be built which is immune to nonconsentual surveillance? The answers to these questions have more to do with human intent than technology.
Revenge porn exists, like aerial drones. We can't put them back in Pandora's Box. It's another weapon in our increasingly complex social struggle.
Nuclear weapons exist too, but rules and organizations exist to regulate them. Not without problems and failures, but drones need this sort of thing to help fix the bad collateral death/target ratio. And even then, state sponsored killing within a court system is controversial enough, outside of it?
This is so easy to stop it is down right silly. Stop taking compromising photos/videos, problem solved!
Let's not blame the victims. Fundamentally, there's nothing morally wrong with sending a naked picture to a partner. Of course they're taking a risk, but you take a risk letting someone into your house. If the person you let in rapes or murders you, they're the one in the wrong. Likewise, if someone publishes your naked pictures alongside your contact details, they're clearly in the wrong. And you should have a legal recourse against them.
I feel like this should be relatively easy to put an end to.

1. Make revenge porn site give up IP address that uploaded the incriminating images; 2. Check to see if victim's ex-boyfriend lives at the street address leasing the IP; 3. Get a warrant to sieze all his computers; 4. Find the images on his hard drive; 5. Convict him

I guess a judge has to figure out what crime he's guilty of, but from that article it sounds like he could be guilty of at least three. It would be harder if the perpetrator was security-conscious, but even private VPN services are required to hand over information if there's evidence of their users engaging in criminal activity, and most of these douchebags don't even know what a VPN is.

1.5 - Subpoena ISP to get records for which customer that dynamic IP was assigned to at the time.

It's all possible - assuming there's something to charge the uploader with. But it's likely to be a slow process; for starters, the site will drag its feet about supplying the records. And if the uploader used a smartphone on the Wifi in Starbucks, it gets that much harder to track him.

To make a serious dent in this, I think you need some way to dissuade people from running the site.

How about giving people absolute copyright over their own nude bodies unless they have explicitly signed off a picture/video to be public?