Man it's a horrible issue here. I'm glad they're making progress but worried about adding some more 1st amendment exemptions.
I can imagine this turning into a tool the powerful use to suppress "damaging information" or something along those lines. Maybe so long as it stays restricted to uncensored pictures of nudity things will go well.
Copyright belongs to the photographer, not the subject. So if the ex took the photo, the victim is out of luck.
Likeness rights are a bit weird and vary by state, but generally, they only apply to using a person's likeness to advertise or imply an endorsement of some product or service.
That said, there are more privacy-centric laws in various states that might apply here. But those laws don't really draw clear lines in the way that likeness or copyright laws would. Instead, these privacy laws usually turn on whether the information being disclosed is "newsworthy" -- not exactly a very objective standard.
"Copyright belongs to the photographer, not the subject. So if the ex took the photo, the victim is out of luck."
Only if the subject gave permission (usually by signing a document) to the photographer.
This is a very different situation. A jealous ex posting pictures he took of them all over the net. This girl had the right to expect those pictures to remain private.
If he broke the law is debatable. But there's no denying her ex is a first class punk.
> Only if the subject gave permission (usually by signing a document) to the photographer.
Permission from the subject is not required under U.S. copyright law. Unless there's some other agreement in place, it belongs to the photographer. From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html:
"""The owner of the “work” is generally the photographer or, in certain situations, the employer of the photographer. Even if a person hires a photographer to take pictures of a wedding, for example, the photographer will own the copyright in the photographs unless the copyright in the photographs is transferred, in writing and signed by the copyright owner, to another person. The subject of the photograph generally has nothing to do with the ownership of the copyright in the photograph."""
Permission may matter for likeness rights, but as I mentioned earlier, that generally only applies in the context of advertising or implied endorsement.
> But there's no denying her ex is a first class punk.
Agreed, but it doesn't change the copyright analysis.
Yes, I wrote about this the last time this topic came up here.
There is another guy who's life was destroyed by revenge porn, specifically the public sharing of private selfies. Even 2 years after the incident, Carlos Danger (Anthony Wiener) is still being rejected from jobs (by voters) as a result of his actions.
I don't see a reasonable way to shut down revenge porn - it's pretty clearly journalism, and not much different from hidden cam journalism or publicizing leaked documents.
"Public interest" usually distinguishes journalism from other media. Granted, this is a nebulous concept. But it is hard to make the case that revenge porn serves the public interest. It targets the powerless in order to dominate and dehumanize. Even state surveillance pretends to serve the public interest - Moore and his ilk make no such claim.
The Weiner case is an arguable comparison. The character/judgment of a political leader is usually considered a question of public interest. And voters didn't reject him for the images - he was the leading mayoral candidate for a time. Only the 2013 scandal made Weiner seem irredeemably dishonest.
If anything, Weiner benefited from the gender bias in these kinds of cases.
Much like the report on Pax Dickinson, revenge porn is simply exposing the (completely legal) views and opinions of an individual typically employed in the private sector. And it's doing so in a way designed to cause others to dislike the individual being reporter on. Is the report on Pax Dickinson not journalism? (Hypothetically suppose the report was based on leaked emails rather than public tweets if you believe privacy plays a role.)
Appealing to the public interest really seems like reaching to me. And somehow, I suspect that the next Carlos Danger will argue that his nude selfies don't serve the public interest and should therefore be censored.
I see the point here. Attempting to put legal dogs onto this type of issue does not at all cover the scope of how society's perception pans out.
The fact that a legal system might punish someone does not in any way demotivate the behavior but merely makes it more intractable when it does happen. That someone is punished doesn't change the motivations behind the victim's name change, and other efforts.
The question still stands, for companies or institutions of victims like this: Do we want to affiliate ourselves with someone who has a love life that cannot be respected[0], that is out of line with our organization's ethos?
Punishment does not at all address this cultural problem: What is porn ?
[0]: "But the presence of Hip as a working philosophy in the sub-worlds of American life is probably due to jazz, and its knife-like entrance into culture, its subtle but so penetrating influence on an avant-garde generation—that post-war generation of adventurers who (some consciously, some by osmosis) had absorbed the lessons of disillusionment and disgust of the Twenties, the Depression, and the War. Sharing a collective disbelief in the words of men who had too much money and controlled too many things, they knew almost as powerful a disbelief in the socially monolithic ideas of the single mate, the solid family and the respectable love life."
-- http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-white-neg...
> The question still stands, for companies or institutions of victims like this: Do we want to affiliate ourselves with someone who has a love life that cannot be respected[0], that is out of line with our organization's ethos?
If you do not align with the victim in these 'revenge porn' cases then you reinforce the extortionist's position. Does that align with any organization's ethos ?
It's not clear to me that the extortionist has a "position" or that it goes without saying that any organization who does not sympathize is at the same point aligning with the "revenge" sentiment.
Incidents like this can happen without the "revenge" component. Bots and malware might do this.
Something of substance to take away from the above:
Revenge porn is not porn.
Just because there's nudity, there's a woman, and it's a JPG on a website, that does not make it porn. Calling this hateful act "porn" is a misnomer, and throws a valid mode of both sexual and aesthetic as well as economic and political expression under the proverbial bus.
I can't imagine myself caring enough to deal with this the way she did.
I think it might be a gender gap thing - I literally can't understand this reaction.
Obviously I'm not an idiot, and would never cause this kind of pain to someone else, but it's foreign pain. It's the kind of pain I read about, and understand it exists in this world, but have no frame of reference for, like starvation or something like malaria.
And what are employers doing, attempting to confront their employees about it? Are these employers not educated enough in how the Internet works to know precisely the intent of those who've contacted them with this information? Perhaps an employer notifies the victim of the harassment, but certainly doesn't attempt to take consequential action against the employee regarding the material.
> And what are employers doing, attempting to confront their employees about it? Are these employers not educated enough in how the Internet works to know precisely the intent of those who've contacted them with this information? Perhaps an employer notifies the victim of the harassment, but certainly doesn't attempt to take consequential action against the employee regarding the material.
While I understand where you're coming from with this... it seems pretty naive/optimistic to honestly expect most people to behave this reasonably. Most people are not as smart as you and/or have some holier-than-thou moral perspective to throw into the mix and wouldn't have the first clue how to respond appropriately to something like this.
It's commendable that you're able to recognize that you have no frame of reference for understanding the distress, but don't go on to dismiss it as irrelevant or the result of overreaction. Too many people stop at that first step.
I'm halfway in the same boat. I can't totally empathize with this scenario, but I can definitely understand that someone who sent someone else intimate pictures would feel violated at them finding their way into the public and topping search results for their name. And especially, as it seems, with contact information attached with them.
Your second sentence would hint that you acknowledge there are different social forces at play here.
I undestand (and somewhat agree with) your reaction - but only if the photos/videos are anonymous. I don't like the idea of someone getting off to pictures of me, but so long as it's completely disassociated from my real life I think I'd be generally OK with it.
But if someone sent my parents/employers/friends a video of me and my wife going at it, along with my very googleable name, I think I would feel violated in a whole different way.
That changes the situation in a very important way, don't you think?
This may come off as insensitive, but I promise it isn't intended that way.
If you're the sort of person that would have a problem with others getting off to pictures of you naked, don't take pictures of yourself naked. If that seems too restrictive, definitely don't take pictures of yourself naked and then give them to somebody else.
If you have pictures of yourself naked, and have given them to somebody else, you should not be surprised if they ever make it onto the public internet.
If you have pictures of yourself naked, and have not given them to somebody else, you should take exceptional care to ensure that they aren't stolen, hacked, lost or what have you. Delete them, shred them, destroy them.
I hope this doesn't come out wrong. She is a victim of a horrific crime. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. Anywhere else this guy would have been beaten to a pulp. If someone did this to my daughter...well, let's leave it there.
Having said that, I have to wonder about the mental framework within which a girl thinks it might be a good idea to allow the taking of nude pictures and videos of herself.
Please, someone help me understand this, because I clearly don't. The explanation and justification would be far more powerful if it came from a woman.
For a model or aspiring actress it might very well be par for the course and that's that. That anyone else would think this isn't something that will one day come back to bite you is beyond me. In the case of the OP we are talking about a PhD student which, to me at least, implies a certain degree of intelligence and, hopefully, good judgement.
Never write an email, take pictures or videos you don't want the world to see. Never. Ever.
Then there's the other side of these situations. No honorable man would even propose his girlfriend to engage in taking such pictures or videos. Why? Because if you truly care for her you will always actively protect her.
If drinking and drugs were involved it could be another matter. We could rightfully question the moral and ethical choices made by people willing to compromise their good judgement this way.
Yes, I tend to think in some cases it takes two to tango. The guy is a slimeball who deserves financial consequences and jail time. If the pictures were taken with her consent, she is at fault for not showing good judgement. It was stupid and sometimes you pay for doing dumb things.
What she experienced was extreme and it should be criminal. All I am saying is laws only protect you AFTER a crime was committed, not before. The only way to protect yourself from this kind of crime is to behave in such a way that it is impossible to find yourself in that predicament, ever.
Another way to put it is: Killing is a crime with many laws and case law covering it. This is not going to protect you if you walk into a dark alley in a seedy neighborhood and get killed. Yes, the murderer is likely to go to jail if caught and convicted. What got you killed was your decision to enter that alley in the first place. You can't live life thinking there are no criminals around you. Passing laws does little to change this.
If you are a woman reading this please remember: if you are in a relationship with someone who wants to take nude or compromising pictures or video of you, run away from that man as quickly as you can. He does not respect or protect you. He does not look after your best interests. He is an asshole. If you allow it be prepared for these pictures to end-up anywhere at all. Do not do it. It could come back and ruin your life. And please, don't drink or do drugs to such an extent that you lose the ability to exercise good judgement.
Got to wonder about the girls in those girls gone wild videos. How many of them will look back at what they did and think it was a good idea.
Analogy. Should a woman run from a man who asks to engage in cybersex? At the end of the day, the only difference is a MIME Type; it's still a record.
I am not being facetious. We use technology is a number of different ways to express our sexuality. Part of your proposal sounds highly reactionary, and that bothers me. It seems to indirectly justify, for instance, institutions that make it compulsory for victims like this to in similar fashion use technology to further "undo" their own lives.
Nude pictures are fun. For all the reasons it's fun to take pictures at all, plus love and sex.
In a relationship that isn't really obviously screwed up, you have basic trust for the other person.
Part of that trust ought to include encryption, but that's another story.
I think that this situation is atypical. Leaked or lost personal photos might be available to the whole world, but most don't go viral linked to your name. So the 'normal' risk of a douchebag boyfriend is relatively low.
And why is it a risk at all? Why isn't it just safe and fun? What's the harm? Take this passage:
>My professional reputation? Tainted. My parents’ perception of me as their angelic baby girl? Blown to smithereens and then reassembled in the likeness of a leper.
>I sobbed daily.
Where is the harm here? It is coming from her potential employees, colleagues, and sadly her parents. They're the ones with screwed up attitudes about sex. It's their fault, not her fault, because she did nothing wrong. I hope their views are not as harsh as she thinks. But even if she's imagining it those are the ideas we get from our culture.
I get that you're worried about it coming out wrong, but much of your post was similarly victim blaming. The actual solution to murderers in alleys is to send police into the alleys. Not restructure our lives to be tolerant of the constant risk of murder. We should not just cede power to evil because the alley is dark.
And this is not a physical attack, all the harm is in the views others take of the victim. Your judgement of her judgement is part of the harm that the attacker expected.
A betrayal of trust should be blamed on the betrayer, not the betrayed. Is there room for learning better who to trust? Sure. Should we expect people to act like they can't trust anyone they love, and add scorn because they were the ones who encountered trust-evoking douchebags? No.
Personal porn should be fun and safe and relatively inconsequential, for all the reasons that love and sex and photos are fun.
> if you are in a relationship with someone who wants to take nude or compromising pictures or video of you, run away from that man as quickly as you can. He does not respect or protect you. He does not look after your best interests. He is an asshole.
Nonsense. There are plenty of people that take photos and videos of their personal sex lives. You really need to get out more.
For the sake of argument, let's assume his side of the story is the more correct one. Under that circumstance, what do you have to say about society and the legal system with respect to the ability for a woman to potentially destroy an innocent (again, we are assuming his story is true in the context of this question) man's life? Do you have the same visceral reaction, that it is a horrific crime?
This is not a black and white case. You need to read Ryan Seay's side of the story to get a better perspective of how things likely went down - http://jacobsvsseay.com
The essence of his side of the story is that the pictures and videos were here idea, and she enthusiastically produced them and sent them to her, and that their subsequent appearance on the internet was not his doing but the act of hackers who compromised his account and perhaps also obtained videos from Justin TV. He has enough evidence posted that it seems plausible and in my opinion that she's being a bit less than honest in her public persona about what actually happened, basically, that he coerced her into producing the content which he then distributed, when the reality may have been she's a bit of a wild girl in secret and would like to keep that aspect of her personality a secret.
An excerpt:
In closing, if I could impart any words to Ms. Jacobs, it would be the following… I’m sorry that someone did this to you, but it wasn’t me. It never was, isn’t and never will be me. At some point, you will have to accept that. Please don’t underestimate people’s ability to forgive. While it may not be possible for me to do so, people will understand if you reverse and tell the truth. From your constantly changing timeline and story, I’m concerned for you and I hope you’re talking to someone. It has been almost a half-decade since we last spoke, yet you seem to have crafted this detailed and elaborate construct in your head of what I have been doing all of these years. If this is sincerely what you believe and isn’t part of some elaborate and malicious plan, then I hope you get help; it’s frightening and sad to see. It can’t be me and I have absolutely no desire for it to be, but I hope you’re talking to someone. While I’m considerably angry with you and appalled by your actions, I don’t hate you. This is merely the beginning of our legal battle and it will assuredly get much worse from here, but in all matters besides these, I wish you well. We disagree on many matters and we will continue to disagree on many matters, but above all things, be honest, stay strong and please, don’t do anything stupid.
Thank you for the link. When I read the original article about them making new laws, the libertarian in me twitches. Even moreso when I think about unintended consequences:
As an example: what happens when someone is accused of revenge porn, yet is innocent? Similar to the original victim, the accused is also subjected to mob justice, and the court of public opinion makes up its mind based on whose story gets to the news wires first, fastest, and farthest.
Consider, hypothetically: a woman uploads the pictures & videos herself, and then accuses her former lover, so that she can make his live hell for it. It could happen.
That's where I get nervous about the idea being bandied about that making some new law to handle some specific thing will necessarily be effective ... it may, it may not, but the details and specific execution matter greatly.
I know love makes you do stupid things, but we live in a time of instant publishing, cloud galleries, face recognition and the biggest lie in college that is "I won't show anyone, I promise".
Even celebrities with hundreds of thousands to burn can't control how their images go around on the internet. So when your clothes are off and you're worried about strangers seeing you, don't use the camera. Who knows when app will show up that allows any photo of a face to be instantly matched up against the billions of profile pics on Google+ / Facebook.
The guy is a total dick of course, but more importantly what never stops to amaze me what kind of dicks are the "normal" people that surround us on the work and other places. So suppose nude pictures of my coworker/acquaintances/etc appear and everyone becomes aware of this - well I will see these pictures and it might certainly give me some giggles but I won't think anything bad about this person - what's wrong with naked body, anyway? and who haven't taken such pictures at some point? Those crowd people are far more scary then the asshole who shared it in the first place.
33 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 47.8 ms ] threadI can imagine this turning into a tool the powerful use to suppress "damaging information" or something along those lines. Maybe so long as it stays restricted to uncensored pictures of nudity things will go well.
Likeness rights are a bit weird and vary by state, but generally, they only apply to using a person's likeness to advertise or imply an endorsement of some product or service.
That said, there are more privacy-centric laws in various states that might apply here. But those laws don't really draw clear lines in the way that likeness or copyright laws would. Instead, these privacy laws usually turn on whether the information being disclosed is "newsworthy" -- not exactly a very objective standard.
Only if the subject gave permission (usually by signing a document) to the photographer.
This is a very different situation. A jealous ex posting pictures he took of them all over the net. This girl had the right to expect those pictures to remain private.
If he broke the law is debatable. But there's no denying her ex is a first class punk.
Permission from the subject is not required under U.S. copyright law. Unless there's some other agreement in place, it belongs to the photographer. From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html:
"""The owner of the “work” is generally the photographer or, in certain situations, the employer of the photographer. Even if a person hires a photographer to take pictures of a wedding, for example, the photographer will own the copyright in the photographs unless the copyright in the photographs is transferred, in writing and signed by the copyright owner, to another person. The subject of the photograph generally has nothing to do with the ownership of the copyright in the photograph."""
Permission may matter for likeness rights, but as I mentioned earlier, that generally only applies in the context of advertising or implied endorsement.
> But there's no denying her ex is a first class punk.
Agreed, but it doesn't change the copyright analysis.
There is another guy who's life was destroyed by revenge porn, specifically the public sharing of private selfies. Even 2 years after the incident, Carlos Danger (Anthony Wiener) is still being rejected from jobs (by voters) as a result of his actions.
http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/defending_hunter_moor...
I don't see a reasonable way to shut down revenge porn - it's pretty clearly journalism, and not much different from hidden cam journalism or publicizing leaked documents.
The Weiner case is an arguable comparison. The character/judgment of a political leader is usually considered a question of public interest. And voters didn't reject him for the images - he was the leading mayoral candidate for a time. Only the 2013 scandal made Weiner seem irredeemably dishonest.
If anything, Weiner benefited from the gender bias in these kinds of cases.
For example, consider this news report which targets the powerless in order to dominate and dehumanize: http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne...
Much like the report on Pax Dickinson, revenge porn is simply exposing the (completely legal) views and opinions of an individual typically employed in the private sector. And it's doing so in a way designed to cause others to dislike the individual being reporter on. Is the report on Pax Dickinson not journalism? (Hypothetically suppose the report was based on leaked emails rather than public tweets if you believe privacy plays a role.)
Appealing to the public interest really seems like reaching to me. And somehow, I suspect that the next Carlos Danger will argue that his nude selfies don't serve the public interest and should therefore be censored.
I would like to live in a society that was safe for porn.
The fact that a legal system might punish someone does not in any way demotivate the behavior but merely makes it more intractable when it does happen. That someone is punished doesn't change the motivations behind the victim's name change, and other efforts.
The question still stands, for companies or institutions of victims like this: Do we want to affiliate ourselves with someone who has a love life that cannot be respected[0], that is out of line with our organization's ethos?
Punishment does not at all address this cultural problem: What is porn ?
[0]: "But the presence of Hip as a working philosophy in the sub-worlds of American life is probably due to jazz, and its knife-like entrance into culture, its subtle but so penetrating influence on an avant-garde generation—that post-war generation of adventurers who (some consciously, some by osmosis) had absorbed the lessons of disillusionment and disgust of the Twenties, the Depression, and the War. Sharing a collective disbelief in the words of men who had too much money and controlled too many things, they knew almost as powerful a disbelief in the socially monolithic ideas of the single mate, the solid family and the respectable love life." -- http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-white-neg...
If you do not align with the victim in these 'revenge porn' cases then you reinforce the extortionist's position. Does that align with any organization's ethos ?
Incidents like this can happen without the "revenge" component. Bots and malware might do this.
The organization believes it has PR to manage.
I think it might be a gender gap thing - I literally can't understand this reaction.
Obviously I'm not an idiot, and would never cause this kind of pain to someone else, but it's foreign pain. It's the kind of pain I read about, and understand it exists in this world, but have no frame of reference for, like starvation or something like malaria.
And what are employers doing, attempting to confront their employees about it? Are these employers not educated enough in how the Internet works to know precisely the intent of those who've contacted them with this information? Perhaps an employer notifies the victim of the harassment, but certainly doesn't attempt to take consequential action against the employee regarding the material.
While I understand where you're coming from with this... it seems pretty naive/optimistic to honestly expect most people to behave this reasonably. Most people are not as smart as you and/or have some holier-than-thou moral perspective to throw into the mix and wouldn't have the first clue how to respond appropriately to something like this.
Your second sentence would hint that you acknowledge there are different social forces at play here.
But if someone sent my parents/employers/friends a video of me and my wife going at it, along with my very googleable name, I think I would feel violated in a whole different way.
That changes the situation in a very important way, don't you think?
If you're the sort of person that would have a problem with others getting off to pictures of you naked, don't take pictures of yourself naked. If that seems too restrictive, definitely don't take pictures of yourself naked and then give them to somebody else.
If you have pictures of yourself naked, and have given them to somebody else, you should not be surprised if they ever make it onto the public internet.
If you have pictures of yourself naked, and have not given them to somebody else, you should take exceptional care to ensure that they aren't stolen, hacked, lost or what have you. Delete them, shred them, destroy them.
Having said that, I have to wonder about the mental framework within which a girl thinks it might be a good idea to allow the taking of nude pictures and videos of herself.
Please, someone help me understand this, because I clearly don't. The explanation and justification would be far more powerful if it came from a woman.
For a model or aspiring actress it might very well be par for the course and that's that. That anyone else would think this isn't something that will one day come back to bite you is beyond me. In the case of the OP we are talking about a PhD student which, to me at least, implies a certain degree of intelligence and, hopefully, good judgement.
Never write an email, take pictures or videos you don't want the world to see. Never. Ever.
Then there's the other side of these situations. No honorable man would even propose his girlfriend to engage in taking such pictures or videos. Why? Because if you truly care for her you will always actively protect her.
If drinking and drugs were involved it could be another matter. We could rightfully question the moral and ethical choices made by people willing to compromise their good judgement this way.
Yes, I tend to think in some cases it takes two to tango. The guy is a slimeball who deserves financial consequences and jail time. If the pictures were taken with her consent, she is at fault for not showing good judgement. It was stupid and sometimes you pay for doing dumb things.
What she experienced was extreme and it should be criminal. All I am saying is laws only protect you AFTER a crime was committed, not before. The only way to protect yourself from this kind of crime is to behave in such a way that it is impossible to find yourself in that predicament, ever.
Another way to put it is: Killing is a crime with many laws and case law covering it. This is not going to protect you if you walk into a dark alley in a seedy neighborhood and get killed. Yes, the murderer is likely to go to jail if caught and convicted. What got you killed was your decision to enter that alley in the first place. You can't live life thinking there are no criminals around you. Passing laws does little to change this.
If you are a woman reading this please remember: if you are in a relationship with someone who wants to take nude or compromising pictures or video of you, run away from that man as quickly as you can. He does not respect or protect you. He does not look after your best interests. He is an asshole. If you allow it be prepared for these pictures to end-up anywhere at all. Do not do it. It could come back and ruin your life. And please, don't drink or do drugs to such an extent that you lose the ability to exercise good judgement.
Got to wonder about the girls in those girls gone wild videos. How many of them will look back at what they did and think it was a good idea.
I am not being facetious. We use technology is a number of different ways to express our sexuality. Part of your proposal sounds highly reactionary, and that bothers me. It seems to indirectly justify, for instance, institutions that make it compulsory for victims like this to in similar fashion use technology to further "undo" their own lives.
In a relationship that isn't really obviously screwed up, you have basic trust for the other person.
Part of that trust ought to include encryption, but that's another story.
I think that this situation is atypical. Leaked or lost personal photos might be available to the whole world, but most don't go viral linked to your name. So the 'normal' risk of a douchebag boyfriend is relatively low.
And why is it a risk at all? Why isn't it just safe and fun? What's the harm? Take this passage:
>My professional reputation? Tainted. My parents’ perception of me as their angelic baby girl? Blown to smithereens and then reassembled in the likeness of a leper. >I sobbed daily.
Where is the harm here? It is coming from her potential employees, colleagues, and sadly her parents. They're the ones with screwed up attitudes about sex. It's their fault, not her fault, because she did nothing wrong. I hope their views are not as harsh as she thinks. But even if she's imagining it those are the ideas we get from our culture.
I get that you're worried about it coming out wrong, but much of your post was similarly victim blaming. The actual solution to murderers in alleys is to send police into the alleys. Not restructure our lives to be tolerant of the constant risk of murder. We should not just cede power to evil because the alley is dark.
And this is not a physical attack, all the harm is in the views others take of the victim. Your judgement of her judgement is part of the harm that the attacker expected.
A betrayal of trust should be blamed on the betrayer, not the betrayed. Is there room for learning better who to trust? Sure. Should we expect people to act like they can't trust anyone they love, and add scorn because they were the ones who encountered trust-evoking douchebags? No.
Personal porn should be fun and safe and relatively inconsequential, for all the reasons that love and sex and photos are fun.
Nonsense. There are plenty of people that take photos and videos of their personal sex lives. You really need to get out more.
Secondly, there appears to be two sides to this story: http://jacobsvsseay.com
For the sake of argument, let's assume his side of the story is the more correct one. Under that circumstance, what do you have to say about society and the legal system with respect to the ability for a woman to potentially destroy an innocent (again, we are assuming his story is true in the context of this question) man's life? Do you have the same visceral reaction, that it is a horrific crime?
An excerpt:
In closing, if I could impart any words to Ms. Jacobs, it would be the following… I’m sorry that someone did this to you, but it wasn’t me. It never was, isn’t and never will be me. At some point, you will have to accept that. Please don’t underestimate people’s ability to forgive. While it may not be possible for me to do so, people will understand if you reverse and tell the truth. From your constantly changing timeline and story, I’m concerned for you and I hope you’re talking to someone. It has been almost a half-decade since we last spoke, yet you seem to have crafted this detailed and elaborate construct in your head of what I have been doing all of these years. If this is sincerely what you believe and isn’t part of some elaborate and malicious plan, then I hope you get help; it’s frightening and sad to see. It can’t be me and I have absolutely no desire for it to be, but I hope you’re talking to someone. While I’m considerably angry with you and appalled by your actions, I don’t hate you. This is merely the beginning of our legal battle and it will assuredly get much worse from here, but in all matters besides these, I wish you well. We disagree on many matters and we will continue to disagree on many matters, but above all things, be honest, stay strong and please, don’t do anything stupid.
As an example: what happens when someone is accused of revenge porn, yet is innocent? Similar to the original victim, the accused is also subjected to mob justice, and the court of public opinion makes up its mind based on whose story gets to the news wires first, fastest, and farthest.
Consider, hypothetically: a woman uploads the pictures & videos herself, and then accuses her former lover, so that she can make his live hell for it. It could happen.
That's where I get nervous about the idea being bandied about that making some new law to handle some specific thing will necessarily be effective ... it may, it may not, but the details and specific execution matter greatly.
Even celebrities with hundreds of thousands to burn can't control how their images go around on the internet. So when your clothes are off and you're worried about strangers seeing you, don't use the camera. Who knows when app will show up that allows any photo of a face to be instantly matched up against the billions of profile pics on Google+ / Facebook.