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California Family Fights For Privacy, Relief From Cyber-Harassment
theodp writes "Just days after his daughter Nikki's death in a devastating car crash, real-estate agent Christos Catsouras clicked open an e-mail that appeared to be a property listing. Onto his screen popped his daughter's bloodied face, captioned with the words 'Woohoo Daddy! Hey daddy, I'm still alive.' Now he and his wife are attempting to stop strangers from displaying the grisly images of their daughter — an effort that has transformed Nikki's death into a case about privacy, cyber-harassment and image control. The images of Nikki, including one of her nearly-decapitated head drooping out the shattered car window, were taken as a routine part of a fatal accident response and went viral after being leaked by two CHP dispatchers. 'Putting these photos on the Internet,' says the family's attorney, 'was akin to placing them in every mailbox in the world.'"
...but your score to settle is not with the nebulous force of users that are the internet but with the Orange County Police Department.
That is correct, sir, and here are the pics you were looking for.
I don't want to see these photos, and the parents and family shouldn't ever have to see them either.
The officers and department should probably be punished in some way to avoid this sort of behavior again. I am almost certain there is a policy against releasing accident photos in such a casual way.
As for stopping the spread on the internet, it's too late. It's probably already in the wayback machine and google images cache. At this point the best we can do is make a firefox plug-in that detects the image and censors it. Then install the plug-in on the family's computers.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I remember this too. It was passed around last year because of how graphic the accident was, and as a cynical tale of poetic justice to the stereotypical spoiled daughter totaling daddy's Porsche (which is why it went viral, and with help from 'chan). The accident tore her family apart and everyone can sympathize with how much emotional trauma is and will be caused because of the accident. What limited a lot of the empathy from people was the fact that she was speeding in her dad's sports car and died a totally frivolous death. Sending her father crash site pictures with captions for ***** and giggles is so fundamentally flawed. * * * Anyone else read the part where they blamed the tumor on daughter doing coke? "It turned out to be benign, but 8-year-old Nikki had to undergo intensive radiation, and doctors told her parents the effects of that treatment on her young brain might show up someday--perhaps by causing changes in her judgment, or impulse control. Her family believes that's why, the summer before the accident, Nikki tried cocaine and ended up in the hospital in a cocaine-induced psychosis. She used cocaine again the night before the accident, her family says. Lesli and Christos discussed checking her into a hospital, but decided against it: she was to visit a psychiatrist the next day, a specialist on brain disorders. So they let her sleep it off, and the next day, the three of them ate lunch together."
-MILDLY IMPORTANT-
If you do go to that website be warned, it does contain the images mentioned but also a video. THIS VIDEO IS A VIRUS. It didn't run very well in WINE but some people have less secure nonfree operating systems.
tl;dr
If you go to her name dot net the video is a virus.
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
Yea that's what happens when you crash... suck it up... That site has an .exe to install. Surely malware.
And the situation with Mitchell Henderson is no less egregious?
Please, the media is cherrypicking their causes. A beautiful California teen driving a Porsche is far more marketable than some sad little boy in the midwest who kills himself over bullying and a lost iPod.
Are you saying that intellectual property protection should apply to pictures of celebrities, but not their works?
The US constitution states that the purpose of intellectual property protection is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and that it should apply to inventions and writings (and by extension, their modern analogues). A person's likeness, being a natural trait and not the design of any human, doesn't meet the requirement.
The photos weren't taken by a member of the public, but either a) a police photographer, who you can be sure is covered both under the above, and also a stipulation in their employment contract that all images they create for and on behalf of the CHP are the property of CHP, or b) by a CHP officer, also subject to the above.
The letter was *sent* to the father, disguised as a house listing. Something that he as a Realtor would open and read. It was not accidental, and it was not random spam.
not the same thing at all.
If you took photo's of every person who died in your ER Room and posted that on the net, you probably wouldn't be surprised to get fired.
At the very least its unprofessional behavior.
Does the law need to specify everything you do so you can be a decent human being?