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California Outlaws 'Revenge Porn'
coondoggie writes "Call it a modern day love story: Boy meets girl; they 'like' each other; they privately sext naked pics of each other to celebrate; girl loses interest, breaks it off; guy responds by posting previously private pics to Internet site specializing in revenge; girl has little recourse, suffers much humiliation, ridicule. There is a lot of pressure to change the outcome of such wretched stories, which seem to be pervasive these days. Some relief is on the way the way, at least in California, where this week the governor signed one of the nation's first laws making so-called 'revenge porn' illegal. Specifically, the bill prevents people from electronically distributing or posting naked pictures of ex-romantic partners after a break-up with the intent to shame the person publicly."
we accept people get naked and do fun things?
That would be far more beneficial in the long run.
You got naked and had sex, own up, move on.
TO Be Clear: IT's a horrible, rude, dhouch beg, jack ass movie to put that private stuff on the internet. I"m not siding with those assholes. It would just be nice that instead of going 'OMG she does what I do, but now its in a picture!' to 'So what, everyone does it, lets get the asshole that distribute the picture.'
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What a strange time we live in.
First, that the government needs to go stick it's nose into business like this. Second that people feel they deserve privacy for pictures they send to third parties unencumbered by any business contract or doctor/lawyer privilege. Who exactly gets to determine when a disclosure of photographs is or is not allowed? Now we have to take the understood intention of the first party into account? What about when someone changes their mind? What about when pictures are taken by a the second party? What about by a third party?
Strange.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
How the hell will they prove it's revenge? If you don't want naked pics of you posted on the internet, don't let him take pictures. This is one of the stupidest laws I've ever heard of.
It seems that _positive_ internet laws only get passed when it is almost "too late". This one falls into that category, methinks. I've never understood why people engage in "revenge porn" in the first place. But I guess this gives victims of this practice - mostly women I am guessing - some way to fight their ex-boyfriends or ex-lovers. Sounds like a good & needed law overall. I support it...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Why not just make it legal for the ex-gf to kick the guy in the balls?
Is there anything to suggest that this law will be any more effective at curbing the free distribution of illicit data than previous laws currently failing to do the same? I'm guessing "no."
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
Don't send naked photos of yourself to people you really don't know. In fact, don't send naked pictures of yourself over the Internet to anyone.
You gave me the image, its mine to do with as i please.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I can't imagine how they will prove intent or source in most cases. Hint: they won't. This will make the situation worse, with the legal system being used for false-flag blackmail of exes in revenge.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yeah. Because rape is super easy to prosecute.
If it's limited to only those cases where someone can prove "intent to cause serious emotional distress", then it's not going to be very effective. I see loopholes o'plenty.
hey girls and women: if you dont want some loser you dumped posting pics of you on the net then dont take nude pics of yourself,
people need to get over their hangups with nudity, and they need to understand there is a difference between nude photos and porn, (hint: its not porn until sexual activity is involved)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
...but judge, my intent was to impress my friends, potential girlfriends, etc. with the hotness of my ex. ...but judge, my intent was to let other guys know that such a hottie was now available, so that she might find a new boyfriend more easily. ...but judge, this photo is a work of art and thus protected by the first amendment.
etc...
Intent seems a high barrier to prove...
This is just going to be used to supress scandals that politicians get in. I expect it will be 90% used by men against women. To hide workplace harrasment, adultry, child abuse, and prostitution.
1. Don't say anything you wouldn't say to your boss and your mother.
2. Don't post anything you wouldn't want your boss, and mother to read.
3. Don't take, or allow to be taken pictures you wouldn't show to your boss and mother.
4. Nothing is ever anonymous!
I live by them, and so should you.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
If the picture is uploaded to Craigslist with the caption: "For a good time, call..." or to one of the several services that exist to serve this exact market (with fields for name and contact info of the victim, no less!), no, intent is not hard to prove at all.
DRAT FOILED AGAIN!
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Proving intent and clarifying when something was "posted publicly" is tough to do. For instance, what's to stop a slimy person from posting nude pics to a website that has a "We're still together" button that acts as a dead man's switch, such that if it isn't pressed in time, the pics get publicized. Who's doing the publishing then? And if it's one of the involved partners, when did it actually occur? When they uploaded them pre-breakup, or when they refused to lie later about their status?
Alternatively, I can just see folks posting nude pics of ex-partners with statements along the line of "Check out what I'm missing, now that we're not together any more." Was it done for revenge? Because the person is pining away? Because they want to make others jealous of what they had? Who knows? Laws regulating intent are always difficult to enforce, and are generally ill-advised.
Even so, I do like the spirit of what this law is trying to do. People should have some control over how information that they provided to others in confidence is used. Whether than control should be mandated by law or regulated via codes of conduct and other societal factors, however...
Why should the law care about whether or not there has been a romantic relationship, or even if there's nudity?
How about, if you have pictures of another person, given with reasonable expectations that it was for your private use (i.e. you do not have any signed permission to the contrary), why not just make it illegal to make these public with intent to bully, defame, humiliate, or shame?
Celebrities and other people in the public eye excepted, as always, or half the entertainment industry would crash overnight.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
This law was passed in California. Republicans there are as rare as Christians in Saudi Arabia!
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
Yeah, this will definitely survive a first amendment challenge. /s
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
This seems like it falls in the area that's already covered by intimidation, extortion and blackmail. i.e. "You will not break-up with my lame, abusive ass, or I will hurt you publicly."
Your not naked under you clothes. You are clothed under you clothes. You are under your clothes. And if your wearing clothes you are not naked. Also these incidents normally involve picture that were intended as pornograpy. No one is sending nudes to a lover for medical reasons.
If in 2008 the NSA people had no problem sharing the conversations of soldiers with their girlfriends between them just imagine how they would be sharing now whatever digital you take with your girlfriend now. So just label it "national security" instead of revenge and should be ok. Or stop taking any digital media that is not meant for sharing with other people, no matter how good or bad are going your relations with your girlfriend, with no privacy that is the first thing that will be misused.
If that's the case, then why did it pass a predominately Democratic state legislature and get signed by a Democratic governor?
This law was passed in California. Republicans there are as rare as Christians in Saudi Arabia!
So Democrats elected Regan and Schwarzenegger?
Just another day in Paradise
Republican governors have controlled the state of California for much more time than democrat governors in the last century. One of those governors even became a president of the US and the most revered symbol of the conservative movement (Ronald Reagan).
California is a blue state, but it's not like republicans are rare here. I live in San Diego and my congressman is a republican.
I can see the intent of the law, and I think the people that do it are slimeballs, but who is going to decide this? If you post pictures and say "Look how hot my ex girlfriend was" are you trying to shame here? What if you include "I wish she would take me back but she is too good for me." Who is going to decide what your actual purpose was? And what if you are in the pictures as well? There are too many questions and judgement calls with this law.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Hardly. California elected both Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger governor.
for pictures posted on sites outside the US?
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
For starters it would be nice if everyone stopped assuming that only men do this.....
California State Assembly: 52 Democrats, 25 Republicans, 3 vacant
California State Senate:28 Democrat, 12 Republican
I'm thinking This legislature isn't passing laws to, and I quote, "protect Republicans and their "Perverted" ways"
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Here's a formula guaranteed to prevent your being the victim of revenge porn: don't send anyone pictures you don't want to see on the Internet. Absolutely foolproof, guaranteed.
Thing being: people wanna see her boobs, people don't wanna see my skinny johnson.
As a result, her pictures get circulated and mine get deleted. WORKS FOR ME!
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
I was thinking something similar. Not necessarily that such would happen in a majority of the cases but that the potential for abuse is there.
It is unlikely to be motivated by the quest for profit, however. Criminal proceedings aren't likely to yield profit unless blackmail is involved, and the danger in blackmail will deter some cases.
I see the most likely abusers of this law as the spurned seeking revenge. Granted, few will want to post pictures of themselves online and make an accusation to get revenge. But the potential payoff (i.e. sending your #(*@ing ex to jail, that stupid !@&*!) is high enough to mean that some will try it. Combine this with the fact that males in particular are often treated guilty of sexual crimes until proven innocent and you have a huge potential for abuse.
Well, Cali does like its movie stars, but Regan was a different time in Cali, and Schwarzenegger would have been a Democrat in most states.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Because, God help us an inner sense of decency isn't doing it. It sucks that we need a law for this situation, but we DO need a law for this situation. And, the problem has been around for a long time. I believe it was ex-Miss America Vanessa Williams who had candid nude pics her boyfriend took of her leaked to the press.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You've got your verbs mixed up... you said "prevent" when you really meant "prohibit". Laws don't prevent you from doing anything. Instead they define behavior which you "shall not" do and define penalties for violating that prohibition. The difference is important because prevention implies a mechanism to keep the prohibited action from occurring. That is not the case with laws.
You're right that sexism is involved, but you're entirely wrong about where it's occuring. Women almost never do this because our society is sexist about nudity. No one cares about male nudity unless the male in question is running for office. A nude picture of a man generally get a "boys will be boys" response and everyone forgetting about it shortly thereafter. A nude picture of a woman generally results in A: lots of males wanting to view it and B: lots of people calling the woman a slut or whore or something similar.
So even if both people in the relationship have nude pictures of each other the male is still in a position of strength. He can damage her reputation significantly by publishing them while she can't do the same to him.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
This seems so bad on many levels. I wonder what the burden of proof is on the origination of the online posting. Depending on who is more vindictive, what's to stop a person posting their own photo and blaming their ex to cause them to receive up to 6 months in jail and $1000 fine. We know how wonderful the legal system is at getting to the bottom of the source of online activity. If we need laws to guard against vindictive douch-baggery .. it can go both ways.
Nudes can ruin you. I had a friend who was in a situation where his GF at one point needed cash and thought it a good idea to pose naked for big naturals, a big tit porn site. He told me first in confidence but eventually everyone found out. He stayed with her for about three years and he almost proposed to her but in the end it didn't work out and he left her. One of the biggest worries he had was "what if I married her and our kids friends or classmates find those pictures?" The entire family would be disgraced. Plus I even think one of his then coworkers found her pictures.
So those nudes can easily ruin a girls life and scare off potential boyfriends or ruin relationships.
This is clearly a case where one party's reasonable expectation of privacy is violated by the actions of another party.
The Supreme Court has ruled that you have no expectation of privacy when disclosing information to a third party not covered by privilege. Boyfriends /girlfriends are not covered.
People (women, according to the FA and others) may have copyright claims, but a better suggestion would be to have enough common sense to not distribute intimate pictures to third parties. But, that's "victim blaming", and we can't have that, can we?
do you want to?
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
So Democrats elected Regan [sic] and Schwarzenegger?
Yes, they did. You might have heard of Reagan Democrats? Did you realize that only two states voted against Reagan in 1984 (IIRC)? Schwarzenegger ran against a Republican in his first election and got well over 50% of the vote in his second election. Someone other than Republicans were voting for them!
Get lost, Carlos Danger.
Have gnu, will travel.
In the 2012 Presidential election, California had more people vote for Mitt Romney (4,202,127) than every other state except Texas (4,555,799). There are a lot of Republicans in California, especially through the Central Valley. It's just that there are a lot more Democrats.
The problem is that the internet has a VERY long memory...not just "nudes", but other items as well. Once its out there.... there really is no way to get it back...
Just a one example.... Many people that used to post on USENET in their "younger" days are now finding that items that they had thought were LONG gone off the USENET "spool" are now coming back to haunt them. This is because when google first started its google groups service, one of the items that they had done was to purchase old backup tapes of USENET posts and indexed all of that into their engines. Google bought Deja-News and other usenet providers to gain access to the data. Suddenly stuff that normally would have been gone in 18months is now available to search/find.
The only way to post nowadays to assume that the information will be seen by the ONE person you may not want to see the info in 5-10-20 years.. So be careful what gets out there...Slashdot included.
--
Time is on my side
So you freely gave your pictures to someone who turned out to be a douche-bag? Wow... That's never happened before...
What are the newest revenge sites? They all get taken down so quickly.
Why do we need another criminal law? There is already defamation, which may be extended to "public disclosure of private facts" with the intent of causing harm. So the jerks who do this should get sued and have to pay the victim some damages, like a year's salary or so. This would compensate the actual victim.
Instead we create another criminal law so we have another reason to put people in prison, this time for just being an asshole. The offender's livelihood may be damaged if they are imprisoned, thereby reducing their ability to contribute to society and/or to compensate the victim. Notice that the state seeks to punish in a way that benefits the state and the hangers-on of the state, such as the prison-industrial complex, rather than being truly concerned for the victim. Thus, the trend toward the criminalization of everything.
The greatest example of course is drug abuse. Can anyone explain how exactly anyone can abuse a drug? Does a drug care what you do with it? One can abuse themselves with a drug. Then the requisite explanation that needs to be offered is: How exactly is it a crime if I abuse myself? Everyone must answer just one simple question for themselves: Who owns my body?
Crimes should be strictly limited to the following: 1. murder; 2. robbery, theft, and fraud; 3. rape, assault, and reckless endangerment; 4. vandalism or reckless/intentional destruction of another's property (this includes polluting).
In all of these, for an actual crime to occur, there must be both INTENT and a tangible VICTIM. Ie., a human being or a group thereof must have actually been killed, injured, physically violated, or deceptively deprived of their property (the victim may also be a corporate entity in the case of crimes 2 and 4). We'll leave crimes against animals for a separate discussion. Thus, there can be no crimes against "society." Criminal fraud must involve intentionally selling something that is not what it is said to be. Ie., a lie must have occurred to make the customer part with their money. Otherwise, it is civil fraud which is basically a contract dispute.
All other matters are civil, period.
Any deviation from this will result in a spiraling out of control of the state until everything is regulated down to when you can cum, and there are so many crimes that they can find a way to put you in the joint if you don't agree to fuck your customers for the NSA. Ie., exactly the situation we are in or are approaching.
I welcome arguments explaining why anything else should be a crime. But if there isn't both intent and a tangible human person(s) who are harmed physically or deprived of property (including corps.), I'm not listening.
Another benefit would be to women who would like to take their ex to court. They can now do so by releasing the photos themselves and saying that he did it.
Morons posting such pix of their ex-girlfriends have been making it impossible to find girlfriends willing to be photographed...
" He can damage her reputation significantly by publishing them while she can't do the same to him."
Wanna a bet? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3SlGjIm4Jc
What he did wasn't illegal, what she did was. Funny how the part where she dumped him gets ignored. Men don't like being treated like shit anymore than women do and women often aren't any more angelic in their responses either. In this case, she was worse. Sexism works both ways. If he had decked her friend and caught up with her he'd be in jail even though she started the fight and brought a friend to assist. And it's highly likely a jury would convict him. Women may see more issues(ok, blown out of proportion issues) but the end responsibility and accountability is still placed on men in our society not women.
"Women almost never do this because our society is sexist about nudity. "
"So even if both people in the relationship have nude pictures of each other the male is still in a position of strength."
And if your girl friend makes fun of your sex life to all her girlfriends and they spread it around?
Men do the competing and women do the picking. There is no balance women have the upper hand.
What a horrible, fearful, shuttered way to live your life.
It will be very hard to enforce. You can always accidentally 'lose' your phone or computer which contains those pictures. Then someone would 'inadvertently' post those pictures somewhere just for fun. It will be hard to prove that it is for revenge.
" He can damage her reputation significantly by publishing them while she can't do the same to him."
She could accuse him of rape. Even manufacture evidence quite easily. He'll be arrested, tossed in jail, publicly humiliated on the front page, lose his job, etc, in most places on just the accusation. A guy accusing a woman of rape gets little more that the last page if anything and the short-shrift in law enforcement and that if he is believed at all. Fact is, sexism is everywhere, and both genders can treat each other badly. Deal. All this abusive law proves is freedom(free doom) is dead, long live the nanny state.
You've got it backwards. I would never hire a man i had seen a naked picture of for any position of responsibility, no matter how old the picture was or how "arty" the picture. A woman would in some situations at least get the benefit of doubt.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
This law was passed in California. Republicans there are as rare as Christians in Saudi Arabia!
So Democrats elected Regan and Schwarzenegger?
Well, they're more rare now than they were then. And Reagan couldn't be elected dog catcher by today's Republicans. As politicians go, he was pretty pragmatic and centrist. And on occasion we do elect an idiot like the Ah-nold the Governator.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Offhand, I'd say that Sacramento and Los Angeles are Democrat. Oakland and San Francisco are so far left that they're national embarrassments.
National embarrassments? Well, not really, at least on the European scale of embarrassment. For example, the People's Republic of San Francisco ensures that all people living there have health coverage. Not a very Republican idea but certainly not an embarrassing one either. San Francisco also spends a bunch of money it gets from tourists in the form of taxes they pay to fund the arts there. What's embarrassing about San Francisco is that it's a pain in the ass to drive there literally because the streets are in such bad shape. I was there just yesterday and my tailbone is still recovering from the experience.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
and what is if my intent is to give the world some seriously awesome amateur porn?
I absolutely see your point, but it almost sounds like you'd be OK with letting the other 92% off with no consequences, just in case. (Not saying you said that at all, just that it could be inferred.) I have very mixed feelings about laws and false convictions, because it's *very* hard to know where to draw the line. Obviously, I'm against false convictions, but the debate arises at some point because we can't accept that every offense can't be absolutely factually verified, so we can't be sure what does and doesn't merit ruining the accused's life... but we also can't just decide that any offense that could be falsified gets a free pass. There's no one all-purpose, ironclad answer.
I'm not sure what to think about this unless I can see some examples of what we're talking about. Does anyone have a link?
Reality has a liberal bias
Do you mean douchebag
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Are they outlawing it too?
This bill would provide that any person who photographs or records
by any means the image of the intimate body part or parts of another
identifiable person, under circumstances where the parties agree or
understand that the image shall remain private, and the person
subsequently distributes the image taken, with the intent to cause
serious emotional distress, and the depicted person suffers serious
emotional distress, is guilty of disorderly conduct and subject to
that same punishment.
Implies that the photographer AND the distributor are the same person.
Also, it implies that "parties agree or understand that the image shall remain private".
So I guess, one person does not agree or claims not to understand that and it's OK?
And then there's that "intent to cause serious emotional distress" bit.
What if that was not the intention, but say... pride? "Look everyone! This is what I get to fuck every night!"
You can be distressed all you like baby, I did this out of love, not to cause you harm.
What about lack of intention cause the photos were on a phone, computer, drive etc. that got lost or stolen?
"I don't know how those photos got online you honor. I lost my phone after getting drunk when this person broke up with me."
Nor does the existing disorderly conduct law address that:
(4) (A) Any person who photographs or records by any means the
image of the intimate body part or parts of another identifiable
person, under circumstances where the parties agree or understand
that the image shall remain private, and the person subsequently
distributes the image taken, with the intent to cause serious
emotional distress, and the depicted person suffers serious emotional
distress.
This looks like basically one of those "Strong on X" laws, which protect no one but which make the public paranoid cause they can get innocent people in jail easily and retroactively should the judge have a bad day.
And then there's that bit where the lower half of the boob is now far more dangerous, but that was already there.
(B) As used in this paragraph, intimate body part means any
portion of the genitals, and in the case of a female, also includes
any portion of the breasts below the top of the areola, that is
either uncovered or visible through less than fully opaque clothing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Don't you have some law in the USA where people can restrict the diffusion of pictures where they appear, porn or not.
In France we have "droit à l'image". It is a form of copyright that protects the subject of a picture.
Intent is different than outcome. If the outcome is they are embarrassed but the intent was just to share what was once a part of the perpetrators life then no crime. This bill just looks unenforceable unless someone is dumb enough to post the images with text saying the intent is to embarrass which opens up the door for false accusations where the images are posted by the victim themselves to get revenge on the purported perpetrator.
I think the intent is to keep the offence relatively narrow, since there are a lot of ways these images could come to be public, and not all - probably most - do not seserve or require the full majesty of the law. As for questions of intent, well, that's why we have courts.
[FUCK BETA]
I guess there is a significant overlap between group A (viewers) and B (assholes invoking 'slut' etc).
I do not call ladies in the pr0n movies sluts - in fact I enjoy services they provide to me in my cellar (a place that would not be so enjoyable otherwise). I call one of my exes a slut because she had a another guy while she lived with me. The overlap citizens mentioned above are not viewing the stuff for the sake of the society but for own pleasure. They should have their balls cut off for being hypocrites.
What about men with no penis size issues? Take a picture of my penis and post it online and people will go, "Oh. It's a penis. Seen one of those before."
It's not terribly interesting. It's not abnormally large or small or bent or coloured or pierced or tattooed or covered in growths. It's a penis.
Should that give me the right to publicly humiliate a woman with impunity?
No way this could ever possibly go wrong...
So I give the pictures to a buddy and HE posts them. Problem solved. Since the pictures were sent to me they are my property to do with as I see fit, and that means I can give them to someone else. What THEY do with it after that is not my concern, and if they were never romantically involved with the person, oh well.
Yeah, real iron-clad law they hammered out here. Lotsa thought went into this one.
Forgot to mention that regarding the "strong on X" stuff.
Narrow on the area of effect, vague on intent yet powerful in the headlines.
California Outlaws 'Revenge Porn'*
*for certain values of "outlaws", "porn" and/or "revenge".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...to handle these issues in civil courts, and/or through existing laws.
Instead of creating yet another crime.
And then there's the option of writing a detailed AND precise law that would actually address the issues it was supposedly created to handle.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens