Responding to Celeb Photo Leaks, Reddit Scotches "Fappening" Subreddit

4chan might have introduced a DMCA policy, but Reddit goes farther: VentureBeat reports that the online community known as The Fappening has been dissolved by Reddit, in response to its use in posting and sharing many of the photos leaked from dozens of celebrities. This isn’t the first time Reddit has decided to take action to ban certain questionable communities from its site, as its previously killed other subreddits like Creepshots for similar invasions of privacy as well as banned well-known power users shown to enable such actions. ... Reddit system admin Jason Harvey (aka “alienth”) attempted to cool some of the fuss by starting that discussion about why the company decided to ban the subreddit. Most of it boils down to Reddit waiting too long to speak up about it before making the decision to ban, while assuming its users would mostly understand why it took place. ... “If Reddit is truly to be a platform that’s open in any way, it needs transparency when (heavy handed) actions such as these are taken,” said Reddit user SaidTheCanadian in response to Harvey, while also suggesting the company create a “public log” of sorts showing all banning actions as well as explanations for each instance of a banned community. “I don’t want to be part of a community where community voices are silenced without meaningful notice or explanation. (No one really does like that secret police feeling.)”

Comments

please

[Prokur]

share link to those "famous" photos. thanks

Re:please

[Ecuador]

You can probably get them easily by searching for "fappening" on a torrent tracker. But the point is this has gone way beyond news for nerds or stuff that matters. We've covered the leak before here on slashdot, and there was one interesting aspect, namely that Apple would allow brute force dictionary attacks (and claimed there was no security issue, while patching it at the same time), but covering how reddit is banning a "community" known as "The Fappening"??? What next, articles analyzing the artistic merit of the average 4chan post?

Re:please

[BasilBrush]

namely that Apple would allow brute force dictionary attacks (and claimed there was no security issue, while patching it at the same time)

There was never any evidence that the hacking was from brute forcing findmyiphone. It was only ever a theory.

Re:please

[Anonymous Coward]

What next, articles analyzing the artistic merit of the average 4chan post?

Since most 4chan posts are done for neither fame, nor money, I would argue that they are the only true form of art.

*ducks*

Re:please

[BitZtream]

... After 3 to 6 attempts, your account requires additional authentication to login. You automatically get sent to Iforgot.apple.com for all new requests.

It wasn't a brute force attack nor was it recently patched unless you think 'years ago' is recent.

Re:please

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of an Apple shill are you? GP did not say the leaks came from brute forcing findmyiphone, but that in the coverage about the hack it came up that findmyiphone allowed brute force attacks. Which is called a security vulnerability any way you look at it, regardless of how Apple says it is not and whether the photos in questions came via that avenue or not.

Re:please

[Anonymous Coward]

So I was probably dreaming when I thought I was reading on slashdot about the "ibrute" tool which was working until September 1st? Yes, I am talking about 2014...

Re:please

[Charliemopps]

... After 3 to 6 attempts, your account requires additional authentication to login. You automatically get sent to Iforgot.apple.com for all new requests.

It wasn't a brute force attack nor was it recently patched unless you think 'years ago' is recent.

Yes, it was a brute force attack. Apples now trying to cover it up by claiming "If only you had a better password." Which may be true, if their passwords had been 50 characters long it would have taken the brute force attack a lot long to complete. But the fact of the matter is, Apple forgot to put in an X number of wrong attempts = account locked, procedure in... or it wasn't working properly and people exploited it.

Re:please

[Anonymous Coward]

You are just another guy with an opinion. Prove it.

Re:please

[BitZtream]

... because using a password that anyone can guess means it was guessed by brute force? Thats what you're saying, right?

Show the proof it was brute force, not silly speculation. The account lockout procedure has been in place for several years across the board. Its not something they just added last week.

Re:please

[BitZtream]

And I was making 1 million trillion billion dollars a year until September 1st as well. Because once something is posted to slashdot, it must be true ... and nothing posted to slashdot never gets thoroughly debunked ... ever ...

Re:please

[mean pun]

Yes, it was a brute force attack. Apples now trying to cover it up by claiming "If only you had a better password." Which may be true, if their passwords had been 50 characters long it would have taken the brute force attack a lot long to complete. But the fact of the matter is, Apple forgot to put in an X number of wrong attempts = account locked, procedure in... or it wasn't working properly and people exploited it.

In cryptography, a brute-force attack means that you don't know anything about the password, but just try all the billions of possibilities. Assuming that a password character can only be a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and 10 other characters, and assuming that a password has exactly 6 characters, you would have to try on average (72^6)/2=69657034752 passwords. Assuming you can do 100 tries per second, that would still take more than 8062 days, or more than 22 years on average. Note that I'm being very generous in my assumptions here.

In other words, unless there was another weakness, a brute-force attack was impractical, even without any limit on the number of attempts.

What probably happened was that the passwords were indeed weak. If you know your victim has a dog called 'fido', you can try if she used that name in her password, and in my example you only have to guess two more characters. That only takes seconds or minutes. The attackers may call this brute force, but that's misleading.

Re: please

[nathanmarius]

That's not Apple shilling. The brute force vulnerability was there, but it's worth pointing out that there is not evidence that was what was used. So there may be another vulnerability for Apple (and iPhone users) to worry about. That's the opposite of shilling for Apple.

Re: please

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard the attack was against the API not the UI with the former allowing brute force attempts.

Re:please

[SternisheFan]

And Apple did patch the API within a day or so of this story breaking. It has not been proven or disproven that this is how the photos got stolen. Some phone pics were obviously taken with an Android phone. "What's your dogs name" type password recovery 'attacks' may have been used. There are lowlifes who collect and trade/sell nude pics, sometimes just for the lulz. Some of the pics may have been copied from online accounts from years back.

Re: please

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple shill detected. Go fuck yourself, you propagandist, fascist shitbag.

Re:please

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is pimping Reddit due to the approaching merger. Dice wants out. They only bought this place to flip it.

Say good night, Gracie...

Re:please

[Austerity Empowers]

4chan: Art for Fuck's sake.

Re:please

[SpectreBlofeld]

Assuming that a password character can only be a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and 10 other characters, and assuming that a password has exactly 6 characters, you would have to try on average (72^6)/2=69657034752 passwords. Assuming you can do 100 tries per second, that would still take more than 8062 days, or more than 22 years on average.

Using a dictionary attack will cut that time WAY down, if the targets used words as passwords.

Re:please

[mean pun]

True, but as I said I was generous in my assumptions anyway. In reality the alphabet is larger, Apple must have a minimum password length of at least 8, and I really doubt that you can do 100 tries per second. I therefore am very sceptical that even with a dictionary attack you can get very far, at least not without choosing a specific dictionary for your victim. And if you do that it is no longer a brute-force attack.

As I wrote in an earlier discussion, I know very few websites that impose a limit on the number of login attempts, so it is not reasonable to suddenly declare this an epic fail of Apple. It is good they plugged the hole (although they could just block you for an hour after three failed login attempts), but guessable passwords must have contributed to this.

Oh, and does /. impose such a limit?

Re:please

[sudon't]

If I remember correctly, the attackers were able to work out the answers to the account's "secret questions" because, you know, celebrities, and thus change the password. So, if you call that a brute force attack... I'd be very surprised to learn that a true brute-force, or a dictionary attack was employed. Very surprised.

Re: please

[Anonymous Coward]

I too would like to judge for myself the alleged fame of these 'celebrity photos' ...

PS are andy of them selfies?

"further", not "farther"

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit goes further.

Re:"further", not "farther"

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually

Re:"further", not "farther"

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit goes further.

Or at least beyond the pale.

Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

How about telling those celeb sluts to stop taking naughty selfies, or at least not uploading them all to The Cloud (tm)?

Overreaction.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

How about telling those celeb sluts to stop taking naughty selfies, or at least not uploading them all to The Cloud (tm)?

Puritanical American blaming the victims. It's the same argument as telling rape victims they shouldn't have worn short skirts.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Renozuken]

Don't wanna be strangled? Don't have a neck. Don't want your car stolen? Don't own a car. Stealing is wrong no matter the context.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[angel'o'sphere]

How about grasping that I can do with my body whatever I want. Upload my photoes where ever I want.

But you may not download, upload my photos anywhere! You shall not hack my account! Regardless if it is my private PC at home or my cloud storage!

What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?

What about telling everyone who get mugged or rubbed not to have a $600 iPhone with him, or a $2000 laptop or not $1000 in cash. It is all their fault if they get deprived from their 'property'!??

You attitude likely comes from your desire to see the nude pics of those women yourself ...

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Making copies is not stealing.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you think blame is a 100% sum game. It isn't. Uploading nude selfies to the cloud is stupid and naive. However the victims being stupid doesn't absolve any criminal culpability from those who hacked their account and stole the photos.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[JustShootMe]

Your last sentence is pretty close to an ad hominem. The GP post is probably a troll. So why I'm posting here is beyond me. Maybe I'm bored.

Here's the thing. It's true that in a perfect world, you should have complete control of what happens to the stuff you post, just like you should have complete control over what happens to your body.

This isn't, unfortunately a perfect world.

Protecting yourself is a virtue, not a vice. And giving advice on how to protect yourself is not necessarily "blaming the victim".

Let me put it another way: to use some analogies that have been put forth in other comments, if there is a place in town where someone gets raped every single night, maybe two or three people, and you deliberately going to that place at night, alone... do you really think it's going to do any good to just tell whomever you encounter "don't rape me?"

When it would never have happened if you'd just not gone?

Protect yourself. Don't do stupid stuff. At the end of the day, you do have *some* control over your circumstances. Don't give up that control just because someone else does something stupid too.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Uploading nude selfies to the cloud is stupid and naive.

It's not like they actively did so. It's simply an online backup, which is enabled when setting up the phone. You can opt out, but of course backing up is the recommended action. And quite rightly so. There is more chance of people being harmed by losing all the photos of the kids when a phone dies than there is of the account being hacked and photos being taken.

Consider also that the technicalities of a backup are beyond most non-technical consumers. Which is the group most people, including celebrities, fall in to.

Again, blaming the victims is just wrong.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

How about telling those celeb sluts to stop taking naughty selfies, or at least not uploading them all to The Cloud (tm)?

Puritanical American blaming the victims. It's the same argument as telling rape victims they shouldn't have worn short skirts.

Having common sense is now blaming the victim? They also uploaded said photo to the internet via the cloud. There are a lot of celebrates that still manage to avoid nude shots reaching the public. They have people hunting them with camera for crying out loud. Rather than use safe practices liberals always cry blaming the victim.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do it but it's still stupid and naive and pointing that out does not mean we do not think those who hacked the account shouldn't be sued and punished. The victims being naive is never a mitigating circumstance but it does not mean third parties shouldn't point out the victims were stupid. That said, I hope the crackers get caught.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

He didn't say it was, andy more than he said it was murder. It was examples of three different crimes.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[JustShootMe]

Indeed. This is not zero-sum. Just because a bad actor does something reprehensible does not mean that there is not an opportunity for education on how to reduce your risk. Don't crack. And don't put yourself in a situation where it's likely you will *be* cracked.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, If I take a photo of you (and its not a peeping tom) I sure as hell can upload it

for example if I upload photos I took of MY ex, there is nothing legally she can do about it. as the photos are mine

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like it's wrong to blame someone who was killed in a car accident (that was solely their fault) after they chose not to wear their seatbelt.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[93 Escort Wagon]

What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?

Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Protecting yourself is a virtue, not a vice. And giving advice on how to protect yourself is not necessarily "blaming the victim".

You can tell that that's not what's happening here, as the "advice" from these people invariable comes down to not taking or uploading nude photos, and never encompasses the less puritanically motivated "don't use easily guessed passwords or security question answers".

These people really are from the crowd that blames rape victims for how they dress.

Let me put it another way: to use some analogies that have been put forth in other comments, if there is a place in town where someone gets raped every single night, maybe two or three people, and you deliberately going to that place at night, alone... do you really think it's going to do any good to just tell whomever you encounter "don't rape me?"

Which is yet another variety of blaming rape victims. Slightly softened because you've no doubt experienced the short skirt argument gets you a lot of flack.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Seumas]

Unfortunately, you live in the real world where your laptop is going to be stolen out of your car if you leave it visible on the front passenger seat while you go shopping in the mall. The thief is responsible for committing the crime and you didn't deserve to be the victim of that crime, but you *are* responsible for the circumstances which made it possible by not taking reasonable precautions like keeping your laptop out of site (or out of your car entirely).

Passwords, door locks, security systems, and safes exist for a reason.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[JustShootMe]

I completely disagree with you. Particularly the last sentence, which, again, is coming close to an ad hominem. I didn't make that argument and I wasn't going to.

I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens. And that is the way *I* look at it when it comes to my own business, so I won't listen to anyone telling me I'm wrong.

I'm done here. One can never win this kind of argument because there is never any rationality to it. It's all emotional.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Rather than use safe practices liberals always cry blaming the victim.

Wow! It's a matter of left/right politics now?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Seumas]

No, it's the same argument as telling people that if you want something to remain private and within your control, don't stick it on the internet. Believe it or not, you can be *both* the victim of something *and* an idiot for not taking better precautions to protect yourself from being the victim of it.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Zapotek]

Quit with the black and white stuff, it's not that clearcut. If you walk past a neighborhood which is known for its high criminal activity wearing a Rolex, holding a $600 iPhone with one hand and a $2000 laptop with the other, then yes, it obviously is also your fault if you get mugged. The universe does not stand on principles.

The problem is that people (you being a prime example) fail to calculate risk effectively. For example, the risk of someone hacking a PCI compliant institution and stealing my credit card info (from a card with limited funds which I only use for on-line purchases) is low enough that doesn't dissuade me from making CC purchases -- also taking into account other safeguards.

However, if public image was important to me then I certainly wouldn't store embarrassing pictures of me anywhere. Especially not on a laptop I'd brazenly display while walking past a bad neighborhood -- or someone else's server.

Also, if you're looking to get rubbed[sic] then $1000 in cash would certainly help.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

We are talking about victims of crime here, not victims of accidents.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Being an idiot, not being fully aware of what needs to be done for good security, and being to blame, are 3 completely different things.

A victim may well have been unwise in various ways. That does not make them in the slightest bit to blame. Because if you allocate them a percentage of blame, you must therefore reduce the blame from the criminal. And the criminal's blame is 100% - only they chose to to the crime - no one made them.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

False equivalence. Minus 50 points for slytherin.

It's more like blaming somebody who was killed in a car accident that was somebody else's fault after they chose to wear their seatbelt, but design flaw they weren't aware of made it ineffective.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Noah Haders]

Making copies is not stealing.

setting aside matters of law (in which copying IS stealing in some contexts whether you think it's right or wrong)... from an ethical perspective, I would say that hacking into someone's private account and downloading their shizz is stealing.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, try to discredit the guy in any way or form, just because he actually stated a good opinion

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Noah Haders]

I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud.

check your fly; your participle is dangling.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Noah Haders]

What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?

Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.

at the very least if they survive annual attacks it's hard to keep calling the attacker a killer

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Stan92057]

Another one of the legions of coward victim blamers. psssttt having there image stolen was not there fault at all. It was 100% the fault of the scum coward who used the bug apple should have never had to fix in the first place. Its the fault of the web site who published the exploit allowing the scum coward an easy way to brute force someones account. Its the fault of server providers for not educating its customers that the service is not secure and that storing anything private should be though about hardly before uploading. Put fault where it belongs not where its the easy thing to do.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens.

Then I hope you backup your phone locally, and realise that if you have a house fire you may lose all your photos and other data. Which if you are a parent with photos of the kids would be adding one tragedy to another.

I'm done here. One can never win this kind of argument because there is never any rationality to it. It's all emotional.

There is not the slightest bit of emotion in my argument. It's perfectly rational. The criminal is 100% responsible for the crimes they chose to commit. And thus there in no percentage points available for allocating to the victim.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[ATMAvatar]

This was more the case of "Don't want your car stolen? Don't leave the windows down and doors unlocked". The thief still has to hot wire the car, and he/she still takes the lion's share of the blame, but it doesn't detract from the fact that it is really stupid to leave your car out like that.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that noise. There is literally nothing wrong with slut shaming. You assholes and your crusade against monogamy and your militant feminism have proven to be completely and utterly unworkable in society. Shaming these whores is precisely what needs to be done if we want to get society back on track and divorce rates back under 50%. Women are not rational, our duty as men to put them in their place.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

How about telling those celeb sluts to stop taking naughty selfies, or at least not uploading them all to The Cloud (tm)?

Puritanical American blaming the victims. It's the same argument as telling rape victims they shouldn't have worn short skirts.

Having common sense is now blaming the victim? They also uploaded said photo to the internet via the cloud. There are a lot of celebrates that still manage to avoid nude shots reaching the public. They have people hunting them with camera for crying out loud. Rather than use safe practices liberals always cry blaming the victim.

This isn't a "liberal" thing, it's a "I'm not a dick" thing.

Tell you what, you stop blaming the victims, and folks with a sense of empathy and a fondness for justice will stop calling you out for doing it.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not their fault, but they accepted the risk. Look, people call it "blaming the victim", but it's really just a well-meaning warning trying to reach a person with common sense: Don't carry a $600 phone in a crowded anonymous situation if you can't afford (financially or mentally) to lose it. Don't show your white ass in the ghetto if you're allergic to fists, blades or bullets. Don't take naked pictures with your cellphone if you're going to go all PTSD when they end up on the internet. If you want to do silly things, you can't be fussy about the outcome. People understand the concept when there is nobody obvious to blame, for example when a bungee jumper hits a bird at full speed or when the fully certified and well-maintained rope snaps, or when a snowboarder dies in an avalanche, etc. Why is it so hard to understand that taking risks can go south, and even though someone else is to blame, you could still have avoided the embarrassing, expensive or injurious result by not taking the risk?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

But telling people not to upload sensitive yet unessential information is good advice. The error is not in taking sexy photos, but in trusting online services to be secure or that they will back their customers. These big companies have clearly show time and time again they will do neither. The first thing Apple did was lay all the blame on the users.

Stating law or supporting victims may make you feel good, but they don't actually solve the problem. We already know the people who engage in this activity are immoral, and likely outside legal reach. Candid photos of celebs will always be prized. Relying on morality instead of advocating sensible ways to protect yourself is like pushing abstinence in schools and ignoring condoms.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

The thief is responsible for committing the crime and you didn't deserve to be the victim of that crime, but you *are* responsible for the circumstances which made it possible by not taking reasonable precautions like keeping your laptop out of site (or out of your car entirely).

The second use of the word responsible doesn't belong there. It's a good idea to lock your car door. It's a good idea to not leave the laptop there. But you have no responsibility to do either. And if you don't do either, and the laptop is taken, the thief still has 100% responsibility for their crime. Ease of committing the crime isn't a mitigating circumstance.

Passwords, door locks, security systems, and safes exist for a reason.

Sure, they have a practical use. But thankfully there is no legal, moral or any other responsibility to use them.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Indigo]

Kill yourself.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah you are truly right...

The Celebs can also go to a nudist beach without being photographed by paparazies.

Lets take all the gold from fort knox to a ship and let it stay at somalia horn coast for one week without guards.

Lets allow anyone to bring a weapon into the airplane -- its america after all.

Why do we need locks in the first place? Criminals know its illegal to enter another's house!

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe Android and iOS should have a "don't backup to the cloud" album that you can selectively place images in to.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Stan92057]

Unfortunately me and you are of a tiny minority. Reddit should not have been suspired by its users comments because the vast majority were victim blamers not victim supporters. IMO Reddit took way too long to act, you don't need a reason or excuse to do the right thing.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Your analogy is obviously flawed.

It is not as if these celebrities were going around displaying or advertising the fact that they had nude photos of themselves, anywhere, so on that basis, likening the theft of those photos to walking around a dangerous neighborhood with expensive property is absurd.

It's also not about the risk factor. Individuals, regardless of celebrity status, should not have to be IT professionals in order to feel that their personal electronic activities are secure, no more than you should not have to live in a fortress in order to have a reasonable expectation that you won't be murdered in your sleep. It is only our responsibility to the extent that commonly understood and practiced precautions are taken. That's why we have programmers and security professionals in the first place: they get paid to do the things that non-technical people cannot be reasonably expected to do for themselves.

You also mistakenly assume that these celebrities were sufficiently tech-savvy to know how cloud storage works, that photos are stored on a remote server by default, and that they should have known to disable that feature in advance. Hell, I've been using iOS since the first iPhone and even though I've checked and double-checked, I *still* can't be sure that I've got such features disabled on my account. How am I supposed to be absolutely SURE that it's not happening? I just have to trust Apple.

The bottom line is that you can try to shift the blame on these hapless celebrities for being incompetent (by your standards), but the fact of the matter is that even after the occurrence of theft, the continued propagation of those pictures cannot be blamed on the celebrities themselves: that blame solely rests with those prurient individuals who only care about sharing dirty photos and choose to justify breaking the law by saying that it's someone else's fault. No, it's YOUR fault for downloading the photos in the first place. That someone else committed a crime, or that someone else's incompetence made those photos available does not absolve you of your part, if you are so insistent on apportioning blame so finely as to accuse the victims for not taking the precaution of being their own security experts.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[93 Escort Wagon]

Maybe the victim is a cat.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[TWX]

It's the same argument as telling rape victims they shouldn't have worn short skirts.

Is it wrong to cite the bad choices that a rape victim may have made, in a specific circumstance, like getting blackout-drunk in a semi-private party while surrounded by people that the victim might not know very well, when the nature gathering itself has helped whip up those in attendance into a higher state of sexual interest?

In that kind of circumstance the rapist is 100% at fault for his actions, but that doesn't mean that one can't cite additional responsibility on the part of those that took away their own self-control. The expression, "boys will be boys," is misinterpreted. It's not an excuse, it's a warning. The only behavior that one can control is one's own. Regardless of how illegal, unethical, or immoral an act by another may be, their behavior is not something that you can control. If you don't want to be a victim, don't make it easy to become a victim, as the law will only serve to prosecute afterward, not to protect in advance.

In these circumstances, the very existence of the profession paparazzi combined with all of the tabloids that have significant circulation should already be a warning that like it or not, as far as the public's concerned their bodies are not off-limits. Add in previous incidents where private photos have been published and redistributed, and you already have a known threat. Throw in lessons that we're taught as children about the inherent untrustworthiness of others, the lack of knowledge and understanding of the technology that they're using, and the flaws in that technology that aren't even understood by those that developed the tech, and you've got the recipe for what happened. And while it's wrong, while it's immoral, unethical, and probably illegal, it will continue to happen as long as people want to see these stars without their clothes on. There's no excuse to make one's self vulnerable to this, and unfortunately without an understanding of the technology and vigilance with regard to it for as long as the images exist, this kind of thing will always be a risk.

In short, don't take naked pictures if you're not comfortable with them being exposed at some point. You cannot truly protect yourself from them being redistributed.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[aaaaaaargh!]

Coincidentally, 100% of all people who write "100% sum game" have no clue about what that phrase could mean if it had any meaning at all, 90% of all people who write "zero sum game" know absolutely nothing about game theory, and 89% of all statistics are made up ad hoc.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[AthanasiusKircher]

I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens.

Then I hope you backup your phone locally, and realise that if you have a house fire you may lose all your photos and other data.

Uh, GP didn't say he never uploaded photos to iCloud. He said he does NOT upload photos he doesn't "want distributed widely" to iCloud.

Basically, it's a good piece of advice generally: if you have very sensitive data that you'd like to keep private (whether it's financial data, passwords, nudie photos, whatever), it's probably best to keep your own control over that data. Devices that are attached the internet and which randomly transmit your data to other computers there are NOT guaranteed to be secure.

Which if you are a parent with photos of the kids would be adding one tragedy to another.

The ONLY place you have your photos of your kids is on your phone and on iCloud? I have electronic copies of photos I care about shared via a syncing utility (not based on commercial servers or services) on at least four different computers, with at least two different computers in different locations running backups daily.

There is not the slightest bit of emotion in my argument. It's perfectly rational. The criminal is 100% responsible for the crimes they chose to commit. And thus there in no percentage points available for allocating to the victim.

I probably shouldn't get involved in this discussion either, but I'm pretty sure that GP is NOT placing any blame on the victim, especially since he explicitly said that.

In case you've never thought about this, it is in fact possible for a number of factors to be preconditions to a criminal act without all of them being "responsible" for the criminal act. (You might consider reading some philosophy on the nature of causality here.)

Or, to take this to a less controversial topic, let's say that I observe that you keep arriving at work on rainy days with your clothes soaked. I carry an umbrella in my bag every day, just in case.

If I told you that I found things worked out better for me in terms of not having wet clothes when I get to work by carrying an umbrella with me, would you conclude that I've "allocated responsibility" for the weather to you? Of course not! That's preposterous. The weather is the weather, and you're not somehow "responsible" for causing the rain if it rains on you and soaks your clothes.

But carrying an umbrella might help. Suggesting that you could carry an umbrella is not "blaming the victim" of the rain -- it's pointing out that reasonable precautions can sometimes help to avoid bad situations.

I know that if I were a famous actress or something, and I knew that nude photos of me would be desireable by some sick hackers out there, I'd take extra precautions. That's not "blaming the victim." That's recognizing that evil people are in the world, and that's crap, and those evil people are 100% to blame for their stupid actions... but sometimes it's a rainy day, so preparation could help. I frankly feel very bad for those women whose privacy was violated here -- and I think it's really, REALLY important to talk about how to prevent such things in the future, which includes education about how to perhaps avoid dealing with these bad guys in the first place.

I absolutely get why the OP who started this thread sounded offensive by saying this was "overblown" or something. I do NOT get why you feel the need to attack someone (GP) who is talking about reasonable precautions to take to avoid being taken advantage of evil people in the world. In an ideal world, those evil people wouldn't exist... and I could let my doors open at night, post my financial passwords and data on a public website, and store my stash of cash on my front porch. But we all recognize that bad people will take advantage of situations like that. We all take precautions. Observing what sort of precautions might be helpful in certain circumstances is not "blaming the victim."

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Stan92057]

I disagree for the simple fact it that people are being misled into thinking there personal property is safe on their services. And that still isn't a reason allowing victim blaming. Your making an excuses to allow yourself face to blame the victims. I could state 10 reasons why Apple should take all the blame and be right about it but im not going to. I don't need to save face I don't blame victims. Cowards blame victims.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

In that kind of circumstance the rapist is 100% at fault for his actions, but that doesn't mean that one can't cite additional responsibility on the part of those that took away their own self-control.

"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist. So there's a logical fault there.

There's nothing wrong with advice to people about what ways they can minimise risk. But the time for that is before the crime, and the people to do that to are people that are in danger. Raising it after the crime, amongst a group of people who are not renowned for having photogenic bodies, reveals that it is just reducing the blame allocated to the criminals, and that's wrong.

These people had no responsibility not to take nude pictures; no responsibility not to have them backed up on line, and bear no part of the blame for the crime of them being hacked.

Which is not the same thing as it being less risky not to do those things.

You know it would be less risky if I didn't carry cash in my wallet. But that doesn't make me even slightly responsible or to blame if I get mugged.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[TWX]

There's nothing wrong with advice to people about what ways they can minimise risk. But the time for that is before the crime, and the people to do that to are people that are in danger. Raising it after the crime, amongst a group of people who are not renowned for having photogenic bodies, reveals that it is just reducing the blame allocated to the criminals, and that's wrong.

Then when is the appropriate time to raise it?

After that hacking incidents in 2012 when Blake Lively, Scarlett Johansson, and other actresses found their private naked pictures redistributed?

How about when Vanessa Hudgens' photos and Hayley Williams' photos were redistributed before that?

How about when Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian had video of them having sex released prior to that?

Be they technological faults or human failings that led to the information getting out, there's an established pattern that large portions of the public want to see this stuff, and that some who are motivated will go through significant amounts of effort to make it happen. If it exists it's at risk of being exposed. The only certain way to prevent it from being released is to not create it in the first place. The only close-to-acceptable way to create it and not have it be at risk is to not use a digital means.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[NotSanguine]

I completely disagree with you. Particularly the last sentence, which, again, is coming close to an ad hominem. I didn't make that argument and I wasn't going to.

I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens. And that is the way *I* look at it when it comes to my own business, so I won't listen to anyone telling me I'm wrong.

I'm done here. One can never win this kind of argument because there is never any rationality to it. It's all emotional.

Back in the depths of the medieval period (the early 1990s), when the large (Fortune 50) company I worked for first connected its user base to the Internet, they gave a piece of advice about emails, which, IMHO, applies in spades to any online storage (whenever someone says "the cloud" you should always mentally replace it with "someone else's servers") or site. It went something like this: "don't put anything in an email [replace that with 'online' for today's environment] that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of your local newspaper."

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[henni16]

Are you ready to take responsibility for the next real world victims who might have been willing to protect themselves despite it not being their responsibility in happy ideological lala-land, but who didn't know how to or weren't even aware of the danger because your knee-jerk "victim blame" reaction suppressed that information and finally managed to alienate the last one who would have been willing to help?

On a slightly (un)related note, on some website there recently were some very vocal habitual "Victim blamer! MRA!"-screaming hypocrites apparently living in homes without mirrors wondering where that backlash of "SJW"-screaming came from and why "social justice" could have become(!) an insult and how the environment and the "discussions" have become(!) more hostile.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I look at it differently. If having my $600 iPhone stolen from me would be a life alteringly devastating event, I simply would not own an iphone or carry one around. We all do things every day and we must take the risks into account when we do them. It's no different for me vs a celebrity. Though sometimes the stakes are higher for them because, at least financially, they have a lot more to lose. I'm thinking specifically about one actress, I forget her name, but apparently she has a big Nickelodeon contract. Having nude pictures of you out there is likely a MUCH bigger deal to her than, say, Kate Upton whose work is already fairly adult in nature. So, IMHO, the Nickelodeon actress took on a much bigger risk than Kate Upton and while I don't commend the "hackers" I think it's silly to say that she didn't understand the risks of her actions when she took them. Also, it's important to remember that the reactions we see from celebrities are likely the result of their PR consultant(s) and not their genuine reactions. For all we know the most vocal ones are loving the extra publicity and the relatively quiet ones are in sheer terror. Again, that doesn't excuse the behavior of whoever made their private data public. I don't support that action. I just disagree with the idea that people can willy nilly participate in risky behavior and then call foul when the most obvious outcomes eventually happen.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[TWX]

You know it would be less risky if I didn't carry cash in my wallet. But that doesn't make me even slightly responsible or to blame if I get mugged.

And to reply to this, since I forgot to in my previous reply, if you know a part of town at a particular time of day is known for muggings and you go there during that time of day and get mugged, then you bear some responsibility for not using that grey matter between your ears to evaluate and minimize risks to yourself. So yes, you are to blame if you knowingly put yourself into circumstances that lead to bad things happening to you.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that noise. There is literally nothing wrong with slut shaming. You assholes and your crusade against monogamy and your militant feminism have proven to be completely and utterly unworkable in society. Shaming these whores is precisely what needs to be done if we want to get society back on track and divorce rates back under 50%. Women are not rational, our duty as men to put them in their place.

"Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Kotter! Mr. Kotter!"
"Okay, Epstein."
"It's a troll!"

If you don't get the reference, get off my lawn youngster.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[NotSanguine]

Don't show your white ass in the ghetto if you're allergic to fists, blades or bullets.

Racist much?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

>Consider also that the technicalities of a backup are beyond most non-technical consumers. Which is the group most people, including celebrities, fall in to.
They wouldn't be if the phone wasn't a deliberately arcane restricted POS.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Uh, GP didn't say he never uploaded photos to iCloud. He said he does NOT upload photos he doesn't "want distributed widely" to iCloud.

It's a backup. Whilst on PC software there may be facilities for not backing up certain directories, no-one chooses per photo. And on a phone there's no facility for doing so anyway.

The ONLY place you have your photos of your kids is on your phone and on iCloud? I have electronic copies of photos I care about shared via a syncing utility (not based on commercial servers or services) on at least four different computers, with at least two different computers in different locations running backups daily.

Does your mom? Don't give me stories about what you as a geek do. We're talking about ordinary people here, who wouldn't even understand what you just said, let alone be able to do it. Their choice is a local backup in the house or a commercial service.

And if your own solution works via the internet, there's nothing to say it's any more secure than commercial services.

I do NOT get why you feel the need to attack someone (GP) who is talking about reasonable precautions to take to avoid being taken advantage of evil people in the world.

What's reasonable? What part of your liberty are you prepared to give up for your safety? Are you at fault if you get burgled because you don't live in a gated community with security guards?

Sounds like you have more computer equipment than most people. Are you responsible if it gets stolen because you had so much? It would be safer to have less, after all.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

How about at a time when you are not attaching it to a particular victim or victims, in order to allocate blame to them.

The only close-to-acceptable way to create it and not have it be at risk is to not use a digital means.

The only close to acceptable way to protect yourself from being mugged is not to carry any money or valuables. Do you carry them?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

You're failing to differentiate between responsibility and choice. You have no such responsibility. If you were to walk through that part of town and you were not mugged, did you do something wrong?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[fonske]

I've got three girls. I don't have a life anymore if I can't live with the fact that girls are human beings with sexuality being a part of it.
Instilling shame is not helping my wife and me in trying to give them other goals in life because shame is the one thing that heightens sexual connotation.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

That is pretty much on the nose, but I think we can simplfying the analogy even more without losing the essense:

If you don't want to die in a car crash, then don't ride in a car!

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

because if you allocate them a percentage of blame, you must therefore reduce the blame from the criminal.

So if three people conspire to murder another, they are each only 33% to blame? This reasonning is moronic. The sum of blame percentage need not be 100%.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* No, not racist. Not blaming the rape victim. Not justifying smart phone theft. Not telling people it's OK to take advantage of idiots. Not even telling you not to bungee-jump or not to go and provoke people where you're less than welcome. I am telling you to be aware of the risks you're taking and to make sure you can handle if the risks materialize. I am telling you that my attitude towards the criminal doesn't depend on your stupidity, but my empathy towards you depends on the risks you took and for what reason you took them.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't want your car stolen? Don't leave the windows down and doors unlocked"

I think more aptly, "Don't want your car stolen? Don't leave your keys in the ignition, the car on, but the doors locked." In the end, it's the outer barrier that has to be breached. But a car that didn't have an ignition and has rusted brakes is a lot harder to steal, even if all the doors are unlocked and the windows down.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Guy Harris]

Consider also that the technicalities of a backup are beyond most non-technical consumers. Which is the group most people, including celebrities, fall in to.

They wouldn't be if the phone wasn't a deliberately arcane restricted POS.

Because some other type of phone would require you to understand the technicalities of a backup? Sounds like the kind of phone most non-technical consumers wouldn't use.

Or because, with some other type of phone, the technicalities of a backup would be simple enough for non-technical consumers to use?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I see. So when someone dies because they didn't wear their seatbelt during an otherwise-survivable accident they had absolutely no control over that outcome, so long as the other driver that hit their car with hers was drunk?

I mean, they are the victim of crime, right? The fact that they would have died just the same if they had wrapped their car around a telephone pole without wearing their seatbelt is completely notwithstanding, right?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I just created "100% sum game" to explain if you assign percentage of blame to people, the sum may be higher than 100%. If three persons kill another, each of them is 100% to blame, they don't each get 1/3 of the jail sentence they would have got if they had acted alone.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with encouraging them to have a stable monogamous relationship with sex involved. sex != sluttery. People need to stop falling for this false equivalence.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a backup. Whilst on PC software there may be facilities for not backing up certain directories, no-one chooses per photo. And on a phone there's no facility for doing so anyway.

If your phone lacks the ability to differentiate between what will or won't be backed up and there are simply no other options (which, btw, I'm 99% isn't true), get another phone if it matters to you. Even if you didn't have nudie photos or financial data on your phone, you don't want n GB of waste against your quota on stuff you can d/l again online--you know, wallpapers, ringtones, etc associated with your account.

Does your mom? Don't give me stories about what you as a geek do. We're talking about ordinary people here, who wouldn't even understand what you just said, let alone be able to do it. Their choice is a local backup in the house or a commercial service.

Back in the good old days, if you cared enough about keeping a printed photo safe, you bought a safety deposit box at a bank and you put the photos in there. Now, how many people put their nudie photos in there? Very few, I imagine. Why? Probably because the worst case scenario is they'd prefer the nudie photos be destroyed in a fire and lost than them being handed over to their heirs if they die in an accident.

And, seriously, if you've got nudie photos on your phone, you've already got seriously problems if the phone is lost or stolen. But presuming that doesn't happen, the first thing you'll grab in a fire is likely your phone (unless the phone caused the fire). And if you're out of the house, you'll likely have the phone on you. No matter how you spin it, it sounds like you're trying to create an improbable circumstance to justify not taking reasonable action upon probably circumstance.

What's reasonable? What part of your liberty are you prepared to give up for your safety? Are you at fault if you get burgled because you don't live in a gated community with security guards?

You're absolute right. That's why I keep my money in boxes on the sidewalk in front of my house. Why, anything less and I'm giving up liberty for security.

Sounds like you have more computer equipment than most people. Are you responsible if it gets stolen because you had so much? It would be safer to have less, after all.

One $30 SD card and a $2 SD card reader? Yea, wow. Big cost there.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[NotSanguine]

*sigh* No, not racist. Not blaming the rape victim. Not justifying smart phone theft. Not telling people it's OK to take advantage of idiots. Not even telling you not to bungee-jump or not to go and provoke people where you're less than welcome. I am telling you to be aware of the risks you're taking and to make sure you can handle if the risks materialize. I am telling you that my attitude towards the criminal doesn't depend on your stupidity, but my empathy towards you depends on the risks you took and for what reason you took them.

So. Not a bigoted jerk? You just play one on /., eh? Fair enough. Carry on.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't wanna be strangled? Don't tie a noose around your neck. Don't want your car stolen? Don't leave your car running, the doors locked, and the windows cracked open. Stealing is wrong no matter the context. But you're a dumb fuck if you don't think that facilitating an easy crime doesn't make you an extra prime target.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Uploading nude selfies to the cloud is stupid and naive.

[...]

Again, blaming the victims is just wrong.

I would not call it "stupid and naive", but perhaps "imprudent" for people (and celebrities in particular) to (a) have these types of photos, and (b) have them uploaded anywhere. The main problem is (a) though.

And saying that that it was unwise to create these types of photos (especially if you're famous) is not blaming them.

None of these celebrities did anything wrong, and none of them probably deserved for this to happen for them. But they did increase their risks. At least for me, that is what I mean by "imprudent" in having these types of pictures. I often go by the saying "three may keep a secret if two are dead" which is why I'm generally OCD about having my name entered into a database.

And it does not even have to be malicious people that would lead to these types of photos to leak: just ask Hayley Williams of the group Paramore about posting to Twitter.

Seriously: if you're going to don't want the data to spread, don't generate it. And if you are going to generate such types of bytes, at least make sure it's deniable (e.g., masks/no faces in photos).

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[TWX]

Since when are we not responsible for our own choices?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have a propensity to call people with whom you disagree names instead of arguing your case. A joke comes to mind: Woman dancing with her date: "Do you like to dance?" Man: "Yes, very!" Woman: "Then why don't you learn how?"

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't upload photos that I don't want distributed widely to iCloud. I figure if I do that I'm just asking for whatever happens.

Then I hope you backup your phone locally, and realise that if you have a house fire you may lose all your photos and other data. Which if you are a parent with photos of the kids would be adding one tragedy to another.

Or maybe he encrypts shiat he considers to be too sensitive himself before handing it over to someone else for safekeeping?
At least that's why I have huge unencrypted backups for most stuff, but also a small encrypted one for more sensitive crap or why client data goes to an encrypted partition.
That definitely doesn't mean I wouldn't be angry should the family Christmas pictures from the unencrypted backup end up on the web or that I deserve it or couldn't have valid complaints against a backup service. But I, personally(!), would consider it a low enough risk because of lack of interest by others and someone looking at them being not big enough of deal to not trust some reputable service provider to keep them reasonably safe.
Basically expected value of damage = probability * damage and then it's up to each person to decide what they want or can afford to risk.


For example, normal family pics could go to icloud or whatever, but since I'm not an exhibitionist, you bet that personal sex pics would join banking info and whatnot in an encrypted-by-me backup - if I were to backup those at all.
Conversely I don't keep piles of cash under my mattress and don't really care if someone at the bank looks at my bills or if the bank or their insurance gives me replacements instead of the exact bills I gave them should some of them "leak" during a robbery.

Speaking of family pics: I guess your advice to your 14-year-old would be "Sure, go ahead, make sex tapes and send them to your true love of two weeks; it's not your fault if they end up being passed around the entire school and the ones doing it would be criminals and probably even prosecuted for CP. With everyone in agreement that this isn't your fault, why could you possibly mind this happening? Someone worried about your potential suffering recommending against making those or uploading them to someone else's computer is just a puritan victim blamer trying to control you sexuality."

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Zapotek]

The examples I gave ware successful in demonstrating a high-risk situation vs a low risk one, and that adults should be able to assess these sorts of situations properly.

Nowhere did I suggest that people be IT professionals, as it's not about the cloud nor any other intricate technicality, but I simply stated that you should flat out not create documents of any sort that can be damaging to your image, if that image is important to you. Someone hacking your account, someone stealing your phone or laptop, you forgetting your phone at a park bench, you accidentally sending them to the wrong person and a myriad of other reasons should discourage you from putting yourself at risk without any real benefits. Those people have spectacularly failed at that, so part of the blame goes to them, as well as to the people who violated their privacy, if we want to be realistic.

You called them hapless, you accounted them no responsibility, essentially treating them as non-people. Is that really the right way to treat healthy adults?

Finally, your post makes it sound like I'm on some sort of a crusade against them or as if I were defending the people who both broke valid laws and violated someone else's privacy, which I absolutely did not. Your excessive defensiveness and offensiveness stems from your own issues man, don't put that on me.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[narcc]

Then when is the appropriate time to raise it?

Did you miss it? He said:

But the time for that is before the crime

You even quoted it.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[narcc]

Why do you want to put so much responsibility on the victims?

Are you a criminal?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if you allocate them a percentage of blame, you must therefore reduce the blame from the criminal.

What's with the certain influx of people who treat blame like physical widgets? No, blame is only vaguely quantifiable, and it's most certainly not zero sum.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Cowards blame victims.

Cowards argue with straw men. No matter how much you try to make it so, giving advice on how to avoid being a victim is not blaming the victim.

In the spirit of ending all posts in this thread with ad hominem attacks, I'd like to propose that maybe you have a vested interest in there being more naive victims of easily prevented crimes. Are you perhaps a criminal?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[CaptainDork]

Wrong-think.

If nude photos aren't protected, how about a law firm's documents in a $138 million dollar lawsuit?

How about military secrets?

How about your bank account?

Dumfucks like you miss the point entirely.

The Internet is broken. The answer isn't to quit using it, as you suggest ... the answer is to fix it.

It will be fixed eventually, but certainly not by dumfucks like you.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[denzacar]

"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist.

No it does not.

You are conflating responsibility, blame and fault into one and single thing. Which is not the case.
That is why a statutory rape charge is not a possible charge if both persons who are engaged in consensual sex are adults.

Responsibility means that one is responsible for one's own actions.
And yes, if one's actions endanger others they ARE responsible for the results of those actions.
Like someone going out to sea in a storm, falling overboard and causing millions in damage to haul their ass out of the water.

The fault is not implied in one's responsibility, but in the results of their actions for which they are responsible.
In the case of pictures and reddit and the deletes, celebrities have a responsibility to act like responsible adults.
Responsible adults don't leave their naked pictures online. Period.

BUT!
The burden of their fault there is suffered solely by their reputation and their "good name".
Which is why they are making demands on account of this being "a copyright issue" and not something else, like invasion of privacy.

The responsibility for breaking into their accounts and taking and sharing those photos on the other hand belongs solely to those who did the breaking in/stealing/sharing.
And so does the fault. For every one of those acts.

The responsibility for them being ABLE to do that rests on the host service which the celebrities in this case were using.

Same as the responsibility of reddit for providing their users with tools and ability to share those images.
After all, if there was no responsibility there, celebs would have no one to ask to pull down those photos, but the people who actively share them on reddit.

And, we are back to celebs and their responsibility for demanding that reddit removes those images - causing reddit to remove entire subreddits, thus encroaching on freedom of speech of EVERYONE using those subreddits.
More responsibility and more fault for both.

There are various responsibilities, various faults and none of them are a zero sum game.
Some are a matter for the legal courts to determine the blame, some are judged in the court of public opinion, some will not be judged at all.
But there is plenty of responsibility and fault to go around.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

.... can't live with the fact that girls are human beings with sexuality ...

Then you are the exception. We all accept that some unnamed schoolgirls aren't dumb virgins. Very few people accept that schoolgirls they see every week also don't want to be dumb virgins.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[denzacar]

in which copying IS stealing in some contexts whether you think it's right or wrong

No, it's not.
It's copyright infringement.

Unless you're talking about trade secrets.
Which is again not stealing. It might be trademark or patent infringement though.

Calling any of that stealing is like calling drawing blood, or any other easily renewable bodily fluid, murder.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Krishnoid]

Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.

Yes, yes, I know, but it is difficult to find a job when I'm not in the country entirely legally, and have a wife and eight children to feed. Nevertheless, I do very much appreciate your concern and advice.

-- Apu Nahasapeemapetilon

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[gnasher719]

Is it wrong to cite the bad choices that a rape victim may have made, in a specific circumstance, like getting blackout-drunk in a semi-private party while surrounded by people that the victim might not know very well, when the nature gathering itself has helped whip up those in attendance into a higher state of sexual interest?

A rapist is a rapist. A rapist might make a decision which victim to choose and the actual victim acting differently might have made the rapist choose a different victim, but it was the rapist's decision to rape. And what kind of sicko wants sex with a "blackout-drunk" woman? If that's what you want, why not invest in a blow-up doll?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit a nerve, I see.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[NotSanguine]

You seem to have a propensity to call people with whom you disagree names instead of arguing your case. A joke comes to mind: Woman dancing with her date: "Do you like to dance?" Man: "Yes, very!" Woman: "Then why don't you learn how?"

I don't necessarily disagree with OP's general point. It is important to be aware of your surroundings, and it is a good idea to keep your personal safety in mind -- unless you have a personal bodyguard, no one else will. However, I did take exception to OP's bigoted comment ("Don't show your white ass in the ghetto if you're allergic to fists, blades or bullets."), so I called him/her on it. No hidden agenda or ad hominem at all. If OP doesn't want to be considered a bigoted jerk, a good start would be not to make bigoted comments.

I'm curious. You say, "You seem to have a propensity to call people with whom you disagree names instead of arguing your case." Please provide examples. I frequently post as me, so if I have such a propensity, it shouldn't be too hard to show. I disagree with your assessment. The body of my posts is my evidence. Prove me wrong. How's that for name calling, friend? Have a nice day.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[reikae]

I'm a dreamer too, but absolutely secure yet seamlessly usable remote storage seems as likely as peace on Earth and goodwill towards everyone.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Noah Haders]

what about copying someones private diary. or confidential information.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[reikae]

Is it wrong to cite the bad choices that a rape victim may have made, in a specific circumstance, like getting blackout-drunk in a semi-private party while surrounded by people that the victim might not know very well, when the nature gathering itself has helped whip up those in attendance into a higher state of sexual interest?

 
I think it's definitely wrong when talking to or about a specific victim. They feel horrible enough already.
 
On the other hand, such talk probably has a useful place in rape (or violence in general) prevention education, for example. The advice can do good only when given in advance.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[reikae]

I agree with the moral bit, but what about insurance? My stolen bike wouldn't have been covered if I hadn't presented all three keys as rudimentary proof that the bike was locked. (The key wouldn't come out while the lock was open.)

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[reikae]

I don't think there's anything wrong with being a slut either. I do think making promises of faithfulness to one's partner(s) and then breaking them is wrong (mutually renegotiating the rules is fine of course).

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Wootery]

It's not like they actively did so. It's simply an online backup

An online backup tool - that they willingly installed - did the transfer. Anyone that uses such programs should really keep in mind what such a program does.

Granted, cloud-backup providers are acting irresponsibly in failing to express the risks of using their system.

blaming the victims is just wrong

Indeed, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to say the victims failed to take sensible basic steps to protect themselves.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... nothing wrong with HPV, HSV, fatherless children, deformed children, cervical cancer, empty relationships...

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

> Quite frankly - if someone is getting shot every year, I would have no problem telling him he's probably not making the best choices.

Hey now, who could've predicted that a little girl wouldn't be able to control an Uzi in full-auto?

I mean, fault is binary. Yes/no. It's not like you can be a little bit at fault and someone else can be a lot at fault or that it can be divided up so that someone did something stupid and another person did something heinous.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, dork, but if you're gonna go around calling people "dumfucks" [sic] then perhaps you should spell it correctly, dumb fuck.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like an American high school?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

..an online backup that backs up to the cloud. ignorance is bliss.

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Celeb nudes are valuable IP... Worth lots of money. Thousands of people are trying to get them. Why would you save that in a "cheap public iCloud locker".. It's known iCloud gets broken into from celeb leaks.. It's like leaving the pictures in an envelope on your dashboard at the mall.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[MacDork]

Stealing is wrong no matter the context.

Except when it applies to a Law Enforcement Backdoor, right? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear... right?

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Except celebrities should know that iCloud is not a SECURE PLACE to store $10k worth of pictures. Technically it's illegal to open the mailbox in from of my house unless you're the mailman. That doesn't mean I should put my solid gold bricks in there!

Putting celebrity nudes on iCloud might as well be the lockers at the train station.. Somebody is GOING to wait you out to snatch them. They're worth $10k's lock them up like they're fancy jewelry or car keys kids!!!

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[TWX]

Nevertheless, women are raped at parties where they're blackout-drunk. To me, the solution is to not get drunk to the point that one loses all control of one's faculties.

Compare to this current debate. If naked pictures are being stolen from technology that is beyond the understanding and control of the user, don't take naked pictures with technology that's beyond the understanding and control of the user.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[TWX]

I think it's definitely wrong when talking to or about a specific victim. They feel horrible enough already.

On the other hand, such talk probably has a useful place in rape (or violence in general) prevention education, for example. The advice can do good only when given in advance.

That's exactly the point that I, and others who feel the same as I do, are trying to make. There's nothing we can do for the current crop of victims. What we can do is to point out how bloody stupid their actions were, and how others need to not follow these same actions if they don't want to find themselves in this exact same situation.

The women featured in these leaks are already massively publicly famous. This isn't slut-shaming someone unknown, dragging them into the limelight. This is pointing out how the high and mighty have unwittingly assisted in bringing themselves down, and how conditions that they never thought of have led to this.

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a born victim, and a self entitled one at that. Enjoy being victimized your entire life and keep telling yourself it isn't your fault.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, blaming the victims is just wrong.

There is a significant flaw in this reasoning. Responsibility is not unidimensional. If responsibility was always unidimensional then victim blaming would always be wrong. However, because we have multiple agents capable of making decisions this creates a situation in which responsibility is multi-dimensional. Consider an incident from my teenage years.

I went to the grocery market one evening. I was trying to purchase ground beef. There was no ground beef on the shelf. I asked the deli clerk if it was possible to get some. She informed me that she'd have to go in the back and make some. After a few minutes of waiting, I heard some screaming coming from the back room. She came out of the door screaming with her hand bleeding. She had just cut off part of her finger. I felt awful. I had done nothing wrong. However, it was because of my request that she had lopped off part of her finger. Thus, my choice was responsible, to some extent, of this happening.

The situation of the photos is like this in reverse. The perpetrator was responsible. He bears 100% of the ethical responsibility for his actions. However, it might be the case that we can expect the celebrities to bear some responsibility. Were they aware that nothing on the Internet is secure and that their photos were being store on a server connected to the Internet? If so, then they can bear some of the "practical" responsibility while bearing none of the ethical responsibility.

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

If you strap on a couple of steaks and walk into a lion's den, sure, you can blame the lion for mauling the person, but you can damn well consider laying a tiny bit of blame on the victim.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Puritanical American blaming the victims. It's the same argument as telling rape victims they shouldn't have worn short skirts.

Hogwash. If that were the case then the inventors of passwords would be "victim blamers."

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Continuing with that logic it's up to society to educate internet users on the importance of not putting nude photos on internet connected devices. What have you done to help except continuously use the wrong "their" word?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

A victim may well have been unwise in various ways. That does not make them in the slightest bit to blame. Because if you allocate them a percentage of blame, you must therefore reduce the blame from the criminal. And the criminal's blame is 100% - only they chose to to the crime - no one made them.

The victim is not responsible for the crime. That rests entirely on the criminal. The victim is responsible for raising the level of risk if done so knowingly.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[anarcobra]

The word you're looking for is right there in the sentence you wrote. It's copying, not something else. Unless you deprive them of the diary or information, it's not stealing. If I sneak into your garage and copy your car, have I stolen it?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist. So there's a logical fault there.

There is an additional independent responsibility in play. This responsibility raised the level of risk. Thus, there is no logical fault in TWX's response.

But the time for that is before the crime, and the people to do that to are people that are in danger.

People do this, and they still have the "stop blaming the victim" leveled against them. See the backlash to the nail polish designed to detect the date rape drug. Countless feminist article were printed that, while well meaning, the creators were still blaming the victim.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Noah Haders]

This argument is retarded and so are you.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[pete6677]

It's called being a realist, you moron. Reality isn't always pretty, or politically correct.

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

No, and I also carry a gun.

There is a fundamental difference in worldview that isn't easy to reconcile. People can hand wave "blaming the victim", but when you are a minnow in a tank of sharks, it is your responsibility to do your best to not get eaten.

There is a world of muggers, thieves, etc out there. This isn't news, and really isn't something that can be changed. It has been there since the beginning of mankind and in other species as well. It is one's responsibility to reduce their chance of being victims of any kind of others. The internet and cameras attached to it never have been secure, it has happened before and many times before.

So I really can't think why these people shouldn't share the responsibility. Maybe it is tough to understand because I don't take sexpics and post them places that the sharks can get to them.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[goose-incarnated]

"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist. So there's a logical fault there.

[snipped]

You know it would be less risky if I didn't carry cash in my wallet. But that doesn't make me even slightly responsible or to blame if I get mugged.

How the hell did this get modded insightful? No one is victim blaming - if a girl gets blackout-drunk at a private party with people she doesn't know very well then she isn't guilty of being raped, she's guilty of being stupid. The rapist still get's 100% "at fault" for rape. The victim get's $SOME% "at fault" for being stupid.

You're making a silly claim - that people should be absolved of all responsibility even when they take risks. Sorry, no. While the criminal is still 100% to be blamed for the crime, that doesn't prevent us from saying "what a stupid twit " for the victim taking unnecessary risks.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[goose-incarnated]

There is not the slightest bit of emotion in my argument. It's perfectly rational. The criminal is 100% responsible for the crimes they chose to commit. And thus there in no percentage points available for allocating to the victim.

There is nothing rational in your argument. We can (and do, as a matter of fact) call the criminal 100% guilty of the crime and call the victim $X% guilty of stupidity. This in no way endorses the crime, as you seem to think, especially in the case of rape.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

The hacker used just 500 passwords against the accounts. The passwords were incredibly weak. That is precisely why the accounts were able to be hacked.

How would you feel if you found out Bill Gates had had $1B stolen from an online account because he'd used the password billy1 to safeguard that money? Of course the theft would have been wrong. But the Bill's poor planning would have played a large role in the heist.

Is that also blaming the victim?

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You're attempting to out of the your statement after being identified as a sexist, Calvinist pig. It won't work. Change your thinking and stop victim blaming.

You have the privilege of being a highly educated computer scientist with years upon years of specialized knowledge about distributed infrastructure, networks, infosec, and similar topics.

You have the audacity to assume these victims have the same knowledge? They put their trust into a system they didn't take a large percentage of their life to comprehend.

Do you do the same for vaccines, drug treatment, and the like? Surely we should blame you for basic histocompatibility mismatch when you get your next failed organ transplant.

Oh, but there are trained specialists to help. Unlike tech, where we throw mom, pop, the kids, grandma and grandpa to the wolves on a daily basis. Because we don't care as long as we get their dollar.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing. And you've already allocated 100% of the "at fault" to the rapist. So there's a logical fault there.

No, it's just a lack of understanding on your part.

You are 100% responsible for the actions you take, or choose not to take.
The criminal is 100% responsible for the actions he/she takes.

So it's perfectly logical for me to state that while the perpetrator is 100% responsible for doing something bad, you are also partially responsible for intentionally and willfully refusing to take any measures to prevent it. You are advocating what self-defense instructors would term the "Victim Mentality". If you don't want to become a victim, then stop waiting for every bad person on the planet to go away, and take proactive steps to protect yourself.

Telling people not to trust online backup services is not blaming them, it's warning them. Telling them not to believe Apple (and others) who claim things are secure, is not blaming them, it's warning them. Stop being an easy target. Stop being weak. Take some responsibility for your own safety and security, be Strong.
Especially if you're a smoking hot Celebrity babe that has every horny guy in the world drooling over you.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[lister king of smeg]

How would you feel if you found out Bill Gates had had $1B stolen from an online account because he'd used the password billy1 to safeguard that money?

I would laugh my ass off then wish I had tried it first.

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill yourself. Now.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, the solution is to not get drunk to the point that one loses all control of one's faculties.

Actually, a lot of those rapists are sober and know exactly what they're doing.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

But you may not download, upload my photos anywhere! You shall not hack my account! Regardless if it is my private PC at home or my cloud storage!

What about telling those people who get shot every year not to stand in front of a killer wiht a gun?

Yes, these are absolutely true statements, and yes, I would advise people not to stand in front of a killer with a gun.

It's a question of risk management. You know computers are hackable and that any stored or transmitted data is open to theft. It's proven by a dozen major data breaches each year. You have to evaluate whether the damage, horror, and shame associated with losing each particular bit of data is greater than the pleasure of having that data and your confidence in its security. Like taking nude pictures of yourself? Fine. I recommend you not tape them to your front door, lest someone steal them. I recommend you not hang them in your living room, lest a houseguest take a picture (copy) them. I recommend you not store them in the cloud. I recommend you be especially careful that your camera not get stolen.

Likewise, if you're out walking, no one has the right to shoot you, and no one has the right to take your cash. Nevertheless, I recommend you choose not to walk down dark alleys in south Detroit. I recommend you not accost groups of young men wearing red bandanas and playing loud music on the corner. I recommend you not pin $100 bills to your suit.

You are fully within your rights to do these things. The people who violate your property rights are clearly in the wrong, have generally committed crimes, and should be villified. Unfortunately, we live in a world with free will, where people can (and do) choose to violate both your sense of morality and the law. Words written on a page will not protect you from those people, so it is in your best interest to take appropriate preventative measures on your own initiative.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[LordLimecat]

If your goal is to prevent someone you love from getting into that situation, recommending that they not wear a short skirt and walk through a bad part of the city at night wouldnt be "blaming the victim". It would be pointing out that there are unwise things you can do that are liable to get you into trouble.

Blame isnt this binary thing where only one person can have done something wrong. If I walk through the Bronx in expensive close flashing a wallet full of money, I havent done anything illegal or wrong, but Im going to get mugged and a small part of the fault lies with me for making bad choices. That doesnt mean the mugger isnt at fault, just that I bear a little responsibility for making poor choices.

So, you can live in a fantasy world and pretend that anything you do thats legal, you should be able to do. Or, you can engage with reality and realize that some things that you do will create problems for you.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[LordLimecat]

I have a desire to walk through the bronx wearing the Matthew Lasko suit, wearing a rolex, and flashing hundred dollar bills. Its not MY fault if I get mugged!

Well, I guess it depends how you define fault, but it IS really dumb...

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[LordLimecat]

I think between Reddit and Slashdot Im developing a severe allergy to political correctness.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Zapotek]

Did you just call me politically correct? You've gone too far mate...

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

How about telling those celeb sluts to stop taking naughty selfies, or at least not uploading them all to The Cloud (tm)?

Overreaction.

i fully agree that uploadin nude pictures to the cloud is a bad idea but while they should have exercised more security precautions that doesn't mean they deserved to be stolen from. The guy who did this not only stole thepictures but also used the pictures as a random to get money from the collective internet. People threw money into his bitcoin wallet to get the picture released and that's not ok.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't win this kind of argument because you are totally fucking wrong about it.

Parent post has great point: choosing to behave defensively will net you a better chance at a life without those things. Advice ranging from "don't go dangerous places alone in provocative dress" to "don't upload pictures of yourself to Apple's whatever" is GOOD FUCKING ADVICE, whether or not you want to claim it's "victim blaming" and be offended that someone might offer you or others a piece of pragmatic advice to live in the real world, instead of assuming that society can, in this one particular way, suddenly preemptively solve 100% of everything ahead of time, and raging when that can't happen.

It's a cute meme for people who want to be angry about stuff, and it's pretty sad because you can't say common sense things because now you are "blaming the victim". Well, no. But pretending that the victim had no fucking agency is wrong too.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[meta-monkey]

I was a little surprised at how butthurt redditors got over this issue. First, the reddit admins made the decisions they did to ban the things they did for legal, not moral reasons. It's illegal to distribute somebody else's copyrighted pictures, some of which qualify as CP. They must honor DMCA takedown notices, which they were receiving from the celebs' lawyers or else they lose safe harbor protection and open themselves up to being sued by said celebs' lawyers. This is a no-brainer.

Morally, it is wrong to break into somebody's account, to copy their private photos, to distribute them, posses, or look at them. Using the word "morally" is usually tricky because different people have different moral standards. That said, I don't know of any moral framework that permits such behavior. Golden rule? Nope. Any religious moral standard? Nope. Kant's categorical imperative? Nope. Not even utilitarianism because it doesn't maximize the good for all involved. There's basically no way to say that it's not wrong to distribute these pictures.

Yet, the reddit groupthink is completely butthurt over the reddit admins refusal to let them use reddit as a platform to conduct illegal and immoral acts. And it's easy to see this is the predominate view on reddit. Just go to the threads the admins made about their decisions. All the top rated comments are opposed to the admins' stance. I posted in agreement with the admins and was downvoted into oblivion. And yet redditors pretend to be these enlightened liberals. They love wagging their fingers at racists or sexists or capitalists or hypocritical Christians or US foreign policy or the NSA scandals. Hell, they're opposed to the NSA's activities because of privacy concerns, yet they gleefully invade the privacy of the victims of these break-ins.

And you would think when told "no you can't do this," they might say "aww shucks" and be chagrined at being called out for their shiteous behavior, or at least shut their traps and slink away to trade the photos on bittorrent instead. But no, they're vocally butthurt, angry at the reddit admins, that their "free speech" is being infringed upon, because they're not free to invade someone else's privacy. What the fuck? It's like a peeping Tom, busted, screaming at the cops because "I have every right to hide in the bushes and peep through somebody else's windows!" No. Not only is it morally wrong to peep on somebody else, but it's illegal to be in their bushes! There's no legal or moral justification for their behavior and they're angry at being called out about it! What the hell?!

I'm just kind of stunned. While I didn't think redditors would be paragons of virtue, I thought they at least had some common decency. Apparently not.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Slashdot Parent]

Don't wanna be strangled? Don't have a neck. Don't want your car stolen? Don't own a car. Stealing is wrong no matter the context.

So you're right, I don't want my car stolen. And while I understand the point that you are making, I absolutely do take precautions to mitigate my risk of auto theft, and I bet you do too. I don't park my car on the street in certain parts of town, for instance. Neither do I leave my keys inside nor leave the doors unlocked nor leave my bike racks on it. Do you do the same, or similar? I bet you do, and if not, then you should.

In an ideal world, such precautions would be ludicrous. Why should I have to pay attention to where I park my car or whether or not I lock the doors? Stealing is wrong, goddamnit, and nobody should do it! But, it seems people do steal, even though it is wrong.

We don't live in an ideal world, so we have to deal with the world where we do live. And that means taking some steps to manage our risk of suffering criminal acts against us. The victim is not at fault, of course, but being not-at-fault doesn't take away the pain of having been victimized.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"Intellectual property" is called property for a reason -- it is protected by legislation from copying, which is akin to stealing. You are stealing potential wealth from people who may chose to sell copies.

That's why it is called property: because taking it (via copy) is stealing, thabks to legislation. Do not devolve into semantics. because it "works around" the word "stealing".

There is no point there you are trying to make.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[NotSanguine]

It's called being a realist, you moron. Reality isn't always pretty, or politically correct.

Reality? If you actually viewed the world as it is, rather than how you think it is, you'd realize that each individual makes their own choices, and each individual should be judged independently of every other individual. Judging whole groups of people based on their skin color, socioeconomic status or other characteristic is self-deception at best and bigotry at worst.

Since you likely grew up in a lily white suburb, all you know about "the ghetto" comes from rap lyrics and news reports, you likely have a very skewed idea about it. What is more, by adjudging an entire group rather than dealing with individuals as individuals, you show yourself to be quite the bigot yourself.

tl;dr, You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[angel'o'sphere]

You will hardly find a city/region in Europe where you can not walk around like that.
On the other hand, that was not the point. The point is, mobile phones automatically put back ups into the cloud, you have explicitly to deactivate that. The other point is, in a free country I should be allowed to do what I want. Unless I harm someone else. Blaming the victim, for what ever, makes no sense in a free country. Oh, you are not in a free country, but you simply don't grasp how many freedoms you miss! :)

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

With some other type of phone, the technicalities of backup would involve installing an app that backs up in the manner of your choosing, such as an app that automatically backs up locally to your Time Capsule. Unfortunately, on iOS, automatic local backup support is a feature that only Apple can provide, because the sandboxing policies generally prevent third parties from accessing files owned by other apps.

With that said, describing iOS as an "arcane, restricted POS" is an unfair characterization. I understand why Apple designed things the way that they did, and those limitations are basically a good thing for 99% of apps. They just need to add an appropriate entitlement to make it possible to create utility apps that can't realistically live within those sandboxing limitations.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[dgatwood]

IMO, it's 33% of a roughly 3x larger pie.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Since feminists and the politically correct have taken over, one is responsible for one's choices (as well as, apparently, all previous evil in the world since the dawn of time) only when guilty of being a:

1) white
2) cis
3) hetero

shitlord.

*MIC DROP*

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[denzacar]

copying someones private diary

Copying.

confidential information

Copying confidential information? Or just reading it?
Copying a single copy is unauthorized copying. Sharing it would be copyright infringement.

The confidential part just adds possible unauthorized access if done without consent of the (living) person to whom the information belongs.
Not necessarily though.

Copyright and confidentiality of information don't necessarily belong to a same person.
And some confidential info can not be copyrighted - like PINs, passwords, various identifying names and numbers, medical records...

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Blame isnt this binary thing where only one person can have done something wrong.

Didn't say it was. I simply said that you can't go greater than 100% on blame. And the criminals already have 100%. There may be multiple criminals n which case multiple people get blame.

I havent done anything illegal or wrong, but Im going to get mugged and a small part of the fault lies with me for making bad choices.

So you're using a mighty strange definition of fault that doesn't include illegal or wrong. This misuse of language goes back to childhood, so can be difficult to shift.

So, you can live in a fantasy world and pretend that anything you do thats legal, you should be able to do.

No, I live in a world where if you don't do something illegal or immoral, then you are not at fault. I'd hate to live in your world if it works differently.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Since for ever. If I chose coffee rather than tea, it's not a case of responsibility. I don't have to answer to anyone for it. There is no right or wrong.

For sure some choices do include responsibility. In this case the choice of the criminal to do the crime.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

You are conflating responsibility, blame and fault into one and single thing.

I'm afraid you're miscomprehending. In computer terms you're confusing the if statement with the contents of the optional block. Saying responsibility implies fault if you do the wrong thing is NOT saying responsibility = fault. I did not say they were a single thing.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

Insurance companies are no different from bookmakers. They accept bets. And via the insurance contract they get to set the rules by which the bets are settled. Their rules and morality are not at all in line.

That particular angle you described is bizarre though. If you'd left the lock at home, or had it in your backpack, you could remove the key and show them. Or you could simply buy another lock to get the keys. It sounds like it's simply a matter of trying to make it more of a pain in the ass to claim.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

An online backup tool - that they willingly installed - did the transfer.

No they didn't. It's built into the OS. It's asked about when first setting up the phone, but you can't blame people for following the recommended options. Most people are not geeks and don't know the implications of everything they do, and should be able to rely on the recommended options from a reputable company. Indeed, despite this news story backing up *IS* the best thing.

Indeed, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to say the victims failed to take sensible basic steps to protect themselves.

It's a nuanced thing. Doing so at the time of the news of the crime in 99% of cases comes across as blaming the victim, and most of those cases, intentionally so. It's no different from saying a rape victim shouldn't have worn a short skirt. And I would hope you wouldn't do that.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

No one is victim blaming - if a girl gets blackout-drunk at a private party with people she doesn't know very well then she isn't guilty of being raped, she's guilty of being stupid.

You blamed the victim right there. You THINK the distinction you make makes it OK, but it doesn't. Even if she were stupid, IQ is not morality. You aren't a better person for being clever and a worse person for being stupid. There is no guilt on the victim here. You are just wrong.

Tell me, in your opinion would she still be guilty of stupidity if she went to a party and wasn't raped? What penalty should she pay for this guilt of stupidity where no one was hurt and everyone had a great time?

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[BasilBrush]

If you do, then you are the stupid one.

Reasons in the other post.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[david_thornley]

"Intellectual Property" is called property for a reason - it confuses the issue and makes illegitimate copying look more like stealing. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, and is covered under the appropriate laws, which are not the laws that cover stealing. By legislation, copyright infringement is not stealing. It is sometimes referred to as such, but it misses an important feature of theft: it does not deprive the legitimate owner of anything.

I can "steal" potential wealth by giving something a bad review. That isn't illegal. There's no material difference to the copyright owner whether Joe makes an illegal copy rather than buy one, or tells Fred it's crap and dissuades him from buying a copy.

I'm not condoning copyright infringement, but you are (a) confusing things that should not be confused, including the law, and (b) weakening the arguments against copyright infringements in much the same way that "Reefer Madness" weakened arguments against use of illegal drugs.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[david_thornley]

You understand the issues, and have decided which photos you want on iCloud. That's good. Not everybody understands the issues or the technology. No cloud provider that I've noticed explains these in simple terms before allowing cloud storage. Celebrities, by and large, aren't tech-savvy, and use what stuff they've bought in ways appropriate to how they think it works.

In other words, they took nude selfies, and did what seemed reasonable with them, believing there was adequate security in the services provided.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[reikae]

Just to clarify about the lock, it was welded to the bike's frame. It might have been possible to get extra copies of the key made though, but that seems like insurance fraud. (IANAL)

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[pete6677]

It is YOU who grew up in a lilly white suburb. All you know about minorities was spoonfed to you by liberal publications. You likely rebelled against your conservative parents and embraced all things liberal. I on the other hand grew up in numerous different places, and know that reality is often not politically correct.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[NotSanguine]

It is YOU who grew up in a lilly white suburb. All you know about minorities was spoonfed to you by liberal publications. You likely rebelled against your conservative parents and embraced all things liberal. I on the other hand grew up in numerous different places, and know that reality is often not politically correct.

I grew up in NYC in the 1970s, bud. We had a street gang who made my block their home (along with all the others in my neighborhood). My elementary and junior high schools were at least 65% minorities. You have no idea what you're talking about, boy. And I do emphasize the word boy.

Forget political correctness -- people should be judged on their individual actions, not on some arbitrary characteristic such as socio-economic status, the location of their home, or their skin color. That's not political correctness, that's maturity and personal responsibility.

Yes, I know you're a troll, and you failed to get a rise out of me. Please, carry on.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[LordLimecat]

So you're using a mighty strange definition of fault that doesn't include illegal or wrong.

Im using the definition of "fault" that means "contributed to the result of", or more simply "responsibility". Your bad decision contributes to the result that you got mugged; had you not made that decision, the mugging would likely not have happened.

You seem to be confusing "was immoral" and "at fault". You can share some degree of fault by provoking-- intentionally or not-- a crime. You share a very small part of that fault (as you werent the one committing the crime), but you do share some degree of responsibility.

No, I live in a world where if you don't do something illegal or immoral, then you are not at fault

Then you live in a fantasy world. Entrapment is illegal for a reason; the provocation of a crime does not put 100% of the fault with the one committing the crime.

Re: Bah humbug censorship

[pete6677]

Actually I got quite a rise out of you, douchbag. Anyone can be anything they want on the internet, hence you are not from New York. Well, an upstate suburb perhaps.

Re:Bah humbug censorship

[denzacar]

I did not say they were a single thing.

Nor did I. I said you conflated them into a single entity, by implying the relation of one with the other.

"Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing.

And further attaching the entity of "blame" to that entity, through the reasoning presented, where you use "fault" and "blame" as if they are the same thing.

I'm afraid you're miscomprehending. In computer terms you're confusing the if statement with the contents of the optional block.

I hope that you don't talk to people in real life "in computer terms".
Someone might "allocate" a fist to your face for "allocating" something to them.

Here's a hint.
Human social life, including communication, i.e. language, is NOT computer code or algorithms.
It's more closely related to metadata.

That is why statements like

"I <3 apples"

and

"I <3 Apples"

instantly evoke VERY different images and emotions, despite identical letters and pronunciation.
There is hidden metadata.

Same way, because someone along the way attached the "i" metadata to one of those, the i-Product_Name is automatically understood with only one of those statements.
Someone spent a lot of money and time to establish such a metadata relationship.
A conflation of Apple with i-Product_Name.

Which is the same thing you did, when you've established through your reasoning of "Responsibility" implies that you are at fault if you don't do a thing.", and further talk of "allocating" fault, but deallocating "blame".
You've conflated or bundled the issues of "responsibility", "fault" and "blame" into a single issue.

The compiler built into the human brain does not throw errors when you fail to define a variable before use - it guesses and attaches "like to like".
Which is why you can talk about "fault" and interchange it for "blame" later on, without noticing the problem that causes.
I.e. You conflate them into a single idea.

Which is NOT the greatest of your errors. The idea of it all being a zero sum game is.
Your "100% or less allocation" is a faulty way of thinking about the issues at hand.
Metadata relation is not quantity-dependent. It's relation-dependent.

Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[SternisheFan]

From the link below...

Yishan Wong, the chief executive officer of Reddit, has tried to explain why the site has not banned certain subreddits (sections of the website where users share items connected to a specific topic) despite banning the subreddit which contained the stolen pictures of nude celebrities.

In a Reddit thread under the title “Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul” [sic], Mr Wong wrote: “I did not say ‘we won’t ban any subreddits ever’. I said that we don’t ban subreddits for being morally bad. We do ban subreddits for breaking our rules, and one of them is repeatedly and primarily being a place where people post copyrighted material for which valid DMCA requests are being received.”

Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being “morally bad” but will if they break any laws or any of the website’s own rules.

http://i100.independent.co.uk/...

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC because I'm sure my karma will go to Hell in a handbasket on this.

Here in the US, celebrities are the fickle royalty of this country. They do something wrong, and get angry at a target, they have a lot of power, almost as much as a Saudi prince does in their own country. From shutting a business down via lawyers to sending goons for a physical "tune-up" of people they don't like.

Reddit did this as a way to ensure they have servers still in place Monday. It wouldn't be hard for a celeb to have Reddit shut down (there are offshore firms who can send DMCA takedown notices by the hundreds of thousands in a day), and the owners jailed.

It is unfortunate, but might makes right in the world today (has it actually been different is debatable), and some starlet can make people disappear permanently.

TL;DR, Reddit did the right thing, since it was either do this or get shut down.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being “morally bad”

That is a lie, and you know it. You should bad for trying to trick us with such an obvious lie. Reddit has always been about hard-core censorship. They're a $6.5 billion dollar company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications). They even have their own building at 4 Times Square in New York City for fucks sake. How can you claim that isn't your typical big corporation?

They constantly shut down subreddits because the corporate rulers there do not understand jokes or sarcasm. Nearly half of the subreddits I'm subscribed to have been banned. Things like one for men to complain about women are banned by that corporation. There were no pictures there or other copyright problems so your lie that it was because we broke the law is an absolute and utter lie. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Reddit is all about censorship. For fucks sake they even have a system where every single user can censor posts by voting them down. Their censorship system hides posts if more than four people disagree with you. It's impossible to publicly express dissenting liberal opinions on that site. That site is the most 1984 site on the entire Internet.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[haruchai]

"almost as much as a Saudi prince does in their own country" - NOT ......EVEN.....CLOSE

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then explain why a few weeks ago they were shadowbanning (an admin only power) people left and right just for mentioning Zoe Quinn?

Reddit has a history of banning low subscriber or politically incorrect but lawful subs that rub the admins the wrong way while looking the other way pet subs that cater to extreme left politics (SRS) that essentially lead downvote raids against the rules. Just most of those subs don't have the subscriber count to make noise.

Lastly, when they do ban subs, even if it has been operating for, say, 5 years, everything is lost. Past submissions, posts etc. You can look up in your own history your posts, but there were some really interesting submissions and discussion (happens in the smaller communities that disallow low quality posts)? Poof, sub is hidden forever, good luck finding it.

That's the biggest reason reddit sucks.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

From the link below...

Yishan Wong, the chief executive officer of Reddit, has tried to explain why the site has not banned certain subreddits (sections of the website where users share items connected to a specific topic) despite banning the subreddit which contained the stolen pictures of nude celebrities.

In a Reddit thread under the title “Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul” [sic], Mr Wong wrote: “I did not say ‘we won’t ban any subreddits ever’. I said that we don’t ban subreddits for being morally bad. We do ban subreddits for breaking our rules, and one of them is repeatedly and primarily being a place where people post copyrighted material for which valid DMCA requests are being received.”

Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being “morally bad” but will if they break any laws or any of the website’s own rules.

http://i100.independent.co.uk/...

This seems just a little disingenuous, considering the content of some subreddits that still exist. For instance:

Racism

There are hundreds of subreddits that are racist in tone and content. Many use the N-word in their titles or draw comparisons between black people and apes. One discusses the riots in Ferguson, which it describes as “ChimpOut 2014”. In another subreddit, users share video clips and images of black men who are either dead or about to die, usually in violent circumstances. Despite the subreddit combining violent images and racist terminology, it avoids being banned by not directly inciting or calling for violence.

Bestiality

Various subreddits discuss sex with animals. While the majority of these are fantasies, drawings or artwork, there are videos of people engaging in sex acts with animals or describing their personal experiences. Zoophilia is a felony in most of the US, but is only a misdemeanour in California where Reddit is based.

Animal abuse

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a subreddit exists where users shares images of injured or dead animals, not to raise awareness but as a joke and add their own pithy headline. The images range from innocent pictures of autopsies or hanging meat, to images of road kill (a dog missing its rear legs and abdomen), poaching victims (a rhino with its horn torn off) and even full-blown animal cruelty, including videos of men beating animals.

Creep shots

Reddit got into trouble in 2012 over /r/creepshots, a subreddit where users shared sexualised pictures of women they had secretly taken. While the subreddit and similar ones were taken down, clones of it still exist, the names of which we will not share.

Self-harm

One of the Reddit rules restated by Mr Wong is that “Actions which cause or are likely to cause imminent physical danger (e.g. suicides, instructions for self-harm, or specific threats)” are prohibited. Yet somehow a subreddit filled with nothing but pictures of self-harm persists.

All sorts of misogyny

If it’s misogynistic, it will eventually find itself on Reddit. For instance, there are separate subreddits dedicated to killing, beating and raping women. While the subreddit /r/beatingwomen is banned, a clone page is still active. In some cases these are either fantasies or simply users sharing porn videos of consenting adult performers, but some of the content goes beyond the pale, or links to subreddits about

Dead women

A subreddit exists where users shares pictures of dead bodies (almost all of them women) described in sexualised terms (“Morgue babes”, “fit young thing”, “gorgeous Brazilian girl with bullet wounds.”).

The images on the subreddit are either from crime scenes or accidents such as car crashes, or of bodies in

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

why the site has not banned certain subreddits

They certainly have tried banning all of the entertaining and useful subreddits. Over half of the subreddits I've subscribed to have been deleted since Reddit was consumed by Advance Publications. The site was always about censorship and letting punks vote down good posts to hide them, but after the destruction of Reddit as a company, it seems nearly everything the company does is about censorship. It's a rare week that a good subreddit isn't lost.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Bogtha]

Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being âoemorally badâ but will if they break any laws or any of the websiteâ(TM)s own rules.

Basically, they treat Reddit like DNS. Setting up a subreddit is like registering a domain name. What that domain name is used for is up to the owner. I'm sure if you asked registrars, they wouldn't feel obliged to be the moral police for people who use their services either.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Solandri]

For those who don't know how DMCA safe harbor provisions work, it protects a web site from liability if one of its users should violate copyright on it. e.g. Someone uploads a copyright movie to YouTube, and the safe harbor provision protects YouTube from being sued by the studios for copyright infringement. However, in order to qualify for the safe harbor provision, the site has to take certain measures. Most notably, they have to respond to those DMCA takedown notices within a reasonable timeframe by either taking the alleged infringing work down (and informing the user why and how to issue a challege), or with a response explaining why they're not taking it down. If they fail to do this, they become monetarily liable for the copyright infringement of their users.

Regardless of your opinion on celebrities, taking nude photos of yourself, cloud storage, porn, or hacking, this is pretty clearly a copyright violation. The copyright on the photos belong to the celebrities who took them, and they have sole, exclusive control over distribution in any country which is a signatory to the Berne Copyright Convention. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to register a copyright for a work to be copyrighted. Any copyrightable work you create is automatically copyrighted. The only thing registering does is raise the damage ceiling in a lawsuit (without registration you can only collect damages suffered; with registration the limit is $200,000 per infringed work). So Reddit may have been premature in quashing the subreddit before they got a DMCA notice, but it was inevitable they were going to get one and they would've had to quash it anyway.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit is all about censorship. For fucks sake they even have a system where every single user can censor posts by voting them down.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a radical new idea: Don't like it? Don't read it.

What a concept, huh.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Iamthecheese]

Downvoted posts are hidden by default so that's precisely what it means.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Mashiki]

Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being âoemorally badâ but will if they break any laws or any of the websiteâ(TM)s own rules.

Bullshit. Take a look at the number of subreddits that were launched on the first day when the zoe quinn and then was followed up by the mass topic deletions in gaming subreddits, which was then followed up by corruption in gaming subreddits. And you'll see that half a dozen to a dozen subreddits were outright banned because ... well no one knows. Admins simply banned them, there was no doxxing, there was no harassment in them. They were discussing the issues at hand...and bomf...deleted.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Iamthecheese]

Interesting that you would bring up misogyny but not the great amount of misandry. You even went out of your way to do so since "sexism" would have been easier to address. In any case I, for one, feel censorship is always evil. It's a slippery and well traveled slope from censoring things that make most people uncomfortable to censoring things with which the zietgeist disagrees.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[guises]

How about a British prince then? They're basically just celebrities.

I think the point he was making, a well-trodden point, is that wealthy / famous people have more privileges, including legal privileges, than normals. From the bizarre amount of attention this has gotten you'd think this was new and shocking ("What?! Pornography?! On the internet?!?!") as opposed to an everyday occurrence.

It's certainly a valid point, and it's important to keep bringing it up when something like this happens, but it isn't exactly new or insightful. I don't know why he did the stupid karma disclaimer.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Condé Nast, which is owned by Advance Publications, HIDES LIBERAL POSTS. THEY CENSOR OUR POSTS! Republicans can't defend their racist positions or their war on women so they just get petty and hide our posts. They're so stupid they think it is effect to try to take our voice. Instead, it gives us more influence like it did with occupy. When five of those Republicans vote down a post, Condé Nast rewards them by hiding our post. That is what is wrong with Reddit. It is Faux Knew's dream of a site. There are so many Republican lies spewed there that even some of the Republicans are getting uncomfortable. My last post about something I saw on MSNBC was voted down by over a thousand of those Republican morons. They don't like the truth so they hit the vote down button. They are horrible people.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

My last post about something I saw on MSNBC was voted down by over a thousand of those Republican morons.

This is kind of a funny parody of a certain type of liberal mindset, but I'm not sure if you're actually trying to be funny.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Cid Highwind]

"In a Reddit thread under the title “Every Man Is Responsible For His Own Soul” [sic], Mr Wong wrote: “I did not say ‘we won’t ban any subreddits ever’. I said that we don’t ban subreddits for being morally bad."

Mr. Wong, with all due respect (that's not much for the record). Horse. Fucking. Shit.

  If you make a rule against X (and ban X-related subreddits) but not rules against Y and Z, you're making a moral statement that Y and Z are more acceptable than X. There's just no other coherent reading of those rules. If you're trying to make a community where bestiality and racism are considered morally better than leaked celebrity nudes, that's fine - it's your site, but have the spine to fucking own it.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's taken from an article (I'm guessing, given the 'we' language and the link given, though the link refuses to display a webpage without Javascript enabled. That is a very large red flag.)

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

They were definitely premature; they don't host images, so there would be nothing to 'take down' from Reddit's servers besides speech. And we all should know there is no true freedom in that area.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

While the subreddit and similar ones were taken down, clones of it still exist, the names of which we will not share.

You complain about them not taking down these subreddit(s) but then try to keep them concealed? You do understand that they take them down by people/companies complaining about them in mass right?

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Legitimate DMCA takedown claims are now considered censorship?

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Khyber]

You wanna talk disingenuous?

http://slashdot.org/submission...

http://i.imgur.com/D2YsOFO.png

Lemme show you real Reddit disingenuity.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's just no other coherent reading of those rules.

How about actually reading them? They won't ban a subreddit based on morality, but only legality. I'm not sure how you're spinning that into morality judgments, unless this is some doublethink bullshit, where the only way to escape making a morality judgment is to...make a morality judgment.
Of course, that's just the claim, and based on some reports, they don't follow it. But we're strictly talking about their claims here.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a host I wouldn't want to tread any deeper than responding to DMCA requests because when you're not a lawyer there are a lot of things you can do without realizing you're creating liability. For example, Reddit could arguably be held liable for any illegal content on their servers now that they claim to police the legality of such content.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they received a DMCA notice they wouldn't have to quash the subreddit, only the infringing content. Since that content is not on Reddit's servers, there's not a lot Reddit could do about it. By banning the subreddit the admins have appointed themselves to be copyright police, which is their prerogative. If I were a copyright holder and found my content on Reddit I would go straight to court with the evidence that Reddit proactively removes some copyrighted material, but not mine, thereby tacitly granting approval for violating my copyright.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[sg_oneill]

SRS is awesome, and making fun of racists and sexist knuckledraggers is a pretty important service to the community. If we cant make klansman womenbeaters leave of their own voltiion, then maybe reddit isn't actually banning enough.

Heres a better proposal: Give SRS mods global admin rights.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[tgv]

Yup. Reddit's admins cannot claim a moral ground for their decision if they leave all that shit untouched, and even (shadow)ban people that criticize you for it. I've deleted my reddit account. They can circlejerk themselves without me.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you do everyone a favour and go play on the freeway or something?

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

They never tried to claim the moral high ground. In fact, they went out of their way to specifically say they weren't trying to claim the moral high ground. They banned it for legal and (to a lesser extent) technical reasons.
 
But don't let your desire for a little "internet moral outrage" get in the way of the facts.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[meta-monkey]

They banned the Fappening subreddits not because they were "morally bad" but because people were continuously posting illegal copyrighted content and, since some of the celeb nudes were taken before they were 18, CP. It's not a moral issue, it's a legal issue.

That said, I think it's pretty disgusting the way redditors have gotten their panties in a twist over this. They feel like the spirit of "free speech" has been infringed because the website won't let them illegally post somebody else's private photographs. The reddit groupthink rails against the NSA and these terrible invasions of privacy but without irony thinks it's perfectly acceptable to invade the privacy of the celebrity victims of this cracking incident. The fuck?

I would love to see Jennifer Lawrence's boobs. If she wants to post them for free, or pose for Playboy, great, I'm there. But I have not and will not look at the leaked photos because it's morally wrong to invade someone's privacy like that. It'd be wrong for somebody to take and look at my private photos, and it's wrong to take and look at her private photos.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Essentially, the company refuses to ban subreddits for being “morally bad” but will if they break any laws or any of the website’s own rules."

Laws objectively exist - morality doesnt. They take things down that can have a real legal and material affect to Reddit and leave things up that probably wont.

"Morality" is not and should not be a criteria for anything; what it is good or bad morally is completely subjective and up to individual choice and should not and cannot be dictated.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbshit - the fact that people were able to view them to down-vote them means they werent censored. Idiot.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[sundog61]

> SRS is awesome Today isn't opposite day. SRS sucks, just like every other SJW subreddit. I don't like a lot of stuff that goes on over on Reddit, but I also don't have a burning need to play internet cop, either.

Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned...

[Anonymous Coward]

"MUH SOJINY" said every idiot feminazi ever.

Stop taking risky pics

[crunkatlanta]

Most of the celebs listed already been seen naked..

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

I've already paid people from my bank. That doesn't mean it's OK for hackers to go and take whatever money they want from my bank. Not I am wrong for storing my money in a bank even though it has an internet banking facility.

Stop blaming the victims.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the celebs listed already been seen naked.

Actually, most of them had not, which is why there was so much interest in the Fappening.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

/r/TheFappening and 4chin are the victims here. They just want to share files among a community of peers. They didn't ask for the media attention or arbitrary bans. Media whores sought to turn their own slutty behavior into a misogyny scandal. Information is meant to be free.

Won't you please stop the victim blaming and shaming?

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

no one is "blaming the victim" here, We are pointing out the flaws ina system, namely the internet. if something goes there, it stays there. if its forbidden fruit, someone will go after it

If I walk to the bad part of town and that I know is the bad part of town and something bad happens to me yes, I am partially to blame because I should have known to avoid that spot (if I knew it was thebad part of town)

the internet as a whole, = the bad part of town, dont do things you dont want public on them

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Most banks are insured and they spend money on security. Apple is not a bank and therefore are careless about security until something like this happens.. The hackers used targeted attacks on specific accounts. Like I said earlier the celebrities are hunted by people with cameras hoping to get that golden shot you'd think they'd not post those kinds of pictures on the internet. Yes it was in a personal "protected" cloud but that does not change the fact that they did it to themselves by taking the picture and uploading it to begin with. It's like a drunk driver trying to blame the alcohol for getting them drunk.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

If I walk to the bad part of town and that I know is the bad part of town and something bad happens to me yes, I am partially to blame because I should have known to avoid that spot (if I knew it was thebad part of town)

No. The person that attacks you or robs you is 100% to blame. Victims are not guilty of anything.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

if i put my self in a situation that could have been avoided, I am still partly to blame. the attacker is still 100% wrong in his actions, but I feel that I share some of the blame if i did something that i could have avoided doing which caused the issue to begin with.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

for example, photojournalists who travel to the middle of a war zone. If they get taken captured or killed, they share some of that blame for putting themselves in that situation

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

the attacker is still 100% wrong in his actions, but I feel that I share some of the blame if i did something that i could have avoided doing which caused the issue to begin with.

Which would make for more than 100% of the blame, and is thus impossible.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

Not they are not. They are doing their jobs. You are not to blame if you are murdered in the course of doing your job. The person(s) that murdered you are 100% to blame.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

they chose the job, they could have chose other assignments. again it was just an example.

if you put yourself in a bad situation, and you know it is a bad situation, you share some of the blame. it really is that simple basil.

If you leave your car running with the windows down in front of a bodega, and you come outside and its gone, you share responsibility in your car being stolen.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

you dont seem to understand that 100% wrong, on the attackers part has nothing at all to do with sharing the blame. He is wrong to attack you 100% he had no right to do so. but that does not mean that you could not have avoided it by doing something slightly different than you chose to do.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

it really is that simple basil.

No, that's your naive opinion. It's not at all simple, it's nuanced.

they chose the job, they could have chose other assignments. again it was just an example.

So a cop is responsible if he gets shot? You are responsible if you carry a wallet and get mugged? In fact you're responsible even if you don't carry a wallet because you stepped foot out of the house?

No, these are all things that reasonably need to be done. If you become the victim of a crime whilst doing them it's not your fault.

We need cops, we need news from war zone, people need to carry wallets, and walk outside the house. They are not things that you should not do. You carry no blame for doing them.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

there are differing degrees and im sure everyone would say that there is a big difference between a cop and a photojournalist.

as to your wallet claim, no, if you get mugged for your wallet thats not your fault. however if you have a bankerbag full of 100 grand and you walk through downtown harlem at 3 AM with it on your shoulder and you get mugged, I cant say I really feel sorry for you

you call me naive, yet you are the one who does not understand something as simple as varying degrees of risk

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame is not a 100% sum game. That the person that attacks you is 100% to blame does not mean you are not partially to blame. Else, if two persons murdered a third, we would divide the responsibility in two then assign half the jail sentence to each one. That'd be moronic. In reality we do the contrary, they get additional jail time for having done that in reunion or for conspiracy.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

however if you have a bankerbag full of 100 grand and you walk through downtown harlem at 3 AM with it on your shoulder and you get mugged, I cant say I really feel sorry for you

Then you are a bad person. And you are indeed blaming the victim for the crime.

you call me naive, yet you are the one who does not understand something as simple as varying degrees of risk

I have no problem with probability. Risk is simply probability attached to a bad outcome. I understand it very well. But unlike you I differentiate it from responsibility. The word risk is confusing you.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fuckening, I can't believe you actually said all of that. Would you think of the poor souls who shared nude pictures distributed without consent while unleashing a torrent of terrifying slithering rage at their targets?

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

you dont seem to understand that 100% wrong, on the attackers part has nothing at all to do with sharing the blame. He is wrong to attack you 100% he had no right to do so. but that does not mean that you could not have avoided it by doing something slightly different than you chose to do.

Then I'm glad you've moved from your previous position of blaming the victim:
"If I walk to the bad part of town and that I know is the bad part of town and something bad happens to me yes, I am partially to blame"

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

saying something could have been avoided by better decisions, is not victim blaming.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

i never blamed the victim and i did no such backtracking. Ive been consistent this whole time

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Which would make for more than 100% of the blame, and is thus impossible.

You're a fucking moron.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[reikae]

I suppose you don't mean to imply that the fact he was there because of his job makes any difference? Would you shift the blame in other circumstances? Or am I misunderstanding you?

I wonder where the victim blaming comes from; I admit it's often my first thought until just a moment later a more rational part of the brain catches up and tells me I'm being unfair and wrong. Luckily I don't open my mouth in between.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are the one confused.

If I go skydiving and break my legs during the landing, it is not some unfortunate accident - I CHOSE an activity with high risk.
If I stroll through the bad part of town a night, drunk and displaying handfuls of cash, and I get mugged, it is not some unfortunate accident - I CHOSE an activity with high risk. The fact that a criminal ALSO chose to commit a crime does not eliminate my own bad choices, and my own fault for making those bad choices.

Criminal = 100% responsible for committing the crime.
Stupid victim = 100% responsible for bad decisions maximizing the risk.

Two different factors, two different faults.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir deserve a plus 1 for your honesty. Seriously, can we quit comparing the internet to your physical assets. The internet is INHERENTLY insecure. It was DESIGNED this way ON PURPOSE by the military so it could survive a military strike. It isn't designed to keep anything sensitive safe. Thats Why Snowden got his stuff out and thats how the the 'snowden of Leakers' got the celeb stuff out. There are no f-ing victims here. A victim is someone ijured by a calamity. Haven't you heard? In Holly there is no such thing as bad press. They put their trust in apple knowing (or not if they are truly stupid about technology) that the cloud is insecure. They got hacked because people wanted to see them naked. Did you notice there is no Taylor swift porn? No Miley cyrus Porn or Iggy azalia? Hell there is no porn star porn.. Smart celebs didn't post it in the cloud. So there are no victims.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[thunderclap]

No, you don't need news from a war zone.
People who live there can supply that now. People no longer need to carry wallets.
They chose to.
You still have this delusion that you walk in the middle a run down slum and scream obsenities that you can't be harmed. That is your problem.In reality this responsibility is called consequences. If a people knowingly goes to a dangerous location there is a chance that they can be killed. Yes they do bear responsibility of there own death. No amount of hand waving it away because you want believe that you can do what ever you want and no harm shall come to you idiocy will change the reality that there are people who will kill you simply you aren't them.
So yes a cop IS responsible when he gets shot. Why? Because he is given all the equipment to prevent this. He is payed extra. He is given a weapon and authority. Nevertheless when a people does the illegal act of shooting him, he isn't magically healed because he doesn't deserve it. NO, he made a choice to presue a person and that person made a choice as well. Both could have chosen other options. However, the cop is in the right in doing his job nevertheless he stop has to pay for his medical bills. Very few people get mugged without making themselves attractive to the mugger. See people are lazy and doing want to modify their behavior to make them selves less attractive to those who will always do evil. And Finally you carry blame FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO. BOTH positive and negative. Thats basic human nature.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it this way, if you walk across the middle of a street and get hit by a driver that didn't see you because they where on their cellphone you will still get a ticket for jay walking.

These pictures where not taken illegally by someone else, the celebrities took them themselves on an inherently insecure device and uploaded them to the internet. They had no expectation of privacy with their phone or the online service. Yet they want to feel violated because the pictures got out. If they wanted to take nude pictures that would not make it to the internet without them actually being physically stolen they should have used a non networked camera, printed the photos on a home printer and then deleted the camera card.

Everything else is a crapshoot that you already know law enforcement and most of the apps on their phone has access to, making anything that their phone has access to is essentially already in the public.

TL:DR anything with a network connection cannot be trusted, especially a wireless one with apps that take over access of the device.

Re: Stop taking risky pics

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think the victim somehow has some moral superiority, I know a great place you can walk in East St. Louis at about 1am. Wear a suit and a shiny watch.

If you walk between a mother brown bear and her cub and the bear eats you, okay, by your logic you are 100% not at fault, but you're also a huge idiot too.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[ganjadude]

i agree with you, obviously but i think you chose the wrong person to use. change cop with photojournalist in a war zone and you would be more on point

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[goose-incarnated]

I have no problem with probability. Risk is simply probability attached to a bad outcome. I understand it very well. But unlike you I differentiate it from responsibility. The word risk is confusing you.

You have a serious problem with logic - try telling your insurance that, yes, even though you left your car in a rough part of town, overnight, with the keys in the ignition and all the windows rolled down, that they have to pay up because "it's 100% the criminals fault". The insurance company understands risks much better than you, and thus I'm inclined (and just about every other human out there, barring SJW's) to follow their logic much better than I follow your non-logic.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[goose-incarnated]

you dont seem to understand that 100% wrong, on the attackers part has nothing at all to do with sharing the blame. He is wrong to attack you 100% he had no right to do so. but that does not mean that you could not have avoided it by doing something slightly different than you chose to do.

Then I'm glad you've moved from your previous position of blaming the victim: "If I walk to the bad part of town and that I know is the bad part of town and something bad happens to me yes, I am partially to blame"

1) You're making a strawman - parent said no such thing.
2) Society has already decided that you're wrong - society has already decided that there is nothing wrong in apportioning blame to the victims in certain circumstances.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

But that's not the limits of what you previously said. You previously both said that victims were at fault, and you also sanctioned them for that fault by saying "you do not feel sorry for them", which is an indirect way of saying they deserved it.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

You have a serious problem with logic - try telling your insurance that, yes, even though you left your car in a rough part of town, overnight, with the keys in the ignition and all the windows rolled down, that they have to pay up because "it's 100% the criminals fault".

I'd certainly expect to be paid out if it were parked in a "bad part of town". But the keys part is simply a part of the contract between you. You are still not in any way to blame for the crime you are a victim of.

Furthermore, your example shows how you have to move the goalposts. The celebrities did not leave their passwords somewhere.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

I suppose you don't mean to imply that the fact he was there because of his job makes any difference? Would you shift the blame in other circumstances?

Certainly not. It was simply a quick way of making the OP see that his point was ridiculous. No victim is ever to blame for the crime done to them.

I was beginning to think I was on my own with the this. Thanks for opening your mouth in the end!

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

1) You're making a strawman - parent said no such thing.

Don't you do the barest research before posting? You're wrong again. See here:

http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

2) Society has already decided that you're wrong - society has already decided that there is nothing wrong in apportioning blame to the victims in certain circumstances.

And that blind assertion is just as wrong. Ignorant people may be on your side. That doesn't constitute society.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[BasilBrush]

I've already answered about 2 dozen responses on this topic. I'll just say here, that with the cop example you've gone further than even other people on your side will support. Reductio ad absurdum.

Re:Stop taking risky pics

[thunderclap]

Snip! Reductio ad absurdum.

Doesn't change your failure to grasp the concept of risk management. Oh since you decided to point out how it reduces to ridiculousness. Here's some latin for you: Gallus jeter fallat.

Need to get rid of the rest of the pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of kids browse the website and I have an issue with them having access to many images that in other media contexts such as movies, magazines or television they would be considered illegal. Additionally, some images that are posted by users to /r/gonewild seem to be of under age girls. I wonder why an attorney general somewhere hasn't taken this on. I have been thinking about calling mine.

Reddit needs to clean up its act and require age verification for some subreddits, And stop profiting off illicit pornography and images (like they did with the recent leaked celebrity photographs). Other social media sites can rein it in, so can Reddit.

Re:Need to get rid of the rest of the pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god reddit is the whole of the internet and once it is cleaned up, everything will be perfect for your precious little fuckheads that you can't bother to parent!

Re:Need to get rid of the rest of the pornography

[NotSanguine]

A lot of kids browse the website and I have an issue with them having access to many images that in other media contexts such as movies, magazines or television they would be considered illegal. Additionally, some images that are posted by users to /r/gonewild seem to be of under age girls. I wonder why an attorney general somewhere hasn't taken this on. I have been thinking about calling mine.

Reddit needs to clean up its act and require age verification for some subreddits, And stop profiting off illicit pornography and images (like they did with the recent leaked celebrity photographs). Other social media sites can rein it in, so can Reddit.

Stop shirking your responsibilities as a parent. If you feel the need to censor what your children see or hear, then do it. But don't expect the rest of the world to do it for you.

Re:Need to get rid of the rest of the pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

GTFO of my country, please. Or at least off my Internet.

Re:Need to get rid of the rest of the pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of kids browse the website and I have an issue with them having access to many images that in other media contexts such as movies, magazines or television they would be considered illegal.

Watch what the fuck your kids are doing for a change. It's not up to the internet to make itself kid-proof.

Re:Need to get rid of the rest of the pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Go fuck yourself. Cancel your internet if this is such a big issue for you.

Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Reddit story. The merger is near. Watchout!

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. win

That place has always been about hate

[Anonymous Coward]

The moderators there have always destroyed any liberal speech to try to shove their CONservative views down our throats. Even some parody groups like /r/niggers were shutdown because those idiot Republicans just weren't capable of comprehending satire. I guess you can't expect anything else from their kind since their parents hate education so they have children that are morons. Now those morons are taking over control of the Internet and are petty tyrants.

Re:That place has always been about hate

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you like to refer to people of African descent as "niggers", greenwow, but most of us non-liberals find that offensive and not something we would choose to support.

I guess your true Democrat colors are showing through.

Re:That place has always been about hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Checks. I was banned from a subreddit because the moderator didn't like my sound advice. I refuse to go to that website. It's just a bunch of children.

Re:That place has always been about hate

[Anonymous Coward]

I never used Reddit, but defending niggers is more of a liberal thing than republican.

Only illegal ones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain the Gamergate admin who deletes anyone that disagrees with him.

reddit = trash

[Anonymous Coward]

reddit is a lowbrow news aggregator that's currently infested with the Facebook crowd.

Re: reddit = trash

[Anonymous Coward]

As a web developer it took me all of 7 seconds to realize that anyone using reddit was at least half brain dead. The UI on that thing is atrocious. If all reddit users internally combusted tomorrow, the world we be the definition of Utopia.

Actually that would be a great question to put on job applications: "How often do you use Reddit?" Any response there gets thrown in the trash.

Reddit will always do cost/benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

TheFappenning was a political homicide. It ain't the first time and won't be the last.

For all the 'we put our users first' nonsense that the admins and Ohanian spout, when the shit hits the fan the true colors always shine straight through.

Victim Blaming?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not victim blaming to point out that risky behaviours have consequences...slather yourself in bacon grease and go sleep in a bear infested forest, is the bear attack your fault? One might say that you had a little something to do with it. Give your bank PIN to everyone...lose your money, is it your fault?

It used to be the "you're just like Hitler" scream that shut down intelligent converse, now it's "you're blaming the victim"

The trouble is, all the shamers may be creating more victims, good for business if your only argument is "stop blaming the victim."
 

Speck in the tip of the iceberg

[gmuslera]

This kind of people have government-approved full access to the (potentially naked) selfies of all underage girls of the entire world, celebrity or not, and they surely abuse of it. And are supported for doing that.

Re:Speck in the tip of the iceberg

[Stan92057]

"and they surely abuse of it'"

Citations please:

Re:Speck in the tip of the iceberg

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked for Instagram for 3 years, trust me we get to see all and even nude or child porn that 2 teens screwing post, get reported and people like me remove the image (from public view only) and ban the account.

Most reported images or even celeb shots done drunkenly then self reported go into archive just in case legal needs it. But we of course have copies ftp'd or scp'd to our own home or private servers.

I know a guy at Facebook the grabs celeb shots from private Facebook profiles especially when requested account removals.

No one really does like that secret police feeling

[mlkj]

Understatement of the decade.

All this fuss...

[Charliemopps]

All this fuss, because the victims were famous. If someone posted naked pictures of any of us on the internet, the police would laugh at us. Would the FBI get involved? Would subreddits get deleted? Hell no... If there's any great tragedy in this whole mess, it's that it highlights the class divide in this country. If you're famous, you get more rights than the rest of us.

Thousands of people have their nude photos leaked to the net every day. Reddits FULL of them. Suddenly now it's a big deal. I've no sympathy for these people, not because it's their fault, but because this is just a small dose of what it's like to be normal. Cry me a river.

Re:All this fuss...

[Stan92057]

When a so called normal person image is leaked they may never find that out. She's one of a billion women out there who hasn't a clue her nudes are out there. Being famous you find out and find out fast. I don't know of any news story where a women couldn't get her images removed ya need to provide a link for that statement. Ya I herd about the scum who ran the revenge site he broke laws and now is on the run I think. I would tell women look for there nudies on sites like Reddit,4chan,Tumblr,flickr,deviantart. as a starting point. Tumblr has tons of stolen porn and nude selfies as there are zillions of cellphone selfies on tumblr

Re:All this fuss...

[Anonymous Coward]

When it happens to normal people, it's called "revenge porn" (the implication being that someone releases pics of their ex- as revenge, although the pictures are usually actually acquired by phishing, etc like in the case of the celebrity photos). There's been a few topics on Slashdot about it including the discussion of at least one state law passed about it, so it's not like the issue is completely ignored.

Re:All this fuss...

[phantomfive]

If someone posted naked pictures of any of us on the internet, the police would laugh at us.

If you want to stop the police from laughing at you, have your lawyer contact them instead of calling them yourself.

Re:All this fuss...

[misexistentialist]

Look through 100,000 private naked pictures to stop people from seeing your own naked pics...

Re:All this fuss...

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but sickening.

Re:All this fuss...

[gsslay]

So your argument goes; because "normal" people get stomped on, famous people should get stomped on too. That'll teach them a lesson in what it's like to be normal. Let's not aspire to make things better for anyone, just equally crap.

I'd prefer this approach; famous people make this a big deal, so maybe things will get done that'll help prevent it happening to anyone in future. Including "normal" people. We are not going to put a stop to this ever happening, but that doesn't means we shouldn't try. If it takes a famous people kicking up a fuss to achieve this, then so be it.

Re:All this fuss...

[meta-monkey]

If your nudes were illegally posted to reddit and you sent them a DMCA take down request, I imagine they would honor it.

While it is morally wrong to, without permission, take, distribute, posses or look at someone else's private photos without their permission, reddit corporate made their decisions on the subreddits to ban because of legal reasons, not moral reasons.

Cant stop them

[nurb432]

Moves like this will just drive them underground, where its harder to stop.

Some of the models were underage

[nerdonamotorcycle]

From what I've been reading, some of the models were under 18 when the photos were taken, which makes those photos child pornography. Hosting, linking to, uploading, distributing, possessing, or downloading those particular pics is illegal. "Child pornography" is a whole other level of illegality to "stolen pics," with much heavier penalties.

As far as the argument that "Nobody cares until it happens to a celebrity," sometimes a famous case that happens to a celebrity is what people need to get them to start caring about an issue. A lot of people started caring more about AIDS once Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury died. Nobody really knew what ALS was until Lou Gehrig got it, and it ended his baseball career and then his life. While the events themselves are regrettable, I think it's great that this has started a dialog about stolen pics and revenge porn. Look, there are plenty of people who willingly place themselves on display. Why fap/shlik it to stuff that was posted nonconsensually?

Re:Some of the models were underage

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I would fap to it, but 18 isn't the legal age for nudity in many places, including many states of the US.

Re:Some of the models were underage

[edwartr]

There is major issue with the truth of the claim of being underage. Almost all of the pics in question actually show that they were taken after the subjects were 18. Can that info be faked? Don't know. Also, if they were under 18, then they have to be prosecuted for child pornography themselves. Yep, in a lot of states, if a minor takes a nude picture and sends it to the cloud that is considered distribution. If they sent that picture to ANYONE (boyfriend, etc.) even if that person doesn't forward it, that is still distribution of child pornography. http://www.isba.org/ibj/2010/0... http://news.cnet.com/Police-bl...

Re:Some of the models were underage

[Krishnoid]

As far as the argument that "Nobody cares until it happens to a celebrity," sometimes a famous case that happens to a celebrity is what people need to get them to start caring about an issue. A lot of people started caring more about AIDS once Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury died. Nobody really knew what ALS was until Lou Gehrig got it, and it ended his baseball career and then his life.

In the past, the press was the only way of distributing news widely, and celebrities were the only ones who got press coverage. Depending on your definition of 'celebrity', I suspect the Internet has changed that. Consider oh, I don't know, Tardar Sauce -- if he got a disease while he was still well-known, everybody in the world would know about it. A couple hyperlinks away is a detailed description of the disease, and you soon have worldwide visibility and education on what was otherwise a local concern.

For those with smaller circles of influence, the same holds true to a lesser extent. When these people experience problems, information just as detailed can be spread just as easily by their followers through networking effects.

Re:Some of the models were underage

[Anonymous Coward]

that makes they themselves guuilty of child pornography, people in the US have landed on the sex offenders list for taking explicity images of themselves as minors.

Re:Some of the models were underage

[Anonymous Coward]

Heres a better question. Why care at all if theres porn of anyone? People get all been out of shape over nudity here in the US, but why? Why is it that we have to "shame the slut" for having been seen naked? Whenever you hear the stories of revenge porn it's always accompanied with claims of harassment and often loss or refusal of employment.

The same goes for the new child porn. Why are we arresting these kids and putting them on the sex offenders registry for posting their own pics of their junk on the internet? Theres nothing wrong with the kids, in 99% of cases these days they weren't forced to do so like the child porn of old which involved rape thus they only become a victim of society and law enforcement with a record that they'll never be able to shake for no real crime being committed.

If you ask me society and law enforcement are more to blame then he hackers here. Society provides a profit motive beyond just a desire to see someone else naked, the tabloids put a dollar amount on it and society puts shame on it while the media promotes it for ad dollars.

Re:Some of the models were underage

[Anonymous Coward]

"From what I've been reading, some of the models were under 18 when the photos were taken"

IAFAIK That's based on some carefully worded responses from their lawyers. They have not indicated that the nude photos were under-age, just that _some_ of the photos were taken while under-age. There were more photos stolen than just the nudes.

There's no way that the lawyers would be saying that the _nudes_ were taken when under-age, as that would implicate their client in a charge of producing child pornography. The laws are so screwed up in the US, that you can't take a naked picture of yourself when you are under-age without qualifying.

Re:Some of the models were underage

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've been reading, some of the models were under 18 when the photos were taken

You've been reading trash then. There was a single ***fake*** nude of some Olympic gymnast in the leaks which is where that talk started.

Look, there are plenty of people who willingly place themselves on display. Why fap/shlik it to stuff that was posted nonconsensually?

Dunno, it's not my thing. But ever since I was a kid I saw the Tabloids in the grocery store checkout line, gleefully proclaiming that some celebrity was caught sunbathing nude by a photographer, or had her tits fall out of her swimsuit, and publishing the photos with the 'naughty bits' censored over. So this is really nothing new at all, other than the pictures were taken BY the celebs and then were found by someone else, so the magazines can't really print them.

The point is that when a Celeb gets hacked, the FBI is immediately involved and actively investigating, publicity or not. When it's a nobody like you or me, you'll be lucky to get them to file a report for you. The problem about this "dialog" is that anybody who attempts to make it about increasing security, awareness, education, etc. is immediately shouted down with cries of "Stop blaming the victims!". It's just greasing the minds of the general public that the Government needs to be given more power over communication, more power to spy on us, more power to shut down content, using the scare argument of "Oh, but if it can happen to a celebrity, it could happen to YOU!" Which is completely at odds with reality- most of those people were targeted because of the fact they are celebrities, not despite it.

Re:Some of the models were underage

[david_thornley]

Nude photos are not necessarily pornographic. Under at least some laws, there has to be additional sexual content.

fuck reddit

[Anonymous Coward]

can't believe that site is still around. Last time I checked 6 years ago, it was ran and commented on by a bunch of narcissistic niggers

I encrypt my nude selfies for your protection.

[Anonymous Coward]

They only banned it because the victims are rich.

What gets me is the fact that these people are millionaires, supposedly super smart, but they upload UNENCRYPTED NAKED SELFIES to the cloud. Seriously how is that a good idea? If they used auto encryption like Cloud Fogger, Boxcryptor, or one of the many others the hackers would have tons of worthless files given they used a strong password.

Not making excuses for Apple, but depending on ANY host to protect your shit 100% is a fool's quest. I depend on one person to protect my data and it's paid off many times.

Captcha - terrify
You can say that again.

Reddit's hypocrisy knows no bounds

[edwartr]

It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with Reddit's allowing or disallowing such subreddits - the only real issue is that the mods are total hypocrites. They ban this subreddit and have banned another one or two in the past ONLY because there is lots of bad press; yet they allow subreddits such as /r/photoplunder which is the EXACT same as TheFappening except it doesn't have FAMOUS people with press and lawyers but it is nothing but stolen cell phone pics of women. /r/realgirls/ is the mostly the same. And there are many more. This isn't a matter of do you think the pictures should or shouldn't be posted, it is Reddit saying that posting stolen pictures is totally wrong and banning a subreddit but NOT banning other threads that are EXACTLY like the banned sub just not having 1. famous people with lawyers complaining and/or 2. the press clamoring about the other subreddits. Hilariously, everytime Reddit has had stories in the press about certain subreddits being so bad, they have proclaimed their piety and the evil of said subreddit and banned it; but ONLY IF THERE IS BAD PRESS. No press, well then let that it fly. The issue is that Reddit should simply pick a side and stay true - either ban EVERY SUBREDDIT that breaks the supposed Reddit rules or don't ban any subreddits and fight.

Close... but no cigar.

[denzacar]

It's more like blaming somebody who was killed in a car accident that was somebody else's fault after they chose to wear their seatbelt, but design flaw they weren't aware of made it ineffective.

It's the "I don't need a seat belt, the car has airbags." situation.

And then the victim sues the manufacturer of the car driven by the driver who caused the accident.
So the manufacturer silently recalls all those cars (they were distributed to drivers for free, in exchange for watching commercials) and melts them into slag.
Along with anything that the drivers may have left inside.

There's no need for explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need an explanation for why a website would ban the distribution of private material seized by a hack, you're a disgusting excuse of a human being to start with. This wasn't about "censorship." It's about refusing to serve as a distribution point for material that was never intended for the public domain and was seized through an egregious violation of the privacy of the individuals in question. The reason the subreddit got shut down, at least in part, is because certain people took it upon themselves to continue reposting content using zombie accounts as quickly as image websites like Imgur could pull it back down.

Quick response

[Anonymous Coward]

So, after a week of the two subreddits being the defacto clearing center for this whole event, and verified traffic of hundreds of millions of visits per day, the esteemed admin decices to pull the plug. Well done, this is now completely contained and the leaked pictures and videos are gone from the internet.

Reddit can also rest easy knowing that celebrities will appreciate their lightning quick response to legal threats, responding in well under 200 hours. I bet Jennifer Lawrence will do an AMA any day now.

We can also rest easy knowing that classy places like /r/SexyAbortions, /r/CuteFemaleCorpses, and /r/WhiteRights intact.

It goes a lot deeper here, folks

[Khyber]

http://i.imgur.com/D2YsOFO.png

https://soundcloud.com/user613...

It goes a LOT deeper than you think.

http://slashdot.org/submission...

reddit = hollystupid and govt

[Anonymous Coward]

reddit = hollystupid and govt

Don't really care

[Snotnose]

Don't care how many celebrities got their nude selfies exposed, nor various websites' responses, nor that at least 1 celebretard was underage when she took her pix.

If the person who coined 'fappening' comes to San Diego and drops me a line, you get 1 free beer.

Re:Don't really care

[Nyder]

Don't care how many celebrities got their nude selfies exposed, nor various websites' responses, nor that at least 1 celebretard was underage when she took her pix.

If the person who coined 'fappening' comes to San Diego and drops me a line, you get 1 free beer.

That one that might of been underage when the pic was taken, claimed that it wasn't a picture of her. So if that is not a pic of her, and thus could not of been when she was under 18, how is that child pornography?

Re:Don't really care

[nedlohs]

Because people lie?

Re:Don't really care

[Khyber]

Oh, you mean like the lying Reddit Admins?

http://slashdot.org/submission...

Werd!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dat's right, cuz! Dem bitches needs ta stahp wearin dem bootay shortz n g-strangs under dem lululemons, son! I can't stop rapin ho's!

Why do we think what we think about sex?

[Anonymous Coward]

We think about sex everyday, but why do we think about it the way we do? A new scientific study is being conducted at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) about attitudes to sex and how these attitudes are formed. We want sexy people (such as yourselves) to help us by completing this 10 minute ANONYMOUS survey. Follow the link below and share with others!
https://research.socialsci.com/s/b1796c20d74c013189af002590702d06

I know it's reddit...

[OneMHz]

But if anyone couldn't grasp the monumentally obvious reasons they did this... then maybe those people are just too creepy for their own good.

Obligatory

[LienRag]

http://tldrwikipedia.tumblr.co...

Here's a fappening collection for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're all on here anyway http://theinternetlovesme.com/hacked-celeb-nude-i-cloud-pictures-photos-full-list-of-all-the-celeb-names/ probably even more then what Reddit could ever scrape together with their kids

The Fappenning

[Anonymous Coward]

>The Fappenning Full Collection:
is. gd/thefappenning (remove space)