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Craig Brittain (Revenge Porn King) Sues For Use of Image
retroworks writes "Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey leads with, "Revenge-porn impresario Craig Brittain is learning the hard way that karma is a real witch." The report states that the Federal Trade Commission has settled a complaint against Brittain, whose defunct site, "Is Anybody Down" was accused of unfair business practices. From the article: "The site paid its bills by soliciting women's nude photos on Craigslist and/or from their exes, publishing the photos without the women's permission (and often with their names and phone numbers attached), and then charging fees of $200 to $500 to take the photos down." Brittain agreed to destroy the image and never operate a revenge porn site again. However, On Feb. 9, "Brittain filed a takedown request to Google, demanding that the search engine stop linking to nearly two dozen URLs — including a number of news articles, and files on the case from the FTC — because they used photos of him and information about him without his permission." Ars Technica explains. "In this instance, fair use and general First Amendment principles are on Google's and the media's side."
Even in the sex-free-est society, revenge porn is not seen as being good. The guy is an asshole (and anybody having posted photo there without consent) and may his reputation follow him around. This has nothing to do with sex being shameful or not, and everything to do with consent and revenge.
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visit randi.org
It is generally well established that correspondence between two individuals is private and that for one of the parties to share that correspondence it is considered appropriate to ask the other for permission prior to sharing.
This is generally considered the norm and typically if you publish someones private material shared with you without their permission you would lose in the civil suit.
The problem is with the third party, not the recipient. If I give the material to a publishing company and they post it it is much harder to hold them liable for any breach as they were not involved in the original exchange. It's very similar to prosecuting someone for receipt of stolen goods. If they had no knowledge the goods were stolen then they are almost never held liable.