
'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested  - mercurial
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25872322
======
sillysaurus2
Should it be illegal to operate a website that hosts user-generated content,
some of which is illegal, if you take reasonable steps to remove the illegal
content when informed of its existence?

The answer is pretty clearly "no." But this position becomes more difficult to
defend when the entire premise of the website is based on illegal content.
Something like e.g. if YouTube was originally named ShareMusicIllegally.com.

Actually, at this point in writing my comment, I checked my facts. It turns
out "revenge porn" wasn't illegal until Oct 2013, and then only in California.
[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/revenge-porn-banned-in-
californi...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/revenge-porn-banned-in-california/)

So this is a very unusual situation. We have a business built on a concept
which wasn't illegal until recently. Did he continue to try to operate it in
California after the bill was signed into law?

One position to take is "Who cares. This is a good thing."

That may be true, but remember that if you have the right to host whatever
legal content you wish, then the first step toward losing that right is to not
defend it. Sometimes that requires defending scoundrels.

Honestly, I don't know what to think. Maybe this isn't an instance of that
sort of situation. On one hand, there are concerns about civil liberties in
regards to webhosting. On the other hand, this website was clearly vile.

What does everyone think about how this has played out? Businessman builds a
morally suspect business; business is outlawed; businessman is fined $250k.
Did he deserve it? Perhaps it was karma. Is it a worrying trend that website
operators are becoming increasingly culpable for user content? What if there
were a subreddit dedicated to "revenge porn"? Should Reddit be liable for
damages under California law, and should the subreddit be banned even though
there are far worse subreddits, both from a moral and legal standpoint? So
many questions (though most of it is conjecture, and hence may not be very
useful).

EDIT: It turns out that the $250k fine wasn't due to user generated content,
but rather because the website owner defamed someone by calling them a
pedophile. So maybe the rights of website owners aren't even in question here.
Was there any legal action taken against this "revenge porn" website owner
stemming from the website after it was made illegal in Oct 2013?

~~~
themanr
> Mr Moore is said to have paid Mr Evens to hack into hundreds of victims'
> email accounts to obtain more nude photos to post on the website.

I think this is what they are charging him for - not for hosting genuine UGC.

~~~
sillysaurus2
_It is the latest legal setback for Mr Moore, who was ordered in March to pay
$250,000 (£170,000) in damages for defamation resulting from a civil lawsuit._

I may have misunderstood, but didn't this $250k fine originate largely due to
the UGC on the website?

~~~
k-mcgrady
AFAIK users didn't actually upload content to the site. They submitted it and
then Mr Moore or someone else posted it. I'm also pretty sure he wouldn't
honour take down requests.

~~~
sokoloff
Is there a large chasm between "upload content" and "submit [content]"?

Is the difference in the latter case just that someone clicks "ok, post this"?
I don't think that a quality-review (or lesser, a mechanism to queue and
release content to the site slowly over time) turns user-generated-content
into site-generated-content.

If Youtube did a quality review, it would still be UGC.

If Youtube did a post-facto quality review (to remove copyrighted music), it
would still be UGC. ...

Not honoring takedown requests is a different matter, and just sounds like a
dumb call.

~~~
chilldream
Not a lawyer, but it seems like posting the content yourself could ruin a
Section 230 defense:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)

Also, I'm not sure why a quality-review process would lessen culpability if
all the illegal stuff gets through anyway.

~~~
makomk
It has done in the past, at least if the person doing the posting added their
own editorial comments as I believe Hunter Moore did. However this issue
hasn't come up so far because the main lawyer pursuing most of the civil
cases, Marc Randazza, strongly believes this shouldn't affect section 230
immunity.

------
billpg
I don't see this as a free speech issue. If you want to put a website with
pictures of yourself naked, that's fine by me. You do not get to make that
decision on my behalf.

~~~
josephlord
That doesn't make it not a free speech issue. It is a free speech issue but
one that we come down on the restricted speech side of things.

It is just that it one of the issues that illustrates that some limits on free
speech are appropriate and correct. Once that is acknowledged the tricky
discussion of where that line should be and how it should enforced come into
play.

~~~
IgorPartola
Is it not copyright infringement? You post my pictures without my consent, I
send a takedown notice, you refuse, I call the FBI.

~~~
tseabrooks
Serious question. If you consent today to let me take pictures of you nude...
Don't I own the copyright of those pictures? Now, presumably if you and I were
dating your consent would be very casual... I'd say, "Hey, mind if I snap some
photos" and you'd say, "Go right ahead"... Because I'm quite charming.

A year later I still have these photos and we're not dating any longer. Do I
own copyright on photos as the photographer? How far does your casual consent
go? Do I need formal consent saying I can reproduce them?

A photo journalist will take a photo of a couple in the park as a child plays
in the fountain behind them and use it in the paper the next day. What consent
do they need to get from those being photographed?

It just all feels very fuzzy. Presumably most of the nude pictures are taken
by someone other than the subject of the photos... meaning the photographer
owns the copyright.. I'd think.

Anyone have more info on how this actually plays out?

~~~
adamors
I don't think it's that fuzzy, because even if you gave consent at one point
to be photographed naked, that doesn't mean that the person having access to
the photos can do anything they want with them. I mean it's one thing to send
a nude pic in a sext and it's another to upload the pic to the internet with
all your personal information.

There was a great interview about this last year in a Canadian radio show:
[http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2013/06/13/end-revenge-
porn/](http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2013/06/13/end-revenge-porn/)

~~~
tseabrooks
But... Isn't this why it's legal for "Topless sunbathing photo of celebrity"
to show up in the enquirer? They were topless in a public area (Sunbathing on
a boat, for instance) and a photographer snapped a photo?

I'm just trying to play the other side of the coin here. It's really unclear
to me if revenge porn sites are illegal or just a really asshole thing to do.

Also, In the example you're using... someone sent a sext and that means they
were the original photographer, so they own the copyright. It sounds like
there are two different types of photos here.

I took a photo of you because you said I could - I own the copyright and can
reproduce.

You took a photo of yourself and sent it to me - You're the original
photographer, I have no rights to the photo and can't share or reproduce.

------
sheraz
Good. This guy is a scumbag, and I hope he is prosecuted to the fullest extent
possible.

~~~
eoghan
+1

------
eleitl
I'm surprised it took so long, and he didn't suffer ballistic lead poisoning
instead.

------
thatthatis
Good god people, read the lead of the article. This isn't going after him for
hosting UGC, this is going after him for cracking into people's computers,
stealing their personal photos, then publishing them online.

This is a question of theft and unlawful entry, not free speech.

> Hunter Moore, 27, and Charles Evens, 24, face charges including conspiracy,
> unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information and
> aggravated identity theft.

------
btucker
Bob Garfield (On the Media) interviewed Hunter Moore a few years ago:
[http://www.onthemedia.org/story/173718-revenge-porns-
latest-...](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/173718-revenge-porns-latest-
frontier/)

~~~
chillingeffect
Great link! Only five minutes long, yet very interesting to hear the
interactions between the two.

I especially enjoyed hearing the interviewer begrudgingly admit that it wasn't
just women but also men on the site. He (Garfield) tries desperately to paint
Moore as pure evil in every way, but is repeatedly forced to admit that
Moore's actions are legal and in line with values of our country's laws (er,
our laws until October 2013).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Legal does not mean good or right, of course. The guy is still a complete
scumbag, emotionally broken at some point in his early development I imagine.

~~~
Nick_C
> emotionally broken at some point in his early development

Yeah, that was my first thought when I saw him interviewed. He had no empathy
at all. He basically admitted he ran a shady business that monetises peoples'
misfortunes, but, hey, if he didn't someone else would. As if that justifies
it, somehow.

------
lettergram
This article seems pretty concluded. For one, it doesn't seem like they are
charging anyone for the revenge porn site, rather they are charging him as an
accomplice in "hacking" peoples emails. Worse yet, they then bring in the
$250,000 fine imposed by the court for defamation and that has nothing (or
seemingly) nothing to do with the current case at all.

In other words... what the hell is this article about?

~~~
ephemeralgomi
It's contained in the first graf. They were arrested. That's what the news is.

The rest of the article is background explaining who Hunter Moore is, to
clarify why his arrest is newsworthy.

------
loucal
The last tweet he posted is hilariously ironic...

IIRC, for years he actually used to make videos ridiculing girls who tried to
get their pictures taken down and admitted to ignoring all takedown requests
publicly so I'm surprised he lasted this long with the nature of what he was
doing.

Also do a quick search for his name and 'anderson' he had an interview on
anderson cooper that just makes him look and sound like an actual child.

~~~
debt
I watched it. Made me think that this site serves the potentially positive
purpose of showing that sending nude pictures to people is generally a bad
idea. By extension, people will then view "trusting the interwebs" with
private information as generally a bad idea as well.

Either way, he's a scumbag and the site is terrible, but it's an interesting
social experiment.

------
yarou
This sets a dangerous precedent. Soon there will be laws written that you
cannot criticize the policies of the federal government on a website. And so
on. I would gladly defend this guy, even if he is a scumbag.

~~~
tlrobinson
Regardless of the rest of it, hacking emails to steal and post nude photos is
indefensible.

That said, I'm usually skeptical of CFAA charges when the accused has done
something objectionable but not necessarily illegal (see: weev).

~~~
yarou
We don't know what really happened yet. "Hacking" someone's email can mean a
lot of things. CFAA should only apply if there was an intrusion of some sort
through an attack vector of the system, not if the mailbox owner voluntarily
shared login info.

~~~
mcantelon
What, out of curiosity, is the charge applied to social engineering or
phishing login info?

