'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

> 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.

Making a UGC revenge porn site doesn't need to be defended by anyone. I feel like your comment is a troll. I shouldn't be arguing with a troll and I expect HN to not have them. I'll stop at that.

FWIW, I think you're being unduly harsh. I wonder whether you misunderstood a valid point made by sillysaurus2, specifically that there is an ends-vs-means issue here.

I doubt anyone reading this comment would condone the operation of such a nasty site or have much sympathy for someone who ran one. Nevertheless, it is important to be clear about why we feel such behaviour is morally wrong and should be penalised. What principle(s) are being violated here? Our legal systems in the West tend to depend heavily on precedents, so the reasoning behind a judgement is in a very practical sense as important as the decision itself.

Personally, I think much of this issue could be dealt with very clearly. I believe stronger privacy laws are long overdue in many contexts, and as one example, criminalising the collection or distribution of intimate imagery of another person without their explicit consent is appropriate. Combine that with the well-established legal concepts of attempting to commit a crime, being an accomplice, and incitement, and situations like revenge porn sites are black and white criminal offences as far as the original uploaders are concerned, and the usual legal means should be available to investigate sources and track down the offenders.

There is a second issue here, which is more what I think sillysaurus2 was going after: should a site that hosts user-supplied content have any responsibility for the nature of that content? I don't think the answer to this is "pretty clearly no" in the way the GP post described, because one could certainly make a reasonable, logical argument for an alternative model where if you're going to publish potentially damaging information to a wide audience then you have some sort of due diligence obligation first.

However, I don't personally think that would be the best model, because it would impose severe and possibly prohibitive burdens on many beneficial activities. I prefer a "common carrier" model, where merely conveying someone else's information does not in itself incur any liability if the service doing it has no knowledge of or control over that information. However, the rules about aiding and abetting/incitement should also apply, so if you run a site promoting illegal behaviour or you knowingly allow your site to be used for illegal activities without taking reasonable steps to try to prevent it, you're on the hook as well. Again, this makes operating a dedicated revenge porn site a black and white offence (actually, many black and white offences, for which the penalty should IMHO be correspondingly severe) but without necessarily imposing burdens on modern communications networks that would be harmful to the generally valuable function they serve.

Just in general, the difference between having an editorial gatekeeper, and not, is that it gives the site operator actual knowledge of what's being posted. An example of how that would matter is the DMCA safe harbor, 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(1)(A), which requires the service provider not to be aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent.[1] But "how much did you know, when?" is a crucial question basically any time we hold someone responsible for something under the law, so "we knew exactly what was being posted to our site the whole time" is pretty different from "we couldn't possibly keep track of everything that was being posted to our site."

[1] https://images.chillingeffects.org/512.html

I responded with something similar above. This was my understanding of the various laws (For some / most states).

According to the Jezebel article and wikipedia most revenge porn photos are selfies or photoshops of stolen non-nude pictures. In which case copyright law would apply.

However, to answer your question, you do own the copyright of a photo you take (unless it is a work for hire) even if you take it without permission. The requirement to get permission isn't related to copyright, it's related to the right to privacy. People have sued for damages over revenge porn violating their privacy rights. http://www.scribd.com/doc/138909420/Revenge-Porn-Complaint-H...

If you think in terms of rights to privacy, then it becomes a lot less fuzzy. A child playing in a public place has no expectation of privacy regarding a photograph being taken and put in a newspaper. When someone lets a lover take photographs of them naked there is an implicit expectation that those photos will remain private between them. It would be hard for the photographer to argue that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy when the purpose of distributing these photographs is to get revenge.