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'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

bbc.co.uk

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Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#61

Post by chc »

sokoloff wrote: post #15
k-mcgrady wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

The distinction is very important. The intent of Safe Harbor provisions is not to allow sites to blithely host infringing without possibility of reprisal as long as they take it down when asked. The intent is to relieve sites of the unreasonable burden of both being aware of and policing everything their users do — to allow them to act as sort of a "dumb pipe". If you have personal knowledge of infringing content, you are still expected to take it down even without a DMCA notice — and it is certainly not OK for you to post infringing content yourself.

(Standard IANAL caveats apply of course. I think I have a reasonably good layman's understanding of this stuff since my work touches on this stuff, but you should talk to your lawyer if you want concrete advice.)

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#62

Post by FireBeyond »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

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.…

"if you take reasonable steps to remove the illegal content when informed of its existence?"

In this case, no steps were taken - though some claimed he was willing to remove content "for a fee". Usually, though, requesting content removal got you front page publicity, and the site sharing your content further with other similar sites.

"if you have the right to host whatever legal content you wish"

Said legal content is actually of fairly dubious legality when you pay someone to hack email accounts to get some of it.

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#63

Post by FireBeyond »

tlrobinson wrote: post #49
IgorPartola wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IIRC the rationalization he used was that the person who uploaded the photos, not the subject, was the copyright holder because they were the photographer, thus there was no copyright infringement. I don't know how he verified that, if at all. Now, hacking into email accounts and stealing photos is another matter...

Let's not pretend that he cared at all about rationalization. A request to take down a picture that you clearly owned copyright on (i.e. camera and mirror) would usually result in you being ridiculed on the front page of the site, with requests to other users to find more photos of you, where you lived and worked and to harass you.

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#64

Post by debt »

loucal wrote: post #45

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 a…

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.

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#65

Post by yarou »

tlrobinson wrote: post #51
yarou wrote: post #48

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.

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).

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.

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#66

Post by mcantelon »

bananashake wrote: post #31
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

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.…

> 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.

>Making a UGC revenge porn site doesn't need to be defended by anyone.

OP isn't specifically defending revenge porn sites in general, but rather pondering the ramifications of user generated content in general (which, to me, seems off-base as the fact the content came from centrally organized hacking seems to be the key issue).

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#67

Post by mcantelon »

yarou wrote: post #65
tlrobinson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

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

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#68

Post by 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.

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#69

Post by natdempk »

drewcrawford wrote: post #52
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

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.…

> Is it a worrying trend that website operators are becoming increasingly culpable for user content? Well, let's be clear here. He didn't build a business that operated around hosting arbitrary images, that happened to be adopted by bad people for bad purposes. He was a bad person himself, who built a bad website, to assist other bad people. These are two very different things. I mean, I understand how you could imag…

This is going to sound kind of ridiculous, but I think a flaw with this viewpoint is that you're saying that a "revenge porn" site is inherently bad with bad effects and bad intent.

For the sake of argument, I can imagine a scenario where an upcoming adult model submits "revenge" pictures that she took herself as a form of free publicity, or another popular revenge site that is actually run by an adult modeling company where all content is actually generated by them under the facade of being "revenge porn". Should this content be illegal? Should the site that the model submitted to be fined? What if all documentation was destroyed in the case of the second site, but it was just the state going after it? Do you trust a court of law to make these decisions accurately?

These aren't easy questions, and this is why I have trouble with going after businesses that are morally suspect. It always seems to set a dangerous precedent for businesses that are on the edge or on the "moral" side of things.

Re: 'Revenge porn' website former owner Hunter Moore arrested

#70

Post by allochthon »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

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.…

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.

In my opinion, this is one area where the US legal system goes south. There must be a way to maintain people's legitimate right to freedom of speech that does not involve defending clearly scandalous behavior. I think people too easily buy into the lawyer's argument on this one.

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