A somewhat related note is that America's culture of sex-negativity, shame and general hysteria around nudity is a required prerequisite for this type of bullying and abuse. Look at the following paragraph:
> Jill became hysterical, repeating, "Oh, my God. No. Oh, my God. No."
This is, obviously, the reaction of someone who fears repercussions from others. And this is for completely harmless acts (taking nude photos), which almost everyone does these days. And with good reason. Society in the US clamps down hard on people (women to a greater degree, but also men) who have the audacity to express their sexuality. That this expression was in no way intended for the public, makes no difference. Once it becomes publicly known, you are a slut (or a pervert) and harshly punished. Perverts are no good, and sluts are worse. This cultural norm is the only reason this type of shaming has any effect.
But really, we are all sluts and perverts. A good first step would be to go after the psychopaths who run campaigns like these. A good second step would be to abolish the cultural norms that allow sexuality and nudity to be used as a weapon.
If you look at "alternative" sexual societies like swingers' clubs or BDSM communities, you will often hear the word "pervert" or "slut" used in a positive sense, the way homosexuals are reclaiming literally every derogatory term used about their sexual identity. Most people in these communities are very aware and careful regarding the reactions of outside society if it became known what they do in their bedrooms, but the capability to make them feel bad about themselves for acts of nudity or sex is often completely absent.
A litigious culture in which courts and police are heavily relied on to solve disputes.
That's what the courts ARE FOR. Are you saying you'd prefer to live in the world where Charlotte flies to Sacramento and calls Hunter out at high noon in a cowboy hat? Because it seems fairly clear the "negotiation" option was a complete non-starter.
Courts don't exist to solve all disputes, surely. One clear indication that this is not an appropriate dispute to solve using men with guns is the fact that she had to rely on awkward legal maneuvers (retroactively registering the photo with the copyright office and sending a DMCA notice) that clearly weren't intended for this. The alternative is not to engage in a different form of violence, but rather to ignore it and continue on with your life.
Edit: To be clear, I'm aware that some of these victims lost their jobs. I did not mean to suggest there was no harm done. However, they lost their job due to the prudish culture that I originally referred to, not directly by the actions of the villain.
The alternative is not to engage in a different form of violence, but rather to ignore it and continue on with your life.
You and I have our beliefs about sexuality, and perhaps any one woman showing up on this website could elect to ignore it. But it's quite clear that Hunter was causing women real harm & suffering, regardless what your or my beliefs about sexuality are. Particularly considering he got people fired. I don't know about you, but someone getting me fired is not some little joke I can ignore.
One clear indication that this is not an appropriate dispute (...) is the fact that she had to rely on awkward legal maneuvers
I disagree. I believe that's a clear indication the legal system is currently catching up to technology, not that the law doesn't belong on the internet.
Perhaps we need to look at this from a different angle. Why can employers fire me for having a naked picture taken? Perhaps we need to roll back no-fault firing as well.
I think the comment was talking about changing social attitude more than anything else if I read it right. If we make it normal to have nude pictures on the Internet, then these sites will automatically lose steam.
Why can employers fire me for having a naked picture taken? Perhaps we need to roll back no-fault firing as well.
Why can people choose not to purchase from Chick-a-Fil because they dislike the anti-gay opinions of the owner? Perhaps we need to roll back no-fault failure to purchase chicken as well.
Meanwhile, back in a free society, people are allowed to freely associate with whoever they choose even if we disagree with their opinions.
> Meanwhile, back in a free society, people are allowed to freely associate with whoever they choose even if we disagree with their opinions.
BS. We are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of several criteria. Government agencies certainly cannot refuse service on arbitrary criteria, and minority groups throughout history have had to resort to the law due to the fact that oppressive majorities might be unfairly boycotting them.
There is no such thing as a "free society"; there are societies with different values and with different criteria as to who are fairly and unfairly victimized.
For the record, in most civilized countries at-will employment where you can be fired on the spot without compensation for no justification is considered to be a gross undermining of worker's rights.
> Meanwhile, back in a free society, people are allowed to freely associate with whoever they choose even if we disagree with their opinions.
Except employers are not free to hire and fire, even in weird societies where that's seen as a good idea. They're not allowed to discriminate against people with protected characteristics.
In this situation it's possible the employers are vulnerable to sexual discrimination lawsuit, because revenge porn websites target mostly women.
I'm well aware that the US is not a free society once you choose to engage in commerce. And as of next year, you won't even be free not to engage in commerce.
Ignoring it and continuing on with your life isn't an option if you have to worry that next time you apply for a job someone is going to search your name and find that picture.
This guy wasn't posting these pictures annonymously, he was including personal and identifying information so that it would come up if you searched their name and even their facebook timeline. You should also look past the daughter in the story, what about the teacher who was fired on the spot when the photo was posted? Not only was she fired, but she would be unable to work in that field ever again. How could she possibly ignore what happened?
However, they lost their job due to the prudish culture that I originally referred to, not directly by the actions of the villain.
Ah, so his villainy is rendered less villainous by this fact? His villainy is somehow not his responsibility, because his impact was indirect?
Or do you mean to suggest that the wronged women, instead of pursuing the man who targeted them EXPRESSLY TO RUIN THEIR LIVES should instead undertake the relatively trivial task of changing the moral values of an entire nation?
He didn't say Moore was less villain. He's saying Moore is not the only one to blame, and that can be understood: would you accept being fired because your boss saw a picture of you having a tennis game ? would you accept if it was a photo of a lunch with your friends ?
There is no reason a boss can fire you because of your private life.
This absolutely reveals a problem in society, and a problem with employee's rights and employers being able to fire people for things that are none of the employer's business.
But none of that changes that Moore and his henchmen are the primary villains here. Behind bars is the only place for that kind of malice.
...and if you are fired because someone sees your naked photo? If someone comes up to you in a store and says, "I've seen you naked?" Both of these were examples of the harassment women go through regularly after an event like this.
Stop right there - "...and if you're fired because someone sees your naked photo" by itself is a separate unexcusable problem that needs to be solved.
Someone seeing your naked photo should never, ever be an acceptable reason for firing someone, no matter where you work. The original article discusses on how to prevent the naked photos from being spread; but we also need to fix this issue as well.
> Courts don't exist to solve all disputes, surely.
Courts exist, among other things, to solve such relatively petty disputes as whether you were ripped off over a £50 TV, or whether people moved a fence an inch. The magnitude of harm here is clearly greater; I've yet to hear of someone otherwise stable being driven to suicide over a TV.
It's not sufficient support for the idea that the courts shouldn't address something to say that someone had to do some legal manoeuvring because it's not specifically covered yet.
> However, they lost their job due to the prudish culture that I originally referred to, not directly by the actions of the villain.
Why should that make a difference? He clearly was aware of the harm he was contributing to, in a fairly major way, and continued with it anyway. There was a clear line of cause and effect from his actions to the harm, that he was aware of. That this line was social rather than physical in nature strike me as an arbitrary distinction. If I put a bounty out on you, the line of effect is social rather than physical in nature as well; I didn't pull the trigger, it's just that I was talking to a greedy person who valued money more than your life.
It certainly belongs in court, just maybe not in a civil one. It's a criminal case. Well, damages for the victims (surely much more than the villains will ever be able to pay) may belong in a civil court, but these people also belong behind bars for a good long time.
If you're willing to ruin someone's life like that, you do not deserve to live in a way where you're capable of doing so.
The reason she had to rely on awkward legal maneuvers involving the DMCA is that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives websites like this one pretty broad immunity from legal action over everything except copyright infringement and federal criminal offences. Basically, she had to resort to a copyright infringement lawsuit because copyright holders are the only group with more lobbying power than online service providers.
The courts have apparently interpreted it broadly enough to bar people from getting an injunction requiring the site to take down the offending content when they would otherwise have a basis for doing so. There's a whole bunch of entirely legal online extortion businesses built on this simple fact; the most prominent lawyer fighting these revenge porn sites - Marc Randazza, who advised her - is actually doing so on behalf of one of them and so has incentive to preserve Section 230 of the CDA.
> To be clear, I'm aware that some of these victims lost their jobs. I did not mean to suggest there was no harm done. However, they lost their job due to the prudish culture that I originally referred to, not directly by the actions of the villain.
They did lose their job directly due to the actions of the villains. It was an organized attack to ruin some innocent person's life. The prudish society provides them the means, but let's not forget that these people are pure evil. There's not the slightest excuse or reason for what they did, other than pure, unadulterated malice. The nudity makes it easy, but when that tool is taken away from them (it certainly should), there are still plenty of other ways they can discredit, slander or ruin someone.
Prudish culture? What a pathetic excuse to save your worldview that entails disenfranchising people legally simply because your hyperbolic insinuation this litigation is another form of violence.
I understood this point to deal with the abuse of the judicial system and the belief that law enforcement has the same powers as portrayed in TV shows like CSI, not in the fact that we have a justice system in place.
Eh this is anti-American jibber jabber. Where is this fantastic enlightened country of which you speak? So you mean to say in the UK, Norway, or whatever mythical country you are implying about, no women there would be upset to have people surreptitiously posting nude pictures of them?
I call shenanigans on this and all the other nonsense anti-American rants.
You should really get out more. And I mean out of America.
Nobody likes private pictures of them posted without their consent, but in countries were topless sunbathing is the norm and nudity is a non-issue, women would be upset as in being pissed off, not as in "oh my god, my life is ruined".
I don't see what I have said that implies I am whatever it is you are implying ... Maybe I am just poking real holes in thus argument and you don't like it so you play this game? :(
You are being too simplistic with this nude beach stuff. What occurs on a nude beach or to people that attend such a beach may be different from what happens to individuals away from such beaches even in the same country.
Stronger labour laws in many european countries would prevent most people from getting fired for having nude pictures of themselves published on the Internet as it wouldn't be seen as a valid cause for being fired. A few european countries has criminal laws against shaming. But yeah, it would still suck for the people involved.
You are apparently not aware of the fact that for the better part of 15 years, Norwegian girls and boys have been using various websites to post nude pictures of themselves to the public. En masse. We literally have a nude library of most of my own generation and many following mine.
There are shame sites causing pains for girls here, too, but we have no such culture of which your speak where nude pictures is some big deal (once out of high school.)
No. Though I obviously can't speak for either of the folks above, I read their reactions as them not caring whether other people saw nude pictures of them. Instead, they care about other folks' reactions to those pictures and that is what the above replies want to guard against. If the latter (the reaction by others) wasn't negative, the former (the posting of nude photos) wouldn't have a stigma that the jerks in the linked article could exploit.
In decent societies nudity isn't even something considered worth taking pictures over. Try visiting Austria for example during the summer and taking a swim. Good luck find any non-naked beaches (at least partial), where anyone cares.
Not everyone in Austria takes part in nude beaches, etc, etc ... Is this really where we are at HN? We are going to pretend that big bad America is the only place in the world where there are any people that assign any sort of charge to sexuality?
> Presumably both of you will now go ahead and post naked pictures of yourself since you don't care if anyone sees them?
Don't get your hopes up. Everyone has a lot to say on this topic and why 'Our culture is bad. Everyone should grow up - having your nudes online is not a big deal', but they'll never deliver themselves.
Well. 12% of the photos of the victims that she was trying to locate were self uploads so there are people who not only don't care if their nudity gets published. They actually want it.
I do not disagree with you, but in my eyes a sex-positive culture will not prevent the Hunter Moores of the world from making other people's lives miserable. Shaming over nudity is just one example, one way.
I'm glad the FBI & judicial system appear to have been effective in this story. The fundamental reason this sort of thing happens (again, in my eyes) is because the internet is still a pretty lawless place; that's the root of what happened here.
I don't know, can't really see the slut-shaming working to this extent here in the UK, let alone other parts of Europe. Hell, Italy had an ex-pornstar as a member of parliament for some time IIRC.
Right, because the UK & much of the EU already have that positive culture. You're standing on the mountain, we're ten thousand feet below in a valley, and you're asking why we can't just hop on up to the peak to join you quicklike :)
I find the whole thing baffling. I find it genuinely difficult to understand how any actor was anything but sympathetic to the women in the story. It brings a whole new light to the idea of 'revenge porn', which I had always assumed was just a way to cause someone some embarrassment and would be quickly forgotten.
The parliament is a sideshow. What happens to an average person in their lives is a totally different story.
But I do find it entertaining that you believe there are no Italian misogynists that would use nude photos or videos against a woman. It's not naive at all. :)
>> But I do find it entertaining that you believe there are no Italian misogynists that would use nude photos or videos against a woman. It's not naive at all. :)
Who said that? Certainly not me. I wonder where you read that?
I said they would find it hard for slut shaming to work to the same extent - i.e. someone's life ruined over a stolen picture.
Ireland has been a Christian country since the 800s or thereabouts. It legalised contraception sometime in the 80s, divorce in the 90s and will have gay marriage some time this decade. None of these things are compatible with Christianity as it has been understood for most of its existence.
Culture can move very fast. In 100 years if there's anyone close enough to look at us as people rather than precursors they will be revolted that we ate dead animal flesh and stuck children in rooms eight hours a day five days a week and sent them back if they left.
And what moved the culture? Legislation. The very same legislation that the Internet libertarian crew who tell us to "change the culture rather than using the men with guns" generally oppose. So, yeah, that kind of proves the point.
No, plenty of times the legislation is pushed through in spite of culture. Look at the banning of smoking in pubs and restaurants. When that was passed in Britain, it was considered hugely out of step with people's attitudes. Now it seems perfectly normal, but that kind of change came long before the cultural change.
I'd say the same about the first legal change to allow gay sexual relationships. If you'd conducted a poll back in 1967 and asked people whether they think homosexuality should be legal, they would have told you absolutely not. The fact that the law changed and it didn't start raining frogs from the sky convinced people afterwards that it was okay.
Much as it pains me to praise politicians, they are sometimes ahead of the public on issues and take seriously some kind of moral commitment to make society fairer even when it is unpopular.
it was considered hugely out of step with people's attitudes
.. as expressed via the newspapers and (some) television. It's certainly true that for a politician to do the right thing, it's necessary for them to go against "public opinion", but I'm not sure that "public opinion" and the actual opinions of members of the public are the same thing. In fact, the ban was introduced in 2007, by which point only 25% of people smoked, down from over 40% of men and 35% of women in 1980 and over 60% of men and 40% of women in 1960. It's just as easy to argue that the ban was only introduced once smokers were in a clear and shrinking minority, hardly an example of great political bravery. EDIT: a poll from 2005 shows 73% of people in support of a ban when given a yes/no choice, although this declines if compromise options such as legally enforced no-smoking areas are offered: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/43
If you believed the newspapers, you'd think that most British people want to withdraw from the EU (despite voting in favour of the common market in the only referendum we ever had on it), bring back capital punishment (despite it being long gone and there having been no popular campaign for its return) and deport a couple of million people for being insufficiently British (despite the fact that nobody has ever voted for this in large enough numbers to even start thinking about it; the Tories are only against increases in immigration and even this moderation of their past stance was only enough to get them into government via a coalition).
Without wishing to romanticise the good sense of the electorate, generally most people are more reasonable than the media makes them look. I think that's compatible with the notion that politicians follow the prevailing culture (possibly because, via doorstep campaigning and MP's surgeries they actually speak to real people every now and then) and it's the media that makes things look otherwise. It's true that going against the media does require some bravery on the part of our politicians, but I think past experience shows that when the politicians are in touch with what people actually want, it's the media that has to change course and adapt its view of "public opinion" to reality.
> It legalised contraception sometime in the 80s, divorce in the 90s and will have gay marriage some time this decade. None of these things are compatible with Christianity as it has been understood for most of its existence.
"Incompatible"? No, those things are perfectly compatible. Don't believe everything the fundamentalists feed you. Christianity is not first and foremost about the sex stuff; it's about the love stuff. True, gay marriage is new and controversial, but contraception has not been much of a problem outside the Vatican.
Also, you make it sound like Ireland is somehow very progressive, but they're actually extremely conservative on these things. There are other countries that were Christian long before the 800s that have no problem with any of these things, nor with euthanasia or abortion (within reasonable limits).
In reality you're right. Seeing someone naked shouldn't be the end of the world - no one should be fired for nudes appearing online somewhere. No ones life should end. That said, this guy in a total sleeze, and knew that (a) he had no rights to do so (b) its morally wrong (c) it had a good chance of ruining peoples lives.
While we need to fix the first problem I think (cultural taboo about nudity) what sleezebag did is still wrong, and not fixing the first problem.
I find it hard to even muster anger at Moore and his followers. Moore is likely a psychopath, his followers are psychopaths and/or 13-year-olds, and it's hard for me to see those organisms as anything but a devastating force of nature. They need to be stopped from hurting people, but my emotional response to them is much like my response to malaria or HIV.
No, the people who make me angry are the ones like that principal.
Moore certainly seems in serious need of psychological help. But the victim-blaming reaction of the other protagonists (the principal, the local police department...) is just terrible. Clearly, Moore and his followers are not the only ones with a clear lack of empathy.
What I'm surprised about is that there did not seem to be any consequence to his lack of response to a DMCA takedown notice. Is this not enforceable short of a lawsuit?
Yes. The word "vitim blaming" gets thrown around a lot and used in places where it isn't appropriate, but the (female, no less!) police officer's reaction was a textbook example.
> A good first step would be to go after the psychopaths who run campaigns like these. A good second step would be to abolish the cultural norms that allow sexuality and nudity to be used as a weapon.
Absolutely. The people who fire someone over simply having some photo online, carry part of the blame here.
But the harassers themselves should all be in prison, and pay their victims for lost income and emotional damage. They are the true evil here, and should be treated as such.
This is largely a useless point though. All societies have a relative perspective around shame and nudity. Given that relativity claiming one to be too conservative or too liberal is a useless exercise. What matters here is that this is done by people to people within the same culture and is thus very distasteful.
I think that's a stretch - it would be like saying war is really a good thing because of the (possibly good) ending side effects.
If I may recall the relevant operetta on HN:
CANDIDE:
Objection! What about war?
PANGLOSS:
War!
Though war may seem a bloody curse
It is a blessing in reverse
When canon roar -- Both rich and poor
By danger are united!
(Till every wrong is righted!)
Philosophers make evident
The point that I have cited
'Tis war makes equal -- as it were --
The noble and the commoner
Thus war improves relations!
(Pangloss tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. It must be the best possible world, because it was created by an all powerful/knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide
Actually, supporting someone for shaming women because it furthers the goal of creating a society in which women are no longer shamed is more like supporting serial killers because the the publicity they draw helps people feel more strongly about the sanctity of human life.
"it would be like saying war is really a good thing because of the (possibly good) ending side effects."
>it would be like saying war is really a good thing because of the (possibly good) ending side effects.
War can be a good thing for that very reason. It can be a form of politics that is used to avoid further and larger loss of life. However, this only works if the war is not drawn out.
Art of War (and relevant analyses) are good references on this topic. Art of War specifically talks about avoiding long and drawn out campaigns, and let's just say that a few recent examples come to mind.
He's certainly putting the issue on the agenda by highlighting the ridiculousness of these cultural hangups. It's more like a very big, malicious security exploit than an act of heroism, I think.
Hunter Moore is a talentless piece of shit who will do anything to be famous and to have access to the in-crowd. He also has no impulse control, a huge drug problem, and will probably be dead by 30.
He makes Sean Parker look like a respectable businessman. That's how bad he is.
It seems ridiculous to me that the existence of a naked photo (with no context) would be grounds for firing a teacher. It might not be real and, even if, all it proves is that she has a human body, which is not exactly news.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I agree; this country needs to grow the fuck up.
It doesn't have anything to do with growing up. You have to go for the root cause, which is religious conservatism.
Think about it: why can European TV channels show nudity (and sometimes even porn) during daytime? Is it because Europeans are more "grown up" or is it because they have more sane, liberal values and worldviews?
Immaturity (in the aggregate) is an outgrowth and cause of cultural degradation, which is more of a problem in the US than in European countries in which, yes, people tend (on average) to be more socially balanced and adult. Religious conservatism is one expression of an immature mindset (an imaginary friend who rains buttfire on your ideological enemies by the millions). Hunter Moore does not appear religious, but shows a different expression of the pervasive immaturity.
After the 1980s, the anti-intellectual undercurrent (that exists in all societies) metastasized through the resurgent conservative movement (Reagan Revolution). Combine this with economic forces that are (through no fault of their own, for many people) delaying adolescence into what used to be full adulthood and you get a stupid, immature, brain-dead culture.
The ironic thing is that most societies in history at most points in time would look at the presence of porn on TV itself as cultural degradation, and the opposition to it as a sign of maintaining proper cultural standards.
Which is not to say that view is right, but it illustrates that throwing around a term like "cultural degradation" at all can be quite problematic.
This would be the same Europe where millions of people were murdered by their own governments within living memory, that had a functioning Fascist state (a real one) until 1975 and Communist slave states up until 1989, and that has has active "ethnic cleansing" going on right now? That Europe?
Clearly this is a troll account since it was created one hour ago. But I'll take the bait and respond anyway. Yes, the same Europe where millions of people were murdered by their own governments. What about the ethnic cleansing that the US did in Latin America during the 80s? Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Can you please explain why not showing boobies on TV is a sign of "cultural degradation" and all the other insults that michaelochurch was flinging around but (e.g.) murdering 80 or so million people is not?
Exactly, this level of over propping up of Europe and anti-Americanism s ridiculous. I suppose Alan Turing would have thought of Europe as quite "sane" on sexuality as everyone seems to!
Nothing to do with anti Americanism. To 'us' (in the EU in this case) it just seems weird that when there is acted sex and fuck-and-such in a movie during daytime on normal (not pay tv) television, in the US this is considered porn, is beeped away or not aired in the first place. You don't call that prude; while no-one here would blink an eye, young or old, over there it needs to be censored? How is that anti-Americanism and how is it not weird?
But isn't that just blah blah and not the point here? The constant boogeyman in this thread is that Moore's abuse based upon sexual mores would be impossible in Europe. I think that is nonsense.
It is part of the point; if it would be normal (which it is here) to see breasts, this instance would not be as big a deal as it is. You would not lose your job for it nor would anyone care or even point it out if it's just breasts or ass. Hence making Moore his business impossible unless he can get spread shots or sex shots; people who take/film those can expect to have them surface these days. If Moore doesn't, someone else will. That's also a point a point here; we live in these times; stuff you take on a digital camera cannot be considered private in a lot of cases (unless you take it off, print it on a non internet connected photoprinter and put it in an album and then purge (overwrite with 0s) the camera and printer). You have to know that before you are putting pics of your breasts (or more) on computers. You'll forget about them, computers die (but the hds are taken out after you throw them away and can be looked at), images get uploaded in the cloud, etc. If you are a prude then make sure your pics don't get taken in that fashion; even this example; why didn't she remove the breast one and kept the rest?
Moore is wrong for not removing images which are contested to be authorized by the subjects, but further; if he doesn't 1000s of others will and do; there are many of these sites a quick Google search shows. He just has a bigger mouth in the press.
In short; get used to this happening to your pics and indeed, I do no believe Moore would have success in the EU. He would have to hire porn actresses to play girls and boys doin' it behind/in the church and make it look real to get any kind of 'oh my word!' feedback here. In that from a limited audience as there are not that many believers anymore.
A lot of people would still consider this extremely embarassing. It wouldn't be as devastating in most of Europe as it would be in the US, but it'd still hurt.
But no matter what the cultural mores are, it still needs to be very illegal, and these psychos need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And if the law doesn't extend far enough to put them behind bars, the law needs to be changed to stop this.
Yeah, it's not impossible. It would be less devastating, but it'd still hurt. What he did is a gross violation no matter how enlightened your culture is.
America is sex-negative? I wish. We've sexualized every inch of women's bodies to the point where we've started sexualizing empty spaces around them (thigh gap).
And nice derailing into "men are hurt by society toooooo!!!" Perverts aren't good, and these days they're called rapists. And there are a lot of them. But maybe you think rape/sexual assault only happens in dark alleys the woman probably shouldn't have been walking down anyway..
The women in question are considered "bad" because of a naked picture, presumably showing their sexuality. I would call that sex-negative.
How can the word "slut" be considered a slur in a sex-positive society?
Now, perhaps your point is that it is sex-positive, but only for men. The inequity of sex-acceptability is this: men have their status increased by the act of sex, and women have their status decreased by the act of sex. (Even this is problematic, but it works in general.)
The question is this: is the right answer to normalize having sex with multiple partners so that the woman's status is not decreased by sexual activity, or is it to decrease the man's status by not being constrained to a monogamous relationship?
Consider the gay male culture: within the culture, having sex is normalized -- it does not decrease one's status to have had sex with just about anyone. (this is problematized by AIDS, but stick with me.) A culture of sex-positivity may look like this: yes, it's highly sexualized, but within the culture there isn't a taboo of sex.
A sex-negative culture, on the other hand, places shame on the participants of sex except within rigid boundaries. Is this better than sex-positivity? I argue no.
The US culture, with respects to women, is heavily sexualized but isn't sex-positive.
You hit too many sore spots for me to not suspect that you are trolling, but I'll give it a shot anyway. You obviously missed my point.
Yes, the USA is sex-negative. Some examples: People are afraid to talk about sex, even with their children. It is not uncommon for young adults to be afraid of having sex because of the reactions of their parents. Many grownups have trouble expressing their sexual preferences, and hence go decades without being sexually fulfilled, even when married. Sex education in schools meets strong opposition in many places due to the fear of sexuality, with the consequence of teen pregnancies and rampant STIs. Then there's this post, where people lose their jobs because a naked photo of them showed up the internet. Women who publicly express their sexuality in any form are shamed, outside of a few limited contexts such as seedy nightclubs and advertising. I think these exampes are sufficient to define and demonstrate the extent of the problem.
And yes, men are in fact also affected by this sex-negativity. Male sexuality is considered dangerous, of which your instinctive derailment into the crime of rape is a perfect example. This is an area where there is a surprising level of symmetry between the genders. Men are allowed more leeway in their choices and numbers of sex partners, but that's about it.
When it comes to sexual expression outside of the norm, which is the preference for broad shoulders, big tits and missionary or doggy-style pounding, the pervert/slut label is thrown around all the time in contexts where it shouldn't be used. Oral sex was considered a perversion only two decades ago. Anal sex still is, to an extent. Get beyond that into the realm of nonmonogamy, fetishism or bondage, which are defining elements of many couples' sex lives, and all bets are off.
The story kind of jumps around and I read it in parts, but I'm confused about the outcome. He basically went into hiding and suffered no consequences?
What worries me more deeply is how society provides people like Moore with the ammunition they need to terrorize women. One victim complained that she would lose her children over the nude pictures. Even if they were actually of her, why does someone have to fear the government taking away their kids simply because they chose to appear naked in front of a camera? That doesn't make someone a bad parent. It doesn't really make them anything.
Why do we make people fear the govenrment AND their exes AND crazy people on the Internet? As society, we're doing a piss-poor job providing protection to people that need it.
He is under current investigation by the FBI, from what I understood.
I also find it extremely disturbing that someone would lose their job over this. I don't know many other democratic countries how would have this immediate reaction, and would certainly at least investigate first.
Well, I agree the narrative s a bit hard to follow. I doubt anyone will lose ther kids because of that ... That is a very hard thing to do in the US. You essentially need categorical evidence if being a crackhead and even then ...
I've read some totally crazy stories about people losing their kids in the US. Photos of breastfeeding or bathing (child porn!), playing outside (irresponsible!), and who knows what else. And that was without existing divorce and custody issues.
Rootkits exist that survive OS reinstalls. I don't know how prevalent they are, but if you expect a target to try to reinstall their operating system to attempt to purge an infection it is possible to counter this.
Then replace the hard drive? I don't know of any viruses that could hide itself in your case fans so I'm inclined to think that buying a whole new computer is an overreaction.
> Researchers at Core Security Technologies demonstrated the techniques at CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver earlier this month, compromising one virtual machine running Windows and another running OpenBSD.
The attack relies on modifying the BIOS of the target machine; startup firmware that is booted from a chip on the motherboard. Anybody wishing to use this kind of exploit in the wild would need to already have low-level access to the machine in order to make such a change. As the BIOS code is executed every time the system starts up, even if disks are wiped or replaced, this presents an attractive proposition for hackers.
I agree that it's unlikely, but it's nice to see someone actually saying "nuke it"(although "Nuke it" should probably be just "wipe the drive and re-install"), rather than fiddling around with combofix and malwarebytes.
Don't forget that some people don't have OS discs, they have a "Host Protected Area" partition. Maybe rootkits and malware can infect that?
You know you can run a program which updates your BIOS?
Therefore, a hacker can write a program to replace your BIOS with something that looks completely the same, except it also reinfects your computer each month.
This isn't paranoia. It's inevitable. I'm surprised it's not more well-known.
There's a lot of persistent, executable storage on modern computers. I don't know how often attackers take advantage of these, but if you suspect a threat against you is capable of taking advantage of them, then you may want to be more thorough. I kind of think the technician was overreacting too, but I don't know what kinds of rootkits are publicly available for any attacker to copy and paste these days.
The issue here (and my reaction was pertaining to that) is that no number of hardware replacements will make the problem go away. The solution is to use hardware that can't be infected in this way. If an OS can infect the firmware in this fashion, it's a security hole by design. Replacement by other crappy HW is a worthless step.
I was at a security seminar and one of the speakers mentioned a (theoretical?) BIOS virus that copied itself to the NIC when it detected the BIOS was being reflashed, then back again afterwards.
Yep, there are a few network cards, intel among them, that have pretty sophisticated firmwares that can be used to either stash stuff, or infect directly through vectors like DMA. Thankfully though, for home users, desktops tend to have cheap crappy cards with no such firmware update capabilities.
EFI partition, BIOS, other nonvolatile system memory? If it gets root level access it can hide anywhere there are a few KB. Even less than that will do if you're just putting a hook to instruct the computer to re-download the virus if it is detected that it has been removed.
There are lots of things that use updatable firmware that can read and write data in interesting places. Portability is often an issue, so I guess it boils down to motivations of the writer.
I haven't had to deal with a virus for some time but the number of times I've formatted a hard drive and started again far outweigh the number of times I've removed viruses. These days, when machines don't come with the OS on a disk - often don't even come with the drivers on a disk - buying new tech could well be the cheaper option.
If you're buying a computer with Windows installed, then it ought to come with a product key. Just download the appropriate ISO from Microsoft directly, burn it to disc or extract to a flash drive. For the drivers, just go to the manufacturer's website and download the appropriate drivers and burn that to another disc or copy to another flash drive.
Cost $1 for two discs, or $10 for two flash drives < Cost of a new computer
Even better, since you seem to be reformatting quite often, once you have the computer configured how you want, create a clone of the hard drive. That way you don't have to manually do everything over again.
I don't get viruses! If I'm dealing with a virus, it's on some other bugger's machine.
And they probably haven't even created the drivers disk let alone a restore disk. And what sort of idiot downloads an ISO onto a virus riddled machine?
Just a thought: if every American here railing against the ridiculously prudish American culture could pretty please keep in mind that if they offer a service that for instance bans people from posting pictures or distributing apps because "boobies", you are part of the problem.
This is often so easily dismissed on HN as "my product, my rules", when it is actually a political statement of support for, or at least surrender to, the notion that nudity is something wrong and shameful, especially for women.
You wanna solve the problem, start by cleaning up your own act, and take the anti-"porn" provisions out of your TOS, and stop crucifying your users for posting ordinary holiday snapshots because, "boobies".
This should be blatantly obvious, but thank you for pointing it out. I think that many people are blind to social expectations, taboos and their social context.
I think Paul Graham's essay about mental fashions is a great summary of this type of mental stretching, but most people fall far from the philosophic ideal of being able to see society's unwritten rules from a distance.
At some point can't she say "so there's a picture of my left tit on the net, and?"
Also I don't understand why people like Moore haven't been sued into the ground for profiting from copyright violation.
(edit: I mean other than the whole upfront cost aspect, but given how frickin' insane copyright penalties are, you would think some or other lawyer would take it on a no-win no-fee basis.)
Sure, she can say that. Some professions don't welcome people who have nude photographs of themselves on the Internet - teachers, for example.
It seems baffling to me that her partner would consider leaving her, but the article says it was a concern.
Or sometimes people at vulnerable points in their lives are outed. Or not even outed, just plain blackmailed.
It's very easy to say "just shrug it off", but the numbers of people completing suicide (I've found 3 names in a very quick web search) shows that it's not something that people can just get over.
Those links are about very different cases of children being blackmailed. What's at issue in the link is leaked pictures of grown women.
Clearly the behaviour of the people involved in this is abhorrent (for multiple reasons) but there has to be a point where you stop caring. Moore is not the only asshole in the story by a long stretch. He might not even be the worst.
I mean, if the boyfriend thought about leaving her for a second then he's not worth worrying about, he's an asshole. Whoever fired the kindergarten teacher likewise. The real story is not the 'revenge porn', it's the morons that are so upset by it that they fire someone, or that anyone would take kids away from their mother over it, or really any of the societal bullshit about nudity.
edit: And seriously, some professions don't like taking people who have been naked on the internet? Those professions need to grow the f*ck up.
Well, yes, his revenge porn only works because other people are arseholes. But it's because all those other people are arseholes that the victims can't just shrug it off.
No, it doesn't. If the woman you are with has pictures stolen and posted to the internet, and you are anything but supportive, you're a worthless human being. If your friends are somehow abusing you for it and you do anything but tell them where to get off, see above.
It doesn't matter if you're going to break up with her the next day or you hate the very sight of the woman, it's basic human decency.
I tend to be on the opinion that all forms of art are in the public domain by default, unless explicitely stated. So, there would be no breach of copyright here.
However, there is a clear breach on privacy rights, and I'm scared no one in the article or here seems to think that this is the reason why Moore should be prosecuted. The author says than more than half of her contacts are on the site against their own will, for something that is private to their life. That alone is not OK. Copyrights have nothing to do here.
>> I tend to be on the opinion that all forms of art are in the public domain by default, unless explicitely stated. So, there would be no breach of copyright here.
This is factually incorrect.
There is copyright on any and all creations unless explicitly licensed otherwise. This is under the Berne convention. In the US you can register copyrighted works but only to access the higher punitive damages for infringement. It became the law in the US that all works were auto-copyrighted when the Berne convention was signed into law.
>> Copyrights have nothing to do here.
They do, it's stolen* works that are not licensed to the site, and as the escalation of penalties under copyright law has been so huge recently, it may be the best weapon to take these people down.
*(I don't usually like the use of the word "steal" or "stolen" in conjunction with copyright, but where it involves actually breaking in to people's mail accounts and taking things I don't necessarily think it's inaccurate)
Yeah, I was more stating what I think should be the norm (copyright is opt-in, not opt-out). Under the current system, this is clearly copyright violation... but why is it the first thing that comes to mind to build a defense ? How come there is a process for rapidly defending your copyrights, and not something similar for your private life ?
Of course I know the answers. I'm just sad about that.
I agree with most of your comment, except for the opt-in part. If I send you a picture of my vacation, I'm not giving you unlimited license to profit from it as you please.
In the case in question the picture wasn't even published or sent to another individual, so various computer breaking-and-entering laws would also apply to the perp that did that, but for people that get stuff from them and re-publish... I guess we could have a digital equivalent of a handling stolen goods charge, but copyright seems as good a law as any - there is no permission to copy.
The case against Hunter Moore makes me uncomfortable.
Consider a very similar hypothetical site, is-anyone-up-for-busting-corruption.com. Much like isanyoneup.com, this site also posts media of people engaging in actions they do not wish to be seen engaged in. When media is posted, it is accompanied by contact information for the employers of the people involved, and the desire is expressed for those people to be fired and their lives ruined.
I can't say I like the precedent the attacks on Hunter Moore are setting, even if he is a great big jerk.
Any country that claims to operate based on the rule of law would recognise that a site like the one you describe would be seeking to deny natural justice to those depicted.
I have one weird reservation - her daughter is/was 24, but doesn't seem to have been involved a whole lot? Or maybe it's just written that way on purpose?
Maybe it's just me, but leaving someone to mope seems a little like you're treating them as more a child than an adult.
The author claimed to have been a private eye in the 80s, and presumably knew how to investigate with some degree of success. It's not clear how much experience, capacity or energy her victimized daughter had in this time of great distress.
Of course I'd want to on some level, but I'd also want to make sure that even if I helped I'd also be imparting the skills for them to accomplish things on their own.
I think I view enabling a child's independence as a parent's most important job, particularly in light of the often random and occasionally capricious nature of death.
That's a nice sentiment, but when your child's life is being systematically destroyed by pathologically perverted harassers then you just deal with the situation.
Your argument is a little like saying that the best time to teach first aid is when your kid has a gaping chest wound.
Well, no, if the "kid" is 24-years old then assistance and support is required, but 'taking over' seems reasonable only if they're in a coma after an accident.
After all, it's their life, and any decisions on how/wether to proceed and what to avoid are completely theirs to make - they may take advice from parents, or they also may not want their parents to have any say whatsover in how to handle it.
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to this point, but I think it's frequently harder to deal with emotionally fraught things like this for oneself than for another. So long as you're there to do the same for others, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to let someone help you with it.
>People claimed to be afraid of him. He had no fear oflawsuits; he knew a victim would be unlikely to sue because a civil suit would cost $60,000 (according to attorney Marc Randazza)
Why do we allow that kind if situation to persist? What can be done about it?
If you trust in the feasibility of anonymous currency and anonymous internet hosting/browsing (we are close to both already via Tor and Bitcoin/blind mixes), then get ready for a world with assassination markets. It really doesn't matter what you think about it.
I see a number of advantages to de facto anarchy, Hunter Moore getting offed is only one.
You're so cyberpunk! You think the world wouldn't react to an assassination market? You think the internet wouldn't be changed to disallow such a thing? Think again.
"An armed society is a polite society." Not wisdom I personally agree with, but I'm kind of surprised to see HN dissent from the ideals of one of the patron saints of American libertarianism!
Well then libertarians should stop complaining about the militarization of our police forces, since they're clearly just fighting kindness with kindness.
That the poster is expert at trolling, that is, very accomplished as a troll OR that the poster is an expert in understanding trolls and can thus speak with authority about them.
I'd assume he's just a botmaster that happens to automate creepy scanning of compromised email accounts for such images, but the fact that 2 of the victims knew each other suggests that he could be doing targeted phishing on new targets that he identifies while browsing accounts.
I'm not familiar with Black Lotus, but looking at their page for http://www.blacklotus.net/protect/protection-for-gear suggests that they basically act as a proxy for a customer's service, preventing malicious traffic from burdening the server. Because whatever goes in or out must pass through them first, they can decide not to allow certain things out if they are not comfortable with it.
"Gary Jones" is/was likely a script kiddie who spread malware and carefully looked for nude pictures on the hard drives and accounts he gained access to. Basically he went after low-hanging fruit. If he did target anyone, it was probably phishing ("click here!") through Facebook messages or emails.
Answer to the last question is: probably because he was crminal and an asshole and tech people tend to be disagreeable with that. Paying customer or not. We are not lawyers.
> Fear entered my life. I received verbal attacks on Twitter, computer viruses and death threats. ... This prompted me to make Moore's home address public on Twitter.
And people wonder why death threats on the internet is not taken serious by the police. If the victims of death threat do not care, then the police won't. The result is that death threats then become normal on online forums, and real death threats gets ignored.
twitter's safe picture algorithm is a fail in my experience, it fails to tag these gross gore and nsfw pictures but it tags all the pictures uploaded by fernando alonso formula 1 racer as nsfw by default, I never understood that.
https://twitter.com/alo_oficial
click on any twitpicture and you will get a warning.
make sure you have your profile set to not view tagged pictures by default, "tweet media settings"
I always found this annoying being a fernando alonso fan.
I'm pretty familiar with the DMCA and I'm not 100% sure that I could keep it straight with the prospect of my personal and professional reputation crashing down around me because of some jackass illegally cracking into an account I owned and blasting out personal data.
Since we're obviously talking about a very determined scumbag, it'd be too easy to just host outside the US. Copyright law often does apply in this kind of situation, but it's still not a great solution. Need more attention to privacy rights.
What's really sick is the personality cult around this creep, even after the end of IAU. I had originally assumed that the "I love Hunter" posts that appear on the Internet on the topic were him-- he's a troll; trolls do that-- but apparently he has real-life fans.
It's basically the Shawn Parker story. No real accomplishments, but active participation in the party scene leads to high status. If this current incarnation of the VC-funded bubble hasn't crashed, in 3 years he'll be part of the "tech" in-crowd and people here will be discussing his new venture capital fund.
I, for one, will never take investment from any VC firm that employs Hunter Moore as a Managing Partner.
> What's really sick is the personality cult around this creep
Yeah, I just had a look at his Twitter, there's a lot of girls sending him naked pictures and telling him how much they love him, and a bunch of sycophants avidly defending him (in a highly misogynistic manner, natürlich).
> there's a lot of girls sending him naked pictures and telling him how much they love him
Some women just have really broken status filters. They're attracted to guys with high status, and ignore the fact that he achieved that through evil means. It's the same thing that causes women to fall in love with convicted murderers serving life sentences.
From his vice interview:
A lot of people send the naked pictures to get jobs in the adult industry, too. But the one thing they have in common is they’re fucking retarded. That’s the similarity. They’re just stupid people. All I really do is take advantage of them; it’s just them being fucking retarded.
> If this current incarnation of the VC-funded bubble hasn't crashed, in 3 years he'll be part of the "tech" in-crowd and people here will be discussing his new venture capital fund.
> I, for one, will never take investment from any VC firm that employs Hunter Moore as a Managing Partner.
Surely, there's no chance of that actually happening? He's going to end up bankrupt behind bars, right?
> Jill became hysterical, repeating, "Oh, my God. No. Oh, my God. No."
This is, obviously, the reaction of someone who fears repercussions from others. And this is for completely harmless acts (taking nude photos), which almost everyone does these days. And with good reason. Society in the US clamps down hard on people (women to a greater degree, but also men) who have the audacity to express their sexuality. That this expression was in no way intended for the public, makes no difference. Once it becomes publicly known, you are a slut (or a pervert) and harshly punished. Perverts are no good, and sluts are worse. This cultural norm is the only reason this type of shaming has any effect.
But really, we are all sluts and perverts. A good first step would be to go after the psychopaths who run campaigns like these. A good second step would be to abolish the cultural norms that allow sexuality and nudity to be used as a weapon.
If you look at "alternative" sexual societies like swingers' clubs or BDSM communities, you will often hear the word "pervert" or "slut" used in a positive sense, the way homosexuals are reclaiming literally every derogatory term used about their sexual identity. Most people in these communities are very aware and careful regarding the reactions of outside society if it became known what they do in their bedrooms, but the capability to make them feel bad about themselves for acts of nudity or sex is often completely absent.