Candidly: the publication of the Weiner "selfies" wasn't a high water mark for "journalism" anyways. Media outlets could have authenticated the photos and then published the simple facts of what had happened. Instead, those outlets applied their own morals and judgement to the situation, made their own decision that Weiner was an asshole, and punished him by repeatedly and gratuitously humiliating him. Maybe that shouldn't have been O.K. The public interest in the actual photos was, let's be honest, pornographic.

I would say that releasing true facts about people with documentary evidence is journalism. What else would it be?

(2) If it is, so what? If any kind of publication is "journalism", than "journalism" isn't a free pass.

The reality is that to the extent that lascivious photos are "journalism", then we recognize different degrees of "journalism"; it's not a binary state.

Moreover, between laws against theft, and laws against copyright violation, I'm unsure how this isn't a solved problem, or why "revenge porn" sites are deserving of special legislation.

What is true is that speech and expression must receive enormous deference, and what is also generally believed to be true is that the content and ideas animating speech can't be the basis for allowing or denying it.

It could potentially be categorized as 'obscene', but that's true (or false) of a given image regardless of how it was obtained or how it's distributed. If porn sites are still legal in the state of California (they are, right?), then so should images on this site be. If they're being displayed unlawfully, on grounds that they were illegal obtained, or are being illegally distributed, then I don't understand why a successful prosecution couldn't be had on those grounds already.

Different states, different extortion statutes, but the California construction seems to be a common one.

The crime isn't "speech"; it's coercion.

Similar dumbasses who are more sly about extracting money from their sites might be undone by other simple legal issues, such as red-flag knowledge that the content they're hosting is stolen, or (as mentioned upthread) that the content itself is facially illegal, for instance because it depicts minors.

Criminalizing or otherwise prohibiting revenge porn sites on a conceptual level, rather than targeting the sites dumb enough to try to cash in, is a trickier issue that's currently being confronted by state legislatures; it wouldn't be shocking to see one of the resulting statutes eventually end up before SCOTUS, sad as that sounds.

But I'm not seeing other issues you mention as being relevant, stolen material in particular. Weren't the pentagon papers, wikileaks and snowdens NSA files all stolen material?

From reading the Slate article, they mention the new "revenge porn law" specifically, and then list other charges. The contents of the site could have been anything -- credit card numbers, blackmail information, etc., etc., and the CA legislature would still have the exact same case that they have -- extortion.

I suppose I glommed onto your argument because I assumed (from your other post) that you'd been following it, but I think that the implications of a 'revenge porn' law didn't actually come into play here, which sort of makes whatever point I had -- that there's no purpose for it.

Whatever implications the first amendment has here, origination shouldn't play a part in it. If the images are obscene, that can be determined independently of how they were obtained or distributed. If they violate someone's personal copyright, that's an independent claim. If they violate local pornography statutes, that's again, a separate crime.

What it seems to me is that we've taken a number of things that were already illegal and drafted up a new set of feel-good measures that make them illegal under a different heading. Perhaps the net result is in sentencing, but that seems about as efficient to me as "hate" crime sentencing, where we'll end up with mandatory minimums and such.

Anyway, sorry for pestering, you just seemed to have more knowledge on the matter than the Slate article, and I thought you'd implied that there were free speech implications.

Nonsense. I read your blog post; you begin by asking readers to imagine an alternative reality where someone engaged in briebery is expose d by a journalist (despite the briber wishing that such activity would remain private), and then draw a false equivalence between bribery and exposure of one's body in a photograph. The differentce is that while bribery is a crime in most jurisdictions, taking a revealing photograph (or being the subject of one taken by someone else) is not a crime in any of the jurisdictions that apply here. So your public interest argument goes up in smoke.

You go on to draw a comparison with Anthony Wiener. But given that a) he is occupying public office while b) sending unsolicited pictures of a sexual nature to random women he encountered on the internet, that isn't equivalent either. There is a public-interest argument to be made about the unwisdom of him sending out sexy pictures of himself (albeit a limited one; I think most people were more offended by his persistent cheating on his wife than being a horny guy, and this might not have been such an issue if he was single), but you seem to have forgotten that the story first made headlines because he mistakenly posted pictures to his public Twitter account and then organized a wild-goose-chase investigation by falsely claiming his Twitter account had been hacked. This is very different some third party making public a picture of him that he had anticipated would be kept private.

Now I like a good contrarian argument as much as the next guy but this isn't a well-formed argument; it's irrational on its face and degrades the subject of the story in the process of trying and failing to make a point.

An act doesn't need to be criminal to be of journalistic interest. And a public figure is just a person that reporters take an interest in.

And a public figure is just a person that reporters take an interest in.

There is a difference between a merely famous person (eg Kim Kardashian) and a public figure like an elected official, in whose good behavior the public has an interest (as distinct from being interested in it in the colloquial sense). I mean this in the sense of the word republic which is a contraction of the Latin res publica or 'public matter.' This is why private individuals enjoy a right of publicity to their own likeness and copyright protection for their public performances, but the identity and doings of legislators and government officials (within the scope of their official activities) are in the public domain.

[1] http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/charlotte-laws-hunte...

"In most cases, the scam began through Facebook and ended when “Gary Jones” gained access to the victim’s email account."

Unfortunately it doesn't make a lot of sense without context that I can't fine in the article. Was it phishing?

Why would someone with the ability to "hack" a large number of gmail accounts choose nude photos to make their money with? I can't imagine the payoff is comparatively good and large-scale blackmail is a pretty good way to get targeted for prosecution.

Further, aren't these pictures in their email because they were sent to someone? How would the average person distinguish between their account being "hacked" for the purpose of retrieving the picture opposed to the receiver sharing it? It sounds more like the instinctual "my account was hacked!" response to something embarrassing.

edit to add: wow. From the xojane link it appears that's actually exactly what everybody does. I'm at a loss for words.

All 3 of those things were already illegal, and had legal remedies.

To the extent that Anthony Weiner's mistakes in his personal life does impact his job, which is in the public interest, that can qualify as journalism and separate him from the common case of a typical victim of these sites.

If you oppose contemporary journalism as well and favor a more Chinese approach to free speech, I will be unpersuasive.

(a) is a valid product of journalism; (b) probably isn't.

We think (b) is, though, because one way that media outlets secure power for themselves in the market and elsewhere is by exploiting (b) to inflict punishment on the targets of their stories. They don't like Anthony Weiner (no surprise), so they're happy to torture him to get extra pageviews.

Most of us would probably agree that paparazzi publishing pictures of celebrities naked in their back yard with telephoto lenses is not okay. Publishing pictures of Rob Ford smoking crack? That seems more than reasonable. Publishing pictures of Rob Ford smoking crack, naked in his backyard? I don't think that Rob Ford's attire changes the situation (does it really matter if he's wearing a t-shirt, a business suit, or his birthday suit? Either way, he's smoking crack), but how do you encode that in the law? I am not convinced there is a good way, even if we just say "lets hash it out on a case to case basis in courtrooms, then you have to consider SLAPP concerns.

I don't know. Like you said, it's not simple.

But the fact that it's not simple gives lie to the idea that persecution of revenge porn sites somehow impinges on the civic function of "journalism".

I'm also not sure I trust the media in the role of verifying and then hiding evidence. Far better to just do full data dumps and let us figure things out for ourselves.

As a basic example, someone who is a "normal person" might have a photo leak that goes so viral the photo leak itself makes them a "public figure" by the old celebrity definition. What then?

Is pax dickinson a public figure? How about joe the plumber? Both have been the subject of journalistic investigation.

http://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-kamal...

While I think this case had mitigating factors and the guy could have been charged anyway, I certainly don't trust the jerks in the DA's office to decide who the other jerks are.

Here are photos of someone naked vs here are photos of someone naked along with workplace, home address, home phone, etc.

Yelling fire isn't protected as it insights panic.

Doxing/revenge porn should be protected as it insights harassment.

Absolutism may work wonderfully in a fantasy universe, but it has no place in reality. There is a huge difference between the non-consensual posting of someone else's pictures (i.e., revenge porn) and Anthony Weiner, a politician running for office, posting his own pictures of his own privates to women he had just met or not even met. (Hint: in one situation, the subject of the photo did not consent to the distribution of the photo, and may not even have consented to the photo itself. In the other situation, the utter stupidity of the actions calls into question Weiner's judgment and demonstrates a propensity for making rash decisions, both of which are important to know when electing a representative.)