Bang With Friends app sued for copyright infringement by Zynga

The Internet is a terrible place sometimes, but thankfully there are now organizations that can help people who become victims. When illicit photos of Anisha Vora began showing up online, she didn’t know what to do. She contacted Facebook, Twitter and other companies hoping they’d do the right thing and take the photos down. But soon, there were too many places for her to deal with on her own. What happened to Vora happens to all sorts of people. Students, college graduates and professionals. People have lost their jobs because photos were published online without their consent. Most of the victims are women, though not all. As the threat of revenge porn has grown, companies, organizations and even lawyers have sprung up to help victims. Figure out the size and scope of the problem The moment your photos begin circulating online, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You’ve been violated, and…

In a court filing this month, former Will County Board member Kathleen Konicki provides further details regarding her lawsuit against two former boyfriends, accusing one of them of distributing “damagingly embarrassing” photos of her. Konicki filed a sworn statement in Will County Circuit Court on May 16, describing photos of her distributed by her ex-boyfriend as revenge porn. In the lawsuit filed in December, Konicki says Timothy Rathburn, her former boyfriend and an attorney, distributed offensive photos of her in a “damagingly embarrassing and intimate nature” to Will County officials, including Circuit Court Judge Gerald Kinney and State’s Attorney James Glasgow. Konicki, an attorney, also names another former boyfriend, John Bassett, in the suit, alleging that he gave the photos to Rathburn. She’s representing herself in the lawsuit and says in the new filing that she tried to retain several attorneys to represent her, but two admitted they would not…

The offshore Web site that hosts hoards of “revenge porn” — including illegal shots of underage girls — lost its sole source of revenue Friday following a Post expose of its sleazy operation. A Spanish online-ad company said it was pulling its business from Anon-IB — also known as the “Best Anonymous Image Board” — and thanked The Post “for making us aware of this.” Anon-IB was raking in $1,500 a day from Barcelona-based ExoClick in exchange for hosting ExoClick’s ads on its site, according to an estimate from the Web-monitoring firm Alexa. “ExoClick has a zero tolerance policy to any forms of illegal content on publisher websites (as per our guidelines),” spokesman Giles Hirst said in an email statement. “On discovery of such content we will always take swift action to remove ads and ban the publisher from our network.” Several women told The Post that nude images taken…

  Georgios Kollidas - Fotolia.com What is the Copyright Infringement Finder and is it worth it? Photographer Jason Wilder had a problem common to nearly everyone who creates intellectual property: His work was routinely being used online without his permission— and without payment. So Wilder did something about it, creating the Copyright Infringement Finder (CIF) add-on for the Firefox browser. “I have been a professional concert photographer for about 10 years now, and no one ever really wants to pay for concert photos,” Wilder told CorpCounsel.com. “They’d rather take them without licensing them and hope no one finds out, instead of paying a small licensing fee.” The CIF add-on uses Google’s image-searching technology and allows owners of images to right-click on an image in the Firefox browser window to find other sites that are using that same image. “All my images are copyrighted,” Wilder notes, and because “I know which…

Chalk this up in the “funny, but not really” category: Last week, a company working with Microsoft to combat copyright pirates asked Google to remove multiple Microsoft web pages from Google searches—for infringing Microsoft copyrights.Yep, Microsoft filed a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown request against itself, as Torrentfreak first spotted.This wasn’t a case of internal idiocy or revenge, and it’s also not quite as amusing as it may appear at first glance. Instead, it highlights the harmful way copyright holders use automatically generated DMCA takedown requests to try to scrub the net of pirated content, casting a wide net that often ensnares innocent webmasters with false infringement claims. Google’s record of LeakID’s DMCA takedown request against Microsoft.com.(Click to enlarge.) If a copyright holder feels that a particular website is ripping off its work, it can send Google a DMCA takedown request and ask for the infringing site to be removed…

A recent federal court decision confirms that, without more, merely linking to content of copyrighted content is not direct infringement of the copyright in that content.Plaintiff sued defendants for copyright infringement based on defendants’ alleged unauthorized sale of educational materials online. A paralegal in plaintiffs’ law firm sought to buy some of the infringing materials, and one of the defendants sent her a link to material that had been uploaded to a file locker. Plaintiff moved for summary judgment, arguing in part that the link constituted infringement.The court denied plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion, but not because of the linking. It found that there was a triable fact as to whether defendant had uploaded the infringing content to the file locker. The court held that “as a matter of law, sending an email containing a hyperlink to a site facilitating the sale of a copyrighted work does not itself constitute copyright…

MT. CLEMENS, Mich. — A woman sued Best Buy, alleging employees obtained explicit photos of her from her cell phone and posted them on UGotPosted.com, once again putting the revenge porn site under fire. Identified only as Jane Doe, the plaintiff said that she dropped off her phone at Best Buy to be repaired on March 22 and picked it up five days later. When Doe awoke on the morning of April 5, she said found she had 67 new friend requests. By the end of the day, the number of requests reached more than 300. A friend called the plaintiff and told her she was on the website UGotPosted.com, the complaint says. “Plaintiff went to the website, where she found the six suggestive photographs of herself, including a nude photo of her breast, which had been on her phone,” the complaint says. The website’s owners, Eric Chanson, his parents…

A Kansas City man who admitted he threatened to post nude photos of a 16-year-old girl if she wouldn’t have sex with him was sentenced Tuesday in Platte County Circuit Court to 18 years in prison. Denis Aguilar, 23, pleaded guilty in February to attempted child enticement and attempted statutory sodomy for the threats he made in April 2014. According to court records, the victim and her mother alerted Kansas City police after Aguilar requested nude photos of the teen. After the girl sent him photos, Aguilar threatened to post them online, said Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd. The girl told investigators that she was on a social network website that she thought barred users over 18. The teen and Aguilar met on the website and began communicating through other social media sites, Zahnd said. Aguilar told the girl he was 18 and repeatedly asked her to send him nude…

Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian are slated to face off next week in their bitter revenge porn drama, RadarOnline.com exclusively learned. Kardashian, 30, posted a series of naked photos and videos of his baby mama to social media on July 5, and after obtaining a temporary restraining order against him, Chyna, 29, hired legal ace Lisa Bloom to fight for her rights and make her baby daddy pay for his crude posts. “Chyna and Rob have a mediation date set for next Tuesday,” an insider spilled to Radar. “She is trying to make him pay for posting those naked pictures and videos of her. She is not going to settle for a couple of thousand dollars either. She wants millions.” PHOTOS: Blac Chyna Claims Ex Rob Kardashian ‘Is Mentally Ill’ Following Shocking Split “Chyna lost serious money after Rob posted those things. And she wants Rob to make sure that…

The FTC is mailing refunds to MyEx.com victims that filed complaints with law enforcement through the Consumer Sentinel Network. The FTC and the state of Nevada charged that the website, MyEx.com, was dedicated solely to revenge porn and solicited intimate pictures and videos of victims, together with their personal information such as their name, address, employer, and social media account information. The site urged visitors to “Add Your Ex,” and to “Submit Pics and Stories of Your Ex.” According to the complaint, the defendants charged victims fees from $499 to $2,800 to remove their images and information from the site. CONSUMER INFORMATION What to do if you’re the target of revenge porn RELATED NEWS FTC, Nevada Obtain Order Permanently Shutting down Revenge Porn Site MyEx FTC and Nevada Seek to Halt Revenge Porn Site

Weigel was sentenced Tuesday to 120 days in the Ramsey County Correctional Facility with credit for 56 days served. If he’s deemed eligible, he could serve the sentence as work release. Weigel was also placed on three years’ probation. According to the criminal complaint, Weigel allegedly created the fake account in December of last year and sent friend requests to all the boyfriend’s Facebook friends - a group which included many of his ex’s family and friends. The page also allegedly contained multiple written criticisms of the two, including blaming the boyfriend for breaking up Weigel and his ex’s relationship. He also allegedly posted a message naming his ex’s place of employment, and reportedly stated she was not suitable to work there. According to the complaint, Weigel told investigators, “I wanted one chance to let everyone know what they did. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone for monetary gain.” In…

A lot of people know my story. Nobody has to ask me how I got where I am, because my business is posted all over the internet. My ex-boyfriend was the first one to put me out there, exposing me in my most intimate moments. He did it for control. He did it for revenge. He did it for whatever reasons perpetrators normally have for stalking, harassing, and violating others. At no point was I allowed to escape and move on. The internet made it possible for my ex and strangers to reach into my life, no matter where I was, and destroy everything I was trying to build. And nobody was willing to stop him. I was the second person to put myself out there. When I couldn’t stand hiding anymore, having changed my name and lived in fear for years, I took back control of my life. I…

  Facebook has publicly released its most complete community guidelines to date after many years keeping the specific rules its moderators used to govern the platform secret. The update tacked over 5000 more words onto the already unwieldy document, which now includes highly specific examples of banned or heavily regulated content. Is any of it at all surprising? Well, yes. Most platforms have rules that outline common-sense genres of content they’d rather not be liable for - harassment, hate speech, gore, child endangerment, etc. - and these are no different. But as a reflection of its size and global reach, Facebook’s guidelines include some of the most granular examples of what not to do online. Cannibalism is off limits. “Sexualized massages” are specifically barred. Staged animal fights won’t fly, and neither will videos of animals being processed for food. Images of buttocks or an anus are a no-go, “unless photoshopped…

The following was written by Mark DesMeules of American Continental Group On Monday, the U.S. Copyright Office hosted a Copyright Matters program titled Copyright Conversations with the United Kingdom: A View from Across the Pond. The program featured a dialogue between Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights, and John Alty, Chief Executive Officer and Comptroller General at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) of the United Kingdom. The conversation also included several senior Copyright Office officials, UK IPO Director of International Policy Neil Feinson, and Deputy Director of International Policy Adam Williams. The officials discussed the copyright policy issues that are currently being faced by both countries, including: orphan works, extended collective licensing, small claims, and recent efforts in both countries to modernize their copyright legal systems for the digital age. The event was well attended with a number of individuals from both policy and industry. John Alty emphasized a rapid shift to digital in…

At a Fourth of July party in 2016, a stranger approached Hannah Jennaway, then 21, with an unsettling question: “Are you the girl in the Snapchats I just got?” Jennaway’s stomach sank. “No,” she lied. She knew what the girl was referring to and hated imagining anyone watching it — especially someone she didn’t know. As the night went on, more people texted her asking about the Snapchat videos they’d received of two people having sex, including a girl who looked just like her. Earlier that day, Jennaway went cliff jumping at Ennis Lake with a group of friends. Worn out after a day in the sun, she returned to Bozeman with two friends to clean up before going to a party to celebrate the Fourth of July. While Jennaway’s friend Dilan Koelzer, then 20, showered, Jennaway and her other friend went into Koelzer’s bedroom, pushed a couch against the…