Copyright for Publishers

Sen. Al Franken is urging the FBI to more quickly and aggressively pursue and prosecute revenge porn, marking a rare burst of attention on a controversial topic about which Congress has typically been quiet. In a letter to FBI Director James Comey, the Minnesota Democrat asked for more information about the agency’s authority to police against revenge porn, or the act of posting explicit sexual content online without the subject’s consent, often for purposes of humiliation and extortion. Its popularity has ballooned in recent years, and victims are disproportionately women. “The digital age has brought many benefits for free speech, commercial activity, and the sharing of information, but new technologies can pose significant threats if bad actors are not held accountable to our nation’s laws,” Franken wrote in his letter. “As technologies rapidly advance, it is our responsibility to ensure that our nation’s laws keep pace with those technologies. But…

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…

SAN DIEGO - A woman testified Tuesday that she was scared and afraid after sexual photos of her taken by her ex-boyfriend ended up on a website owned by a San Diego man. The woman testified during a preliminary hearing for Kevin Bollaert, who’s accused of posting thousands of explicit photos of women on a so-called “revenge porn” website without their consent, then extorting money from some victims who wanted the images removed. Jane Doe 5 testified that she began getting nasty and racial comments after sexual photos of her were posted on Bollaert’s website, “ugotposted.com.” The woman said she had no idea that her ex-boyfriend had taken the photos when they went on a trip. She said she e-mailed “ugotposted.com” to take the photos down, but got no response. The pictures eventually were removed from the website a week later. In addition to the photos, the woman’s name, location…

I’ve grown up with the Internet for most of my life. I’m old enough to remember when the it was only a few websites and there was almost no real content. The possibilities, however, were endless. There was this feeling that we all knew that we were participating in something revolutionary that would change the world and how we would view it. With time, and with more and more people accessing it, the Internet began to change. This most recent fundamental change, dubbed Web 2.0, was heralded as the “Great Equalizer” that would bring peoples of all walks of life together. The Internet, as it turns out, is only as good as the people who use it. For most, the Internet is simply a tool for communication and to absorb media. People use it to find the best restaurant in town, to post their favourite photo on Instagram, or to…

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A growing number of teenage girls are being approached online by fake model recruiters who lure them into sending indecent images of themselves, which are later used to extort money. Facebook and Instagram accounts are being set up in the names of leading model agencies such as Storm Model Management, which discovered Kate Moss and represents Cindy Crawford. Girls receive messages from someone who claims to be recruiting for the agency; they are encouraged to send topless photos or conduct a Skype interview in which they are asked to remove their clothes or wear lingerie. Sarah Doukas, the managing director of Storm, said that in the past two years the number of calls the agency had received about scam agents had risen from one a week to almost daily messages. “The rise of social media has impacted greatly on why modelling agency scams are increasing,” Doukas said. “Firstly, a lot…

  If ever there was a no-brainer appropriate for the skill level of the empty noggins in Albany, it was the bill to ban revenge porn. If someone posts online a nude picture of you without your consent for the world to dissect and ridicule and beat their chests over, it obviously ought to be a criminal offense in this state. Yet a bill proposing to make the posting of revenge porn a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to a year in prison has been languishing in Albany since 2013. This month, the legislators again went home for the summer without acting on it. Guess who’s behind this nauseating course of nonaction? Google. That’s right, the Internet’s great champion of feminism — hey, don’t they make an effort to be inclusive when picking the Google Doodle every day? — is doing little to stop the revolting daily public humiliation…

SALT LAKE CITY — The U.S. Justice Department has called it “by far the most significantly growing threat to children.” And based on recent investigations, the issue of “sextortion” isn’t slowing down, including in Utah. Sextortion is a form of online blackmail, typically targeting teenagers or preteens. The average sextortion case starts with children who are 12 to 14 years old who are using social media and other apps to message others who they assume are also juveniles, said Steve Cagen, head of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations in Utah and three other states. Eventually, the other “juvenile” will gain the teen’s trust and request a nude photo. “But they’re talking to a 40-year-old or 50-year-old man, who once they have one photo will then extort them for more. It’s called sextortion. It’s happening a lot. And we are asking parents to talk to your kids, because it can happen in…

  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…

Lisa M. can’t walk around her hometown without wondering who has seen her naked. The 28-year-old from Gardner, Mass., was only 17 when her then-boyfriend snapped a couple of topless photos of her when she wasn’t looking. She loved him, trusted him and had no idea he even owned a camera. Years later, the pictures would surface online and spread all over her tiny hometown. “To see those online was just like a total betrayal of trust, and on top of that, there’s nothing you can do about it — it’s just there, and you can’t take it down, and you don’t know who’s seen it,” she said. The pictures had been posted to the Web site “Anon-IB,” a k a Anonymous Image Board, one of the world’s main online promoters of revenge porn — intimate photos that are uploaded typically by a former sex partner and without the subject’s consent. Anon-IB…

Getty Images Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t prepared for deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election, a top Congressman said after the tech giants sent letters last week about how they deal with high-tech doctored videos and other kinds of media manipulation. The companies “have begun thinking seriously” about the challenges, said Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, but it’s their responsibility to prevent their platforms from being weaponized.  “It’s clear they are far from ready to accomplish that,” Schiff said in a statement.  Deepfakes are sophisticated video forgeries, created automatically by artificial intelligence, that can make people appear to be doing or saying things they never did. Though computer manipulation of video has existed for decades, artificial intelligence is making deepfakes and other so-called synthetic media more accessible and harder to detect. The companies — YouTube-owner Google, Facebook and Twitter — all responded in letters dated Wednesday to questions Schiff sent them…

Today, our nation faces domestic and foreign piracy of a different sort: the illegal duplication of software, music, DVDs, and other digitized information. This piracy comes with a high price. Your online digital content is at risk! Last year U.S. copyright industries reported losses of nearly $22 billion due to piracy just from overseas. Today, copyright owners are faced with the challenge of adapting to the digital revolution. The ease of making and distributing perfect copies of virtually every kind of work protected by copyright is putting strains on traditional modes of doing business. To stop thieves from stealing your work now, go —->HERE

People who have their nude pictures posted on the Internet without consent — a vile practice known as revenge porn — have little legal recourse. That’s changing, but only very slowly, with legislation proposed in California earlier this year joining New Jersey as the second state with laws specifically targeting the practice.* The California bill passed the state Senate earlier this month and this week the California legislature will debate it. If the bill passes in its current form, posting revenge porn would be considered a misdemeanor and posters of their ex-girlfriends’ nudes could face up to a year of jail-time or a fine of up to $2,000. Despite what sounds like a much-needed bill for a practice that victims and advocates like Holly Jacobs — the first Floridian, according to her lawyer, to sue her ex for the alleged distribution of non-consensual pornography — say is becoming increasingly common, not everyone thinks explicit…

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the number of offences increased to 105 last year, up from 55 in 2015. So far this year 73 offences have been reported. Wolverhampton Liberal Democrat campaigner Rob Quarmby said: “I don’t want to see, as I do sometimes, a child’s first conversation about the meaning of consent being in a police interview room. “I have a daughter and the thought that something like this can happen to her horrifies me?” Revenge porn is the distribution of a private sexual image of someone without their consent, with the aim of causing distress. It is a phenomenon that has swept the country, with teenagers and young adults taking and sharing naked photographs on smartphones.

Technology and relationships are increasingly overlapping, but are laws dragging behind?(Photo: USA TODAY College file photo) Story Highlights Three out of four college students will be in a long-distance relationship at some point before graduation. A 2011 University of Rhode Island study found that 56% percent of students had received “sexually suggestive images.” As Millennials become increasingly tech-reliant in all facets of life — including relationships — some are facing unfortunate consequences. Three out of four college students will be in a long-distance relationship at some point before graduation, according to a study in the Journal of Communication. Sending nude photos to a partner may be one way to maintain the passion. In fact, a 2011 University of Rhode Island study found that 56% percent of students had received “sexually suggestive images.” But what happens when a relationship dissolves and a heartbroken ex has a library of nude photos of…