Michigan Senate Passes Bill Targeting Revenge Porn

  A New Richmond man has entered a plea in a revenge porn case. Wyoming County Prosecutor Mike Cochrane said it is the first case in the county under the new statute, which became law last year. Timothy McNulty, 47, pleaded no contest early last week. According to Cochrane, McNulty sent intimate photos of an ex-girlfriend to another person. A first offense is a misdemeanor, Cochrane reported. A second offense is a felony. A first offense carries penalties of a fine of no less than $1,000 and no more than $5,000. There can also be jail time of up to a year. While referred to as “revenge porn,” the prosecutor said the statute is actually called “non-consensual disclosure of private, intimate images.” McNulty was charged in November 2017. Lt. Will Hall of the Wyoming County Sheriff’s Department was the investigating officer. Source link

The City Council is poised to criminalize “revenge porn” locally following years of inaction by state lawmakers — who have let a similar bill languish in Albany since 2014. Under a proposal by Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), anyone who posts someone’s “intimate image” without permission could be sent to jail for a year and slapped with a $1,000 fine. The legislation would also expose offenders to civil penalties — including “compensatory and punitive damages” — even without a criminal conviction. Lancman’s bill — which has the support of Mayor de Blasio — is being “primed” for a vote by the Public Safety Committee, his office said Friday. Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside) introduced similar legislation in Albany three years ago, but it has yet to win the support of the Codes Committee. “There’s people who blame the victim for taking the pictures or allowing that significant other to take the pictures…

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…

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…

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 Mobile man is being charged under Alabama’s new revenge porn law after he allegedly posted naked pictures of his ex-girlfriend on social media. Bryndon Bess, 21, is accused of posting the pictures on social media app Snapchat and refused to stop until the victim spoke to him, according to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Department. The new law, formally known as Distributing Private Images, went into effect one year ago and carries up to a year in jail. Source link

TOWSON, Md. (WJZ) — It’s called revenge porn, and it’s a growing problem, impacting thousands of lives. Couples trust each other with intimate photos, then become victims of the digital age. A Towson woman tells Linh Bui how she’s fighting back after she’s exposed. Annmarie Chiarini is a respected English professor, a single mother of two and a victim of revenge porn. It’s a growing problem on the Internet, where former lovers get revenge by posting their ex’s racy photos that were supposed to be for their eyes only. Annmarie’s problems start when she goes on Facebook and reconnects with a former boyfriend after almost 20 years. “I was shocked and thrilled and it’s that whole, ‘Oh my gosh!’” she said. Thinking he’s the one, Annmarie even lets him take explicit naked photos of her. But then, he starts to change. “He was getting more and more manipulative and even…

Copyright for Publishers Publishing in today’s environment means working within a variety of models. These models may entail the use of original content and may use republished, repurposed, adapted and recycled content. What does this mean in terms of copyright law? Since content is a key common denominator across models, publishers need to understand how copyright law protects that content. Key copyright issues include the nature of protected content; ownership of content; how that content is legally protected and what rights protect it; how to license and assignment content in order to monetize it and monitoring unauthorized uses of content. Proper copyright knowledge will ensure that you have maximum protection in the one constant in your various publishing models. Three important copyright issues for publishers are: ownership of content using third party content protecting publications The issues affect both print and electronic publishers of all sorts of content. Copyright Ownership…

PHOENIX — The Arizona House on Monday unanimously approved a bill aimed at stopping jilted lovers from posting explicit pictures of their former flames online to get revenge. The revenge porn bill sponsored by Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, would make it a felony to post nude photos of a person without their written consent. “As technology changes, people invent new ways of hurting folks,” Mesnard said. “If at the end of the day we send pictures to somebody in the context of a loving relationship, we should not have to wonder what that person is going to do.” House Bill 2515 is one revenge porn bill of many being considered by lawmakers across the nation in response to the posting of “revenge porn” that has been made easier by the growth of social networking sites. Last year, California made it a misdemeanor to post such images. Members of an Arizona…

  Children under the age of 16 are among several reported victims of “revenge porn” in Dundee. A total of 23 people have reported the non-consensual sharing of intimate images or threats to do so since new legislation – which means anyone convicted of sharing intimate images without consent could face up to five years in prison – came into force. Of the 23 reports, four involved children aged under 16. A further three reports involved young people aged between 16-19. While the age of consent is 16, pornographic images of anyone under the age of 18 are illegal under UK law. Laurie Matthew, manager at confidential children’s support service Eighteen and Under, said revenge porn was one of the “fastest growing” issues for young people in Dundee. She said: “We believe very few people actually report it because of the intimidation that comes with it. “That’s enough for young…

  “Just because the victim is a man and the suspect is a woman this time, the country is investigating the case differently,” wrote one petitioner, according to the JoongAng daily. “Remember the cases of women who were victims of hidden camera crimes and went to the police for help?” wrote another. “They would be told, ‘Well you had it coming to you, because you didn’t dress modestly’ or ‘We can’t catch the culprit. It’s too hard’.” For years, South Korean women have been victims of what was described by the Korea Expose website as a “spy-cam porn epidemic”. They have been secretly filmed in public bathrooms, changing rooms, or a camera has been pointed up their skirt on an escalator, and the footage is then posted online. In 2016, the police closed down Soranet, one of the most notorious websites for hidden camera footage of female body parts, and…

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…

  Facebook is ramping up its efforts to combat the spread of non-consensual “revenge porn” images across its main website, Instagram and Messenger, it confirmed this week. The move expands on a pilot scheme announced last year that asked any users who were concerned about the spread of intimate images to proactively upload them using the encrypted Messenger service, where photo-matching technology could prevent further sharing. The social network has stressed it does not store the images long term, but instead keeps their unique fingerprint, or “hash.” Initial tests rolled out to a small number of users in Australia last November. On Tuesday, Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, shared more details about how the plan had evolved in recent months. Now, the website is working closely with safety, survivor and victim organizations across in Canada, the U.K. and U.S. to help stop private moments being shared online without permission. “It’s demeaning…

Zynga claim that the app’s name abuses the ‘With Friends’ moniker they use for their family-friendly games. Bloomberg reports that Zynga are accusing the app’s developers of selecting “the name Bang With Friends for its casual sex matchmaking app with Zynga’s game trademarks fully in mind.” Launched in January, Bang With Friends works by signing into Facebook. Users select the friends they’re “interested” in and if those lucky individuals have also installed the app and already selected them, then both parties are sent an email. Forbes writer Kashmir Hill has already pointed out that the app doesn’t live up to its own promises of anonymity, as users who go to add the app on Facebook will be told if any friends of theirs have. Until recently the founders of the app had chosen to be anonymous, though in June this year, CEO Colin Hodge was interviewed by Business Insider. Hodge…

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…