Celeb hacks, NBC producer story shine light on revenge porn
Fox News' Diana Falzone speaks to Dr. Charlotte Laws, an advocate for victims of revenge porn
NEW YORK – Recent stories about the hacking of celebs’ private nude photos and an NBC producer who allegedly put a non-consensual homemade sex video of him and his girlfriend on a porn site have put the subject of revenge porn front and center. And while the cases have their differences, the result is the same: a breach of privacy that negatively impacts the lives of the victims, celebrity or not.
Holly Jacobs – the founder/CEO of Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) – says she became a victim of revenge porn when someone distributed her private nude images on a pornographic site – images that ended up spread on over 300 sites.
“No matter if you’re a celebrity or a regular person, these pictures and videos go viral,” Jacobs told Fox411. “These cyber postings can lead to real life physical attacks, your professional status being compromised as well as your relationship with friends and family suffering. It essentially ruined my life.”
Carrie Goldberg, a New York attorney who litigates online sexual privacy invasions, explained the motivation for those who spread revenge porn.
“Sociopathy is the motive for those who are straight up porn offenders. They cannot deal with rejection,” Goldberg said. “For hackers, it’s a different motivation. It’s not about harming the individual – the hackers are in competition with each other. They’re online hooligans.”
“When it comes to images that are within a person’s control, the best way to protect yourself is having a lot of security back-ups, use strong security passwords,” Goldberg continued. “People have the right to share intimate photos with one person and that does not mean that a hacker or one person can share it with the world.”
Dr. Charlotte Laws, an advocate for revenge porn victims, said “if you own the copyright to a picture or video that is the easiest way to get a picture hopefully removed from the Internet by sending out a take-down notice to the hosting company, to the website, to Google, to all the search engines, to anyone and everyone associated with that picture or video.”
But with nearly everyone having access to a smart phone, computer or social media sites, will revenge porn ever stop?
“The solution is not to tell people to stop sexting,” said Goldberg. “The solution is to convince our lawmakers and society as a whole that it should not be lawful to distribute images without consent.”
To that end, Jacobs started the End Revenge Porn Campaign in 2012, which led to her organization, CCRI. With the help of Jacobs’ organization and other anti-revenge porn advocacy groups, 11 states have passed laws criminalizing non-consensual pornography. Three states already had similar laws in place.
WATCH: Dr. Charlotte Laws, the 'Erin Brockovich of revenge porn'
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