8 ms·

What a nice manipulative article perfectly targeted at clueless general public. So the criminal was her husband, the video was reposted by random users or just

What a nice manipulative article perfectly targeted at clueless general public. So the criminal was her husband, the video was reposted by random users or just bots (probably not illegal, but can start a long talk about personal moral obligations), and the blame is on… Pornhub (because all other porn sites are supposedly very noble). First, because it is silently implied that all good websites should collect and check the official IDs of all good citizens uploading any data to them (what a great perspective), and, second, because it had The Download Button (this lame Don't-Copy-That-Floppy point gets stressed in most of the articles in anti-Pornhub campaign — bravo, incorruptible journalists). But what is the alternative? Of course, it's good old trusted porn studios that have all the papers to prove that women (and men) pretending to have sex on camera and even destroying the functions of their body parts have legal contract. Hooray! It is amusing how porn industry leveraged anti-porn, women's rights, and other groups to kill the competition from amateur and no-name internet content. It is clear that Pornhub owners understood that they can not refuse the offer, and the goal was reached: now Porn Site #1 is mostly a shop-front for big porn studios (and you can be sure they get their share of those horrible, horrible ad revenue money).

onion2k 6y ago
First, because it is silently implied that all good websites should collect and check the official IDs of all good citizens uploading any data to them (what a great perspective)... There's a significant difference between "uploading any data" and "uploading porn". Suggesting someone who is uploading porn should have to prove that they're entitled to, and that the people in the video have consented to be put online in the context of a porn video, is not unreasonable given the weight of evidence that "revenge porn" is incredibly damaging to victims.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  What's the significant difference? I've seen viral videos of people in compromising or embarrassing situations. Some have even lost their jobs as a result. Should all video uploading sites demand documentation that every person in the video consents to it?
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    If the law requires it, yes. The uploader should be the liable party if the subject or subjects didn't consent. Why is this a strange concept? Why should someone be able to upload whatever they want to platforms with no responsibility for what they’re uploading?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - brayhite 6y ago
      I’m not comfortable being liable to being sued because my cousin decided to let us know after the fact he didn’t want to be in any of the pictures uploaded to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/Flickr/etc. I admittedly didn’t read the article, so maybe your comment’s sentiment isn’t meant to include these scenarios.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - kbenson 6y ago
        What if your cousin is doing something frowned upon by society (wearing blackface, spouting racial epithets, etc)? What if it's not frowned upon now, but is at a later date? What if you don't find anything objectionable, but they wouldn't want it shown, and their concerns are borne out later? What if it's completely benign but out of context appears problematic (goofing around with a good friend of a different race and it comes across as something different when only a portion of it is represented)? What if they just have a personal objection to having heir picture posted? There are many reasons why it's a good idea to at least check that the person is comfortable with it. You shouldn't be liable if they've said it's okay.
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Absolutely. Good UX would be the subject receiving a notification that a photo of them has been uploaded, requesting whether they should be scrubbed/blurred from the photo or not before it’s made public. It’s about consent and agency.
- scarmig 6y ago
  It's a balance. Suppose you add this proof requirement. What happens then? It's not as simple as lots of legitimate amateur content producers facing additional friction. Most will make the explicit decision not to have their legal name and address associated with pornographic content. Others will upload their content anyway, without doing an audit of the different platforms' security postures or being aware of the likelihood of and outcomes from breaches. What happens in a breach? Now, you're probably thinking, just require the platforms to be secure! But you can't simply will that into existence, and I guarantee you it's impossible. So ultimately you've made people vulnerable when they weren't before, and you're setting up a situation where it's pretty much inevitable that they'll be exposed and threatened by stalkers, deranged fans, and ideological zealots. Let's suppose you bite the bullet, and say turning all the porn platforms into outlets for major porn production companies is the way to go. At least we've eliminated revenge porn, right? No. Large masses of people really hate that kind of mass produced porn, so they jump to foreign platforms that don't require complicated ID verification. These sites end up with the large majority of amateur porn content, along with the revenge porn. But they're now out of the reach of US law enforcement, so the victims of revenge porn would then be in a worse position than they are today. Now we're getting to even more extreme measures. Maybe the US needs to build a national firewall to prevent the foreign criminals from penetrating our great nation and undermining our morals with porn that's unapproved by the Feds? China is way ahead of the game on this, in that pornography is outright illegal, and it has sophisticated internet security measures that are exceptional in breadth and depth by Western standards. How's its war on porn going? Spoiler alert: it's lost it. Perhaps it could be a moment to build cross-cultural empathy, as Chinese netizens exchange tips with Americans on how to use Shadowsocks to avoid the censors and access amateur porn. Requiring ID verification is one of those things that sounds good and moral on its face, but has so many unintended downstream consequences that exacerbate the original problem while making things generally worse.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    So all professional porn already requires identification and age checks. I'm...not convinced it's the end of the world if amateur ones do too. The considerations are the same.
- ogurechny 6y ago
  You are probably guided by the false dilemma presented by that or similar articles. I doubt any porn service on the internet in the last 25 years did anything like that, just like no web hosting service has checked that each image and each piece of text on your web site is legally owned or distributed by you. This is by no means a recent problem, naked pictures were leaked intentionally or unintentionally long before internet existed. However, the discussion implies that all of the sudden porn sites appeared, you can be on them, and wegottadosomethingfast! I don't think there is much difference between your naked body and other information you might want to keep private. “Porn” triggers people (most often American people, I have to admit as a distant observer), makes them reason like there is some inherent difference between “porn” and “not porn”, and makes manipulation easier. Basically, what you're saying is that there should be more (indirect) censorship and real-life identity matching on the Web — but it's for an Obvious Good Cause! The problem is that Good Causes get forgotten quite fast, and the one who benefits from it is the entity in control of the system that gained power. Here we have porn studios dictating previously independent Mindgeek (former pain in their asses) which content should be on the biggest porn streaming sites under new system. The speed and scale of the attack, and the concerned voices from various directions, hint there was a lot of high-level lobbying involved. Here's no less thrilling example. Suppose that Rick Astley wakes up tomorrow and decides to point out that he has always been a singer and not some kind of internet joke. Perfectly understandable impulse. Then he proceeds to remove all the non-musical uses of his songs (let's forget about corporate ownership). How would you react to that? What would results be? There's certainly more people with similar wishes — basically the whole genre of “viral videos” is one big zero consent heap. When you are having a laugh at someone's expense, do you worry about them? When you watch videos of Beirut explosion, do you think about all the dead people who never gave consent for their last moment to be your entertainment? Should we ban the uploading of such videos without explicit source checks, then?
  - beams 6y ago
    You’re embarrassing yourself with these posts...
  - onion2k 6y ago
    I don't think there is much difference between your naked body and other information you might want to keep private. Absolutely. Swap "porn" for "credit card details" and the point I made is still true. There are some things that people don't want to be shared online and they should be in a position to stop that happening. One individual's right to privacy is more important than another individual's freedom of expression except in very limited circumstances of the public interest. Reporting news should happen even without consent from the people the news is about because it's good for society to be able to share that information. Uploading porn or a prank video should not happen without consent from all parties. As for your example of Rick Astley - the law already enables him to do that if he wanted to. There are many legal mechanisms for copyright holders to revoke access to their material. There doesn't have to be one simple rule that covers everything. We're intelligent human beings. We can have a bit of nuance without society collapsing.
- Ceezy 6y ago
  Yes, any normal porn company make performer sign specific contract, it should just be the same for porn sites
  - pgsimp 6y ago
    How could that even work in practice? Everybody who is visible in a video has to do some kind of VideoIdent and clearly state their consent? YouTube should have to do the same, btw.
    - Ceezy 6y ago
      Are you saying that movies and porn are done without people consent? Performer on set, people acting as background give theirs explicit on paper consent. So if you are not your average porn company you should just send these contracts to the platform. And BY THE WAY it's already like this in the web caming industry.
      - pgsimp 6y ago
        The producers sign the contracts with the people they meet in person to make the videos, so they can verify those same people signed the contracts. A web site has no way to check if the contracts are real. People can just upload made up documents.
        Ceezy 6y ago
        So you think showing NO proof is better? It's real world we are talking about. The reason backpage and co got busted by the FBI is because of the amount of shady activity. And pornhub is definitely hight on the list of shady sites. Also a lot porn site are just own by porn company so they already have the contracts. Just don't be surprise when you see FBI indictments.
- vmception 6y ago
  The US' current ID and info collection requirements for sexual content exist on very thin and shaky constitutional grounds right now. They've never had a criminal indictment, had very limited enforcement solely due to the predictable constitutional challenge, which occurred anyway. Simply put, dragnets against all producers to create a criminal neither solves the problem, deters the problem, nor catches the actual criminal. All you have now is an awkward duty to give anybody with a camera your drivers license or passport. Or did we ever actually think about the people that appear in the videos. And in this thread's suggestion: having them upload it to random websites. Fantastic.
  - ogurechny 6y ago
    Something tells me that the whole record-keeping system was introduced just to protect the studios from troubles. “See, we're legal, shut up and don't get in the way, we're doing business”. And still, most people don't realize what “MET” in “MET-Art” stood for.
    - vmception 6y ago
      I mean that's also true, representatives left to their own devices would come up with something that completely breaks any sense of practicality while still failing to accomplish whatever cause they thought they were addressing.
mattbee 6y ago
Is your diatribe an argument that Pornhub should have the right to distribute pictures of a sexual assault?
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  That's not what he's arguing at all. What happened to this woman is awful and her ex-husband should go to jail. I also think everyone agrees pornhub and other sites should be forced to remove this content. He is making the argument that including a drivers license and signed agreement with every piece of nude media is not a good solution.
Traster 6y ago
You have this almost exactly backwards- PH now own (or are responsible for) their entire industry because they take all the profit.
- ogurechny 6y ago
  That's what I'm talking about: real stories of regular people are cynically used to negotiate new porn profit deals.
LanceH 6y ago
The obvious step would be to require the uploader to be responsible for their content. Less so than youtube, ph's content would generally imply that the owner has secured the rights of its participants.
pc86 6y ago
> What a nice manipulative article perfectly targeted at clueless general public. This could describe approximately 100% of local news articles/segments on any topic even remotely political or controversial. And maybe 75% of the remaining.
essentialoils 6y ago
It's the law. 18 U.S.C. 2257 https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/18-usc-2257-2257a-certifications https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/18-usc-2257-2257a-cert...
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Well, as your link states, this applies to producers of the 'visual imagery' (i.e. in this case, the woman's husband - but presumably he has a record of her name and age required by this clause, and presumably she's over 18), not all the sites distributing/redistributing user uploaded content.
jariel 6y ago
Yeah, I think you're missing the point, which is young women are having their stuff put up online and it's systematically distributed by entities that may very well have the capability to do better. That's a legit story. Edit: We're talking about a story for the masses here, nuances are important, but I don't think most people really fathom that this is a common thing.
colanderman 6y ago
> So the criminal was her husband Why do you think this matters?

onion2k 6y ago

First, because it is silently implied that all good websites should collect and check the official IDs of all good citizens uploading any data to them (what a great perspective)... There's a significant difference between "uploading any data" and "uploading porn". Suggesting someone who is uploading porn should have to prove that they're entitled to, and that the people in the video have consented to be put online in the context of a porn video, is not unreasonable given the weight of evidence that "revenge porn" is incredibly damaging to victims.

Mirioron 6y ago
What's the significant difference? I've seen viral videos of people in compromising or embarrassing situations. Some have even lost their jobs as a result. Should all video uploading sites demand documentation that every person in the video consents to it?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  If the law requires it, yes. The uploader should be the liable party if the subject or subjects didn't consent. Why is this a strange concept? Why should someone be able to upload whatever they want to platforms with no responsibility for what they’re uploading?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - brayhite 6y ago
    I’m not comfortable being liable to being sued because my cousin decided to let us know after the fact he didn’t want to be in any of the pictures uploaded to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/Flickr/etc. I admittedly didn’t read the article, so maybe your comment’s sentiment isn’t meant to include these scenarios.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - kbenson 6y ago
      What if your cousin is doing something frowned upon by society (wearing blackface, spouting racial epithets, etc)? What if it's not frowned upon now, but is at a later date? What if you don't find anything objectionable, but they wouldn't want it shown, and their concerns are borne out later? What if it's completely benign but out of context appears problematic (goofing around with a good friend of a different race and it comes across as something different when only a portion of it is represented)? What if they just have a personal objection to having heir picture posted? There are many reasons why it's a good idea to at least check that the person is comfortable with it. You shouldn't be liable if they've said it's okay.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Absolutely. Good UX would be the subject receiving a notification that a photo of them has been uploaded, requesting whether they should be scrubbed/blurred from the photo or not before it’s made public. It’s about consent and agency.
scarmig 6y ago
It's a balance. Suppose you add this proof requirement. What happens then? It's not as simple as lots of legitimate amateur content producers facing additional friction. Most will make the explicit decision not to have their legal name and address associated with pornographic content. Others will upload their content anyway, without doing an audit of the different platforms' security postures or being aware of the likelihood of and outcomes from breaches. What happens in a breach? Now, you're probably thinking, just require the platforms to be secure! But you can't simply will that into existence, and I guarantee you it's impossible. So ultimately you've made people vulnerable when they weren't before, and you're setting up a situation where it's pretty much inevitable that they'll be exposed and threatened by stalkers, deranged fans, and ideological zealots. Let's suppose you bite the bullet, and say turning all the porn platforms into outlets for major porn production companies is the way to go. At least we've eliminated revenge porn, right? No. Large masses of people really hate that kind of mass produced porn, so they jump to foreign platforms that don't require complicated ID verification. These sites end up with the large majority of amateur porn content, along with the revenge porn. But they're now out of the reach of US law enforcement, so the victims of revenge porn would then be in a worse position than they are today. Now we're getting to even more extreme measures. Maybe the US needs to build a national firewall to prevent the foreign criminals from penetrating our great nation and undermining our morals with porn that's unapproved by the Feds? China is way ahead of the game on this, in that pornography is outright illegal, and it has sophisticated internet security measures that are exceptional in breadth and depth by Western standards. How's its war on porn going? Spoiler alert: it's lost it. Perhaps it could be a moment to build cross-cultural empathy, as Chinese netizens exchange tips with Americans on how to use Shadowsocks to avoid the censors and access amateur porn. Requiring ID verification is one of those things that sounds good and moral on its face, but has so many unintended downstream consequences that exacerbate the original problem while making things generally worse.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  So all professional porn already requires identification and age checks. I'm...not convinced it's the end of the world if amateur ones do too. The considerations are the same.
ogurechny 6y ago
You are probably guided by the false dilemma presented by that or similar articles. I doubt any porn service on the internet in the last 25 years did anything like that, just like no web hosting service has checked that each image and each piece of text on your web site is legally owned or distributed by you. This is by no means a recent problem, naked pictures were leaked intentionally or unintentionally long before internet existed. However, the discussion implies that all of the sudden porn sites appeared, you can be on them, and wegottadosomethingfast! I don't think there is much difference between your naked body and other information you might want to keep private. “Porn” triggers people (most often American people, I have to admit as a distant observer), makes them reason like there is some inherent difference between “porn” and “not porn”, and makes manipulation easier. Basically, what you're saying is that there should be more (indirect) censorship and real-life identity matching on the Web — but it's for an Obvious Good Cause! The problem is that Good Causes get forgotten quite fast, and the one who benefits from it is the entity in control of the system that gained power. Here we have porn studios dictating previously independent Mindgeek (former pain in their asses) which content should be on the biggest porn streaming sites under new system. The speed and scale of the attack, and the concerned voices from various directions, hint there was a lot of high-level lobbying involved. Here's no less thrilling example. Suppose that Rick Astley wakes up tomorrow and decides to point out that he has always been a singer and not some kind of internet joke. Perfectly understandable impulse. Then he proceeds to remove all the non-musical uses of his songs (let's forget about corporate ownership). How would you react to that? What would results be? There's certainly more people with similar wishes — basically the whole genre of “viral videos” is one big zero consent heap. When you are having a laugh at someone's expense, do you worry about them? When you watch videos of Beirut explosion, do you think about all the dead people who never gave consent for their last moment to be your entertainment? Should we ban the uploading of such videos without explicit source checks, then?
- beams 6y ago
  You’re embarrassing yourself with these posts...
- onion2k 6y ago
  I don't think there is much difference between your naked body and other information you might want to keep private. Absolutely. Swap "porn" for "credit card details" and the point I made is still true. There are some things that people don't want to be shared online and they should be in a position to stop that happening. One individual's right to privacy is more important than another individual's freedom of expression except in very limited circumstances of the public interest. Reporting news should happen even without consent from the people the news is about because it's good for society to be able to share that information. Uploading porn or a prank video should not happen without consent from all parties. As for your example of Rick Astley - the law already enables him to do that if he wanted to. There are many legal mechanisms for copyright holders to revoke access to their material. There doesn't have to be one simple rule that covers everything. We're intelligent human beings. We can have a bit of nuance without society collapsing.
Ceezy 6y ago
Yes, any normal porn company make performer sign specific contract, it should just be the same for porn sites
- pgsimp 6y ago
  How could that even work in practice? Everybody who is visible in a video has to do some kind of VideoIdent and clearly state their consent? YouTube should have to do the same, btw.
  - Ceezy 6y ago
    Are you saying that movies and porn are done without people consent? Performer on set, people acting as background give theirs explicit on paper consent. So if you are not your average porn company you should just send these contracts to the platform. And BY THE WAY it's already like this in the web caming industry.
    - pgsimp 6y ago
      The producers sign the contracts with the people they meet in person to make the videos, so they can verify those same people signed the contracts. A web site has no way to check if the contracts are real. People can just upload made up documents.
      - Ceezy 6y ago
        So you think showing NO proof is better? It's real world we are talking about. The reason backpage and co got busted by the FBI is because of the amount of shady activity. And pornhub is definitely hight on the list of shady sites. Also a lot porn site are just own by porn company so they already have the contracts. Just don't be surprise when you see FBI indictments.
vmception 6y ago
The US' current ID and info collection requirements for sexual content exist on very thin and shaky constitutional grounds right now. They've never had a criminal indictment, had very limited enforcement solely due to the predictable constitutional challenge, which occurred anyway. Simply put, dragnets against all producers to create a criminal neither solves the problem, deters the problem, nor catches the actual criminal. All you have now is an awkward duty to give anybody with a camera your drivers license or passport. Or did we ever actually think about the people that appear in the videos. And in this thread's suggestion: having them upload it to random websites. Fantastic.
- ogurechny 6y ago
  Something tells me that the whole record-keeping system was introduced just to protect the studios from troubles. “See, we're legal, shut up and don't get in the way, we're doing business”. And still, most people don't realize what “MET” in “MET-Art” stood for.
  - vmception 6y ago
    I mean that's also true, representatives left to their own devices would come up with something that completely breaks any sense of practicality while still failing to accomplish whatever cause they thought they were addressing.

mattbee 6y ago

Is your diatribe an argument that Pornhub should have the right to distribute pictures of a sexual assault?

JamesBarney 6y ago
That's not what he's arguing at all. What happened to this woman is awful and her ex-husband should go to jail. I also think everyone agrees pornhub and other sites should be forced to remove this content. He is making the argument that including a drivers license and signed agreement with every piece of nude media is not a good solution.

Traster 6y ago

You have this almost exactly backwards- PH now own (or are responsible for) their entire industry because they take all the profit.

ogurechny 6y ago
That's what I'm talking about: real stories of regular people are cynically used to negotiate new porn profit deals.

LanceH 6y ago

The obvious step would be to require the uploader to be responsible for their content. Less so than youtube, ph's content would generally imply that the owner has secured the rights of its participants.

pc86 6y ago

> What a nice manipulative article perfectly targeted at clueless general public. This could describe approximately 100% of local news articles/segments on any topic even remotely political or controversial. And maybe 75% of the remaining.

essentialoils 6y ago

It's the law. 18 U.S.C. 2257 https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/18-usc-2257-2257a-certifications https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/18-usc-2257-2257a-cert...

PeterisP 6y ago
Well, as your link states, this applies to producers of the 'visual imagery' (i.e. in this case, the woman's husband - but presumably he has a record of her name and age required by this clause, and presumably she's over 18), not all the sites distributing/redistributing user uploaded content.

jariel 6y ago

Yeah, I think you're missing the point, which is young women are having their stuff put up online and it's systematically distributed by entities that may very well have the capability to do better. That's a legit story. Edit: We're talking about a story for the masses here, nuances are important, but I don't think most people really fathom that this is a common thing.

colanderman 6y ago

> So the criminal was her husband Why do you think this matters?