Tor Project Sued Over a Revenge Porn Business That Used Its Service 311
redletterdave writes: The Tor Project has been sued in the state of Texas over a revenge porn website that used its free encrypted communications service. The plaintiff in the case — Shelby Conklin, a criminal justice major at the University of North Texas — alleges a revenge porn site called Pinkmeth "gained unauthorized access to nude photographs" she owned and posted them to the internet. She also said Tor, which The Economist once called "a dark corner of the web," was involved in an active "civil conspiracy" with Pinkmeth because the revenge porn website used the anonymous communications service to prevent others from tracking its location.
Re:Moral of the story (Score:5, Informative)
Especially when you are majoring in criminal justice, a field known for having the policy that any bit of dirt found on you can and will be used by someone who wants to hurt you with it.
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This one will be quick. (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty sure you need a massive lobbying brigade in order to qualify for Safe Harbor protections. :P
Re:IETF next (Score:5, Informative)
She's on quite the fishing expedition. Here is another lawsuit filed by her [courthousenews.com], from 2012, suing Pinkmeth (again), Katz Global Media (for the crime of providing anonymous hosting), and Verisign. Yeah, she sued Verisign. Maybe that suit didn't work out so well, so she thought she would try her hand against Tor. Not exactly the best way to make a name for herself as a criminal justice major. I suspect that pursuing suits like these will serve is much more of a "loss in earning capacity" than a porn picture ever would. She might also be interested that her Facebook profile is open for the world to see. Here she is [facebook.com].
Maybe she's just trying to clog up the Google search results for her name with information about lawsuits instead of her actual pictures. You have to go to page 4 to find this one [tumblr.com] (which is not Pinkmeth), page 6 for this one [tumblr.com] (also not Pinkmeth), and page 8 for this one [tumblr.com] (again, not Pinkmeth).
I'm assuming she has no proof that would allow her to sue the person actually responsible for distributing the pictures (you know, other than her). Life lesson learned, I suppose. Try not to clog up the justice system.
Re:Why yes, we should blame the victim here (Score:3, Informative)
Technically true if she posted the photos on Facebook or something.
Instead, what happens is she and her boyfriend do stuff like sexting and sharing rather private photos that way. They break up, douchebag boyfriend decides he's innocent and posts those private photos online.
It's why the German courts I believe say if you do that, you're not only responsible for any damages, but also for taking it down (ha, ha) since those photos were not posted with permission.
Basically, every teenager with a cellphone and a camera is vulnerable to this (I think the numbers were what, 60% of all texts and other messages were of a sexual nature?).
It really is a modern technology thing - if you took nudie pictures of yourself, you had to get them developed, etc., and you mailed them off. If your ex-boyfriend wanted to embarrass you with them, it would take a lot of work to get them published widely. These days, digital photos make it easy to share with your friends, and ex-friends.
Re:IETF next (Score:5, Informative)
Civil engineers are sued when they make mistakes designing a road.
Yea, but they don't get sued for the things people use the roads they designed for. Which is what's happening here.