Today the Santa Ana Police Department had the following announcement on the arrest of serial revenge porn suspect Dillon Nguyen (23) of Westminster who distributed “intimate images and videos involving his ex-girlfriends online after they broke-up”. The Internet Law Center represents one of Nguyen’s victims and applauds the Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) and the…
Yesterday, Congresswoman Katie Hill (D-CA) gave her final speech in Congress as she was forced to resign after her estranged husband and political rivals published nude photographs of her and (so far) unsubstantiated allegations that she had violated House rules by having an affair with one or more Congressional staff members.¹ Hill’s resignation and farewell…
Last week, the firm was quoted in a Bustle story, entitled A Fake Porn App Lets People Put Celebrities’ Faces In Videos & Here’s Why It’s So Dangerous. The article discussed the legal implications of a new phenomenon revealed in a recent Motherboard’s article of new applications using artificial intelligence for face-swapping celebrity faces onto porn performers’…
The Federal Trade Commission and the State of Nevada have filed a lawsuit against the operators of the revenge porn site MyEx.com under both the FTC Act and Nevada’s anti-revenge porn law. This is only the second time the FTC has acted against revenge porn sites. The Complaint is a major statement from the…
Thrilled to be joining my panelists for this great Women’s Voices in Tech and Legal Hackers event in Playa Vista. DESCRIPTION How can technology and the law anticipate, prevent, and respond to targeted harassment of individuals online? Come join our expert panelists as we discuss community standard creation, victim support, and the ethics and operations of moderating…
A new report from the Data & Society Research Institute and the Center for Innovative Public Health Research reports that 4% of U.S. internet users—roughly 10.4 million Americans—have been threatened with or experienced the posting of explicit images without their consent. The report, “Nonconsensual Image Sharing,” is based on a nationally-representative telephone survey offers the first…
California Congresswoman Jackie Speier, joined by Reps. Katherine Clark (MA-5), Ryan Costello (PA-6), Gregory Meeks (NY-5), and Thomas Rooney (FL-17), has introduced Intimate Privacy Protection Act (IPPA) to create a national ban on revenge porn. Although 34 states have passed laws to address nonconsensual pornography, their approaches vary widely. Speier contends that a federal law…
RI Becomes First State to Veto Revenge Porn Legislation Over the last few years, 34 states and the District of Columbia have enacted legislation designed to address Cyber Exploitation (aka Revenge Porn). In June, House Bill 7537, which would ban Cyber Exploitation in the Ocean State, passed both the Rhode Island Senate and House with…
The Internet Law Center was featured in an article by Dan Tynan in The Guardian on Cyber Exploitation (more commonly referred to as “revenge porn”). The article quoted Bennet Kelley as follows: Is this even legal? It depends. At present, 27 US states and the District of Columbia have laws barring nonconsensual (ie, revenge) porn,…
Cyber Harassment Update: Elonis, Sergentakis and John Oliver This has been a busy month on the cyber harassment legal front, with the biggest development being the Supreme Court’s decision in Elonis v. United States concerning criminal liability for threats made over Facebook. Also of note is a federal district court decision in Sergantakis refusing to dismiss a witness…
Landmark Victories for Revenge Porn Opponents Last week saw the announcement of two major victories in the battle against revenge porn. First,.Kevin Bollaert was convicted by a San Diego County jury of 27 felony counts of identity theft and extortion in connection with a revenge porn operation. Bollaert was behind the website UGotPosted and at…
Virginia Court Orders Revealing Yelp Reviewers A Virginia appeals court ordered Yelp to reveal the identity of a reviewer of an Alexandria carpet cleaner where the business presented evidence to cast doubt that the reviewer was ever a customer. Generally, a Yelp review is entitled to First Amendment protection because it is aperson’s opinion about a…
California Criminalizes Revenge Porn* *kind of Governor Jerry Brown has signed SB 568 introduced by Senator Anthony Cannella (R-Central Valley) which criminalizes some (but not all) acts of revenge porn. Specifically, effective today, it prohibits the following: Any person who photographs or records by any means the image of the intimate body part or parts of another…
Do Not Track, Social Media Snooping and Revenge Porn Bills on Gov. Brown’s Desk Three internet bills have cleared the California Senate and Assembly and are on Governor Brown’s desk waiting for approval. The bills are: (1) AB 370 (Muratsuchi) – Do Not Track AB 370 requires that website privacy policies disclose how it handles do-not-track…
LISTEN TO PODCAST (1) CLBR Featured Story In 107 episodes of Cyber Law and Business Report we have had members of Congress and other prominent elected officials along with industry thought leaders and fascinating individuals on the front lines over today’s fights over the internet. The people who have most impressed me are those who…
Cyber Report 