> Is it a worrying trend that website operators are becoming increasingly culpable for user content?
Well, let's be clear here. He didn't build a business that operated around hosting arbitrary images, that happened to be adopted by bad people for bad purposes. He was a bad person himself, who built a bad website, to assist other bad people. These are two very different things.
I mean, I understand how you could imagine some other website, a neutral website, that was unintentionally adopted by bad people for bad purposes, and that other website could do the same sort of damage, unintentionally, that this website did to its victims, intentionally, and that hypothetical situation is sort of similar to this one if you look upsidedown and squint.
But in the moral code of most people (for example, mine) and for that matter the US legal system, it's important not just that you have bad effects, but that you have a bad intent. This is why, for example, murder is different than manslaughter. In both cases somebody is dead because of your actions, but in only one case did you form a specific intent to kill another person. (And manslaughter is, for the record, not "no intent", but it is a lesser kind of intent, like firing a gun into a building without regard for whether or not it is occupied. It's a bad intent, just not bad enough to be murder.)
I think where hackers get hung up is in some sort of weird Net Neutrality-ish argument where any packet is as good as any other packet, and so a packet that carries revenge porn is just as legitimate as a packet that carries cat videos. Packets are neither good or bad but just are and all packets have the same legitimate claim on arriving to their destination as any other. And if you are designing a router, that sounds like a very sound principle to me.
But in the courtroom, we are not prosecuting packets, but prosecuting people. And people are more than just a function of the packets they send. They have motives, they have intents. They construct a conscious plan to do good or to do evil. And that is how they are judged.
This is going to sound kind of ridiculous, but I think a flaw with this viewpoint is that you're saying that a "revenge porn" site is inherently bad with bad effects and bad intent.
For the sake of argument, I can imagine a scenario where an upcoming adult model submits "revenge" pictures that she took herself as a form of free publicity, or another popular revenge site that is actually run by an adult modeling company where all content is actually generated by them under the facade of being "revenge porn". Should this content be illegal? Should the site that the model submitted to be fined? What if all documentation was destroyed in the case of the second site, but it was just the state going after it? Do you trust a court of law to make these decisions accurately?
These aren't easy questions, and this is why I have trouble with going after businesses that are morally suspect. It always seems to set a dangerous precedent for businesses that are on the edge or on the "moral" side of things.
Unfortunately, we have not understood each other. You are saying things like
> Should this content be illegal?
Meanwhile I'm saying things like
> it's important not just that you have bad effects, but that you have a bad intent
and
> we are not prosecuting packets, but prosecuting people
Let me try and use your terminology. There is no such thing as illegal content. There is content that is produced in the course of a criminal act. But it isn't the content that is illegal, it's the act.
I think the rest of your comment follows from that misunderstanding of my premise, but if not, let me know, and I can respond to the actual merits.
Well, let's be clear here. He didn't build a business that operated around hosting arbitrary images, that happened to be adopted by bad people for bad purposes. He was a bad person himself, who built a bad website, to assist other bad people. These are two very different things.
I mean, I understand how you could imagine some other website, a neutral website, that was unintentionally adopted by bad people for bad purposes, and that other website could do the same sort of damage, unintentionally, that this website did to its victims, intentionally, and that hypothetical situation is sort of similar to this one if you look upsidedown and squint.
But in the moral code of most people (for example, mine) and for that matter the US legal system, it's important not just that you have bad effects, but that you have a bad intent. This is why, for example, murder is different than manslaughter. In both cases somebody is dead because of your actions, but in only one case did you form a specific intent to kill another person. (And manslaughter is, for the record, not "no intent", but it is a lesser kind of intent, like firing a gun into a building without regard for whether or not it is occupied. It's a bad intent, just not bad enough to be murder.)
I think where hackers get hung up is in some sort of weird Net Neutrality-ish argument where any packet is as good as any other packet, and so a packet that carries revenge porn is just as legitimate as a packet that carries cat videos. Packets are neither good or bad but just are and all packets have the same legitimate claim on arriving to their destination as any other. And if you are designing a router, that sounds like a very sound principle to me.
But in the courtroom, we are not prosecuting packets, but prosecuting people. And people are more than just a function of the packets they send. They have motives, they have intents. They construct a conscious plan to do good or to do evil. And that is how they are judged.