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Defamation in the Internet Age: Revenge-Porn (Blog #2)

The chapter discusses the two landmark cases for defamation law in the United States: New York Times v. Sullivan and Gertz v. Welch, both of which establish standards for public officials and private individuals that still stand strong today, but with the rapid development of the internet, many of our previous assumptions about defamation, privacy, incitement, etc. are complicated---even more than they already were. Our laws are still playing catch-up to the internet, and one of the specific issues today unique to the internet is "revenge-porn," which is basically when a person shames their ex by leaking/sharing private photos of them online without consent. If defamation is considered speech that "tends to lower a person's reputation before others, cause that person to be shunned, or expose that person to hated, contempt, or ridicule," then revenge-porn certainly falls under that category, specifically libel per se, as it's defamatory on its face without the need for context.

Imagine this: in real life, if you went around showing people naked pictures of your ex, it's easy for someone else to punish you. Online though, it's beyond difficult to punish, because you can just create a fake account and leak them that way. As soon as those images get circulated, they can't be reasonably be expected to be contained anymore (i.e. going viral), at which point it's unfortunately a lost cause for the person harmed.

In the example of revenge-porn, we see how the internet poses new issues: for one, it uniquely allows people to be anonymous, which alone makes the internet a haven for trolling/flaming/harassing anyone. This is obviously a problem for seeking charges for online defamatory speech. How do you investigate the internet for the source of the harassment? Remember that there are NO federal laws against revenge-porn. Revenge-porn can obviously deeply hurt people, but luckily private organizations and sites like Twitter have banned revenge-porn, and Google will remove revenge-porn photos from their search results upon request. As our state/federal laws play catch-up, victims of revenge-porn are at the mercy of the internet's sharing power, underscoring broader unexplored themes of defamation and harassment in the internet age.

http://time.com/4811561/revenge-porn/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/03/12/twitter-bans-revenge-porn/70215684/

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6302812?hl=en

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