Crime and Punishment for Sexual Demand
In light of the recent cultural tempest, some personal reflection and an attempt at critical thinking on the interaction of genders, feminism, privacy, pornography, digital social media, journalism, the nature of sexual assault and the values represented in a generalized version of typical Invasion of Sexual Privacy laws I found on the internet ... I offer the following untrained opinion, it is not legal advice: Wherein a valuable asset, made largely of private yet deliberate pornography, being burgled from an cloud storage service connected to personally secured photographic recording devices such procured and later disseminated with an as of yet undetermined motive (whether for greed, status or to satisfy MALE SEXUAL DEMAND) by a determined collective of still unknown hackers (likely male) and leaked by one or many for profit or not ... to what extent is this significant? First of all, let me say I enjoy personal private pornography and have no disparaging remarks for the young women who original produced any material of this nature in question. I personally enjoy private pornography because it is usually made just for me by a person I am romantically involved with and would also trust completely with my body and images of my body. If social and legal consequences of this very publicized occurrence of privacy intrusion bear out an effect causing less occurrences of my personal enjoyment of similar items intended solely for me ... I will be sad. and pout. and wish for the good ole days when we could send fun, intimate, racy or even dangerously scandalous images to each other with only the one person we actually trust to keep it a secret, personal, private. But that affect does not register at all compared to the scale of the crimes committed in this instance particularly for the victims. The key to understanding the magnitude of this particular crime involves assuming some facts which may prove to be fallacious - they represent my understanding at this time; that female celebrities' sexually intimate moments were purposefully produced as private pornography, digitally archived and secured by users who signed lengthy terms of service acknowledging security and sharing risks and were either betrayed by a confidant such as an assistant or employee, or failed to make appropriate security measures on their own relative to the risk of value loss of the property at stake. The crime of theft of personal property and invasion of privacy has obviously been committed, but requires more detailed analysis to ascertain the scale of its value and moral severity given the sexualized content and celebrity status of the victims and perhaps as women. The level of personal harm to the victims is also magnified given the sexualized nature of the content and the immense scale of potential interest and thereby dissemination. Contra Lena Dunham and Julia Hustwit's hastily constructed analogy to sexual assault vis a vis the notably different crime of extracting sexualized material from women in public places, I do not think upskirt prevention laws (where they are even upheld) and first stage peeping tom laws are directly applicable to this crime in that the intent to produce sexualized content seems largely, although of course depends on a case by case judgement, to reside with the victims. This is not victim blaming: This is so because it is not reasonable to assert the thief could know the nature of the items they were stealing until they were stolen i.e. Taking mail out of a mailbox is illegal, if you break that law and the spoils of your thievery include an envelope of private pornography, you have not created the sexualized content which is a critical element of said laws. Should you fap to it or disseminate it knowing it was intended to be private, you then however have committed another crime which is defined clearly in the second and third stages of typical peeping tom laws (misdemeanor 1a or Felony I accordingly). If you sell it for profit you have not only violated civil property laws of considerable value, possibly qualifying you for Grand Theft, but you may have also bumped up your third stage of Privacy Invasion to Felony "H" (10k per instance and 5yrs of federal PMITAP which I hear will be encouraged liberally if any of the victims are underage) Pornography has a monetary value, which can be gauged by the free market demand upon its dissemination, which turns out to be hefty for a cache of 100 trendy female celebrities private images ... prepare to be completely bankrupted. However (this is not victim blaming, this is an exercise in quantifying insurance liability assertion) ... leaving an item of such incredible monetary value in a street side mailbox would rightfully be seen as foolish, and so the criminal may not be liable for the entire valuation of the property but perhaps for financial harm that a damaged career may entail. Whatever sense of moral security and privacy the victims may have lost (depending on their morals, which are theirs and theirs alone to determine) in an incident such as this is also magnified by its valuation scope because of its consequential widespread dissemination ... This represents a priceless entity which can never be returned or accounted for except as a teaching lessons to be passed on to other potential victims. The lesson being, if you make materials you do not want to share, tend to them as their value to you entails. If you value your privacy, defend it appropriately and responsibly. So for these yet to be found criminals and every single one of their accessories (every 4chan, Pirate Bay, BitTorrent and Reddit creep who participated by encouraging or funding the fappening) what is the crime and punishment you deserve? In the present case, as an example, we will perhaps look at the highest estimated valued material. That which belonged to a beautiful 24 year-old Oscar winner whose obvious appeal as a natural beauty is continuously outmatched by her genuine charm, multi-dimensional personality, sharp intellect, and delightfully nuanced depiction of the human condition which she willingly shares with millions through her acting performances, her personal interviews and her public promotional photo spreads. When a sizeable body of society falls completely in love with a celebrity such as Ms Lawrence, her time becomes immensely valuable. At the pinnacles of their time in the limelight the likes of the Presley's, the Marylin Monroes, or the Beatles became priceless commodities and subject to endless speculation, invasion of privacy and mobbing for attention. Anything connected to them also rose in immense value for its rarity and cachet, such that the demand for them and being connected to them in any way drove people to madness, murder and catastrophe. The numbers that could be derived here are staggering. It could stand that the moments shared with Ms Lawrence at the instant the content was produced could not ever be exactly duplicated or be more valuable than at that very moment, but because visual imagery does so much for the stimulus of male hormonal activity it becomes irresistible food for our perpetual, natural, uncivilized and ruthless innate sexual demand. Temptations our society tends to choose not to resist. The theft and dissemination of the digital visual records of these moments are not only monetary in damage but potentially harmful, personally, to the national treasures of talent, beauty and personality which are represented by Ms Lawrence and the other fine women taken advantage of ... harming us all ... perhaps their victimization will make us love her even more through our sympathy for them, but as a society, we must take critical lessons from these events and admit WE PULLED THE TRIGGER. We are the ones who fund lascivious paparazzi when we pay to sneak a peak into the lives and up the skirts of celebrities in the checkout aisle. We are the ones who will break the internet with the fappening and pour billions into an industry notorious for human trafficking, exploitation and disgrace. We pay for and participate in pornography for sale, establishing its value and cementing its morally dubious process as a part of our collective depravity, for this it is. (Except for the small percentage which is made for pure fun or artistry) We must acknowledge that our actions, collectively, lead us to hurt women. We hurt women we care for and in doing so, we break their sense of security and trust, which can never be rebuilt. Which is why I urge women (and men) everywhere to read this XKCD on password strength and follow its advice so I can still get nice, personal, private surprises from those who trust me and want to share their private moments with me. http://xkcd.com/936/ (But don't use CORRECTHORSEBATTERYSTAPLE exactly ... Especially since autocorrect now knows that phrase ...)
