How do you spell chutzpah? If you don’t have an answer, the story of Craig Brittain, shown at the left (much to his displeasure), will provide one.
The Washington Post explains:
Late last month, the Federal Trade Commission settled a complaint against Brittain in which the agency accused the Coloradan and his defunct site, Is Anybody Down, with unfair business practices. The site paid its bills by soliciting women’s nude photos on Craigslist and/or from their exes, publishing the photos without the women’s permission (and often with their names and phone numbers attached), and then charging fees of $200 to $500 to take the photos down.
As part of the settlement, Brittain agreed to destroy the images he had … but irony of ironies, Brittain himself now feels exposed.
Amazing. A man who made his living by violating the rights of individuals who agreed to photographed (or photograph themselves) in their altogether is now complaining that he has been violated! (Yes, there is a question of what possess someone to strip naked and say, “Cheese!” but that’s another story.)
On Feb. 9, Brittain filed a takedown request to Google, demanding that the search engine stop linking to nearly two dozen URLs — including a number of news articles, and files on the case from the FTC — because they used photos of him and information about him without his permission.
Of the 23 links he names, three are public records posted on government Web sites, and the balance are reported articles from major news sites or blogs. Only four contain a picture of Brittain that he appears to have taken himself; several others use a police booking photo from a 2003 incident. Ironically, Brittain also complains about media organizations stealing redacted pictures from Is Anybody Down — which stayed in business by stealing photos, itself.
Brittain has no actual legal grounds for the complaint, as Ars Technica, who first spotted the filing, explains. “In this instance,” writes David Kravets, “fair use and general First Amendment principles are on Google’s and the media’s side.”
Brittain’s immoral and unethical actions have been criminalized in some states, including California and New Jersey, where the acts are classified under the umbrella term revenge porn. Last October, hackers stole and threatened to publish thousand of nude photos of people as young as ten.
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