In New Jersey, it is legal to record something as long as one of the participants knows it’s being recorded. Since neither of the men knew about it, the recorders have broken that law.
So… I can stay for the straight sex, then?
:dubious: I bet you were a lot more fun in college, Mr. Square.
Speaking for my own college experience, one of the lines between “typical assholery” and “it’s time to beat that guy down and/or expel him from the fraternity” was distribution. It would have, in my culture, been just typical assholery to record it–but if it got out to someone outside the fraternity, that would have been over the line.
I must have missed the part about how the camera got into the guy’s room. To me, concealing a camera in another person’s room is grounds for an ass kicking, legal or otherwise.
They were roommates.
I am assuming the camera wasn’t concealed, the participants just didn’t know it was on. If it is anything like the camera on my laptop, the camera is positioned at the front center of the screen portion. Mine has a red light that comes on when the camera is in use. The asshole roommate left a program open that allowed the camera to record and he (and others) were able to view what was going on live.
Although the ehadline and report are unclear, “secret sext tape” implies concealment. Even if it wasn’t concealed,
Kids get bullied for lots of different things. Even non-gay kids have been known to become suicidal because of bullying. Bullying in general is a problem, and thanks to cyber bullying, it’s probably worse now than ever.
Their parents will be included in the suit and the homeowners policy will probably kick in on the negligence portion.
Actionable in civil court for hate crime, in my opinion.
Even if the DA loses his spine and lets them both off, I think they’ll be paying back for this ‘prank’ for a long time. Rightly so, in my opinion.
Being in college doesn’t excuse crime for me. If you’re old enough to go to college, you’re old enough to be held responsible for your actions. Period.
So they are being charged with collecting explicit images without consent, and distributing them, which is obviously appropriate. However, I do not see anything that suggests that they are being held in any way responsible for Tyler’s death.
It does look like some gay advocates are going to treat this as a hate crime, and I’d imagine there would be law suits forthcoming in that regard.
Well, thank God IANAL because whether the act was technically legal or illegal is of no interest whatsoever to me.
I can’t read this thread without getting angry. I hope someone will start a new thread in a few months indicating whether this asshole’s punishment will be much too lenient or much MUCH too fck…g unbelievably too lenient.*
Hate crime? They probably didn’t even know they were commiting a crime. I don’t think these kids should be held responsible for the death. They are responsible for the invasion of privacy.
It’s worse than invasion of privacy. This was deliberate public humiliation for the sheer cockishness of it.
It is a well-established principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
However, in my local paper that I mentioned earlier, it was only being looked into whether they’re responsible and whether their responsibiity incorporates a hate crime. I’m not sure I’m even convinced they’re responsible, absent more evidence of things they did to this poor guy, or other harassment.
Would you agree or not agree that, even in the event they didn’t know they were committing a crime, (i) what they did was explicitly because he was gay, and (ii) there is a harassment aspect, since they had tried to do this previously but didn’t succeed?
This guy is a real winner. What’s his damage? Is it upbringing, in the genes, maybe too many hormones in the water, what? Why do so many people not have basic decency? But on the other hand, hate crime, really? What if instead of a gay guy it was a chaste girl getting some and he released it to her religious community and she killed herself?
i) I honestly don’t know. If the victim was heterosexual, I think the roommate may have still recorded the event if a guy/girl were involved. I don’t think the victim was targeted because he was gay, he was targeted because he was known to be having sex in the dorm room. I think the fact that he was gay may have added some kind of novelty for the roommate.
ii) I’m not sure where invasion of privacy meets harassment. According to the law posted by someone else, distribution of recordings is a third degree crime of invasion of privacy as opposed to fourth degree.
A PSA about cyber bullying. A good one too, because it’s very true.