Weiner owns the copyright to his own photo assuming he took it himself on his phone. Whether the sext partner infringed that copyright by distributing it depends on whether she was implicitly granted a license to do so. I doubt it. I guess she could argue some other defense, like fair use, but I similarly doubt it would be successful.
So I don’t see why it isn’t a copyright violation. It’s no different from you taking a friend’s photo and selling it to National Geographic, is it? The news may have some fair use defense, but I don’t think the partner does.
Whether the act of distributing the photos would be criminal or not would turn on whether the retail value of Weiner’s weiner exceeds $2,500. I think it was worth at least that much to Fox News.
If that applies at all, then it would only apply if Wiener were a professional photographer. Which he isn’t.
As for the social convention that if I send a picture of my dick to some random chick on the internet, then I should be shocked, SHOCKED if she shares it with other people… well, now that’s really cool. I’ve been holding back on doing this, so now I should feel pretty safe about doing so and NOT having my dick go viral, or something.
We have no idea what his wife knew or didn’t know. Besides, I am not sure martial infidelity, assuming it was, was the sum total of the issue.
But without pics, his scandal was not much different from any number of politicians who “cheated” on their wives. The fact is that it was sensational because the the evidence and the content. People judge him as being perverse whereas others weren’t. Why is that okay given none of that was meant for public consumption or judgement?
The polls told a different story.
Because you keep focusing on the main disparate part. They are analogous, not EXACTLY the same. The main question is this:
Should people who view Weiner’s photos be castigated the same way those who view Lawrence’s are?
Should desires of a person to not have their private photos viewed by the public be paramount regardless of how there were released?
Again look at this article imploring people not to google the images from the cloud leak:
Please explain to me why Anthony Weiner doesn’t have the same rights, or deserve the same considerations outlined in that op-ed?
I never get why not take a naked photo of yourself and your lover and have it processed and keep it in a nice photo album? Sounds very safe and simple to me, sure it could be stolen, if say someone broke into your home. But the chances of that are much lower.
Not blaming the victim here, many did not know that iCloud was not secure as they thought, celebs are like us, sometimes putting too much trust into technology. They never imagined it could happen, but let it be a lesson. Nothing wrong if they keep the photos in an album. That would be nice, no hassle and peace of mind.
We live in a world where crime happens, just like you would not put your possessions in the street, the online world is not as safe as one thinks.
Take the Dope Photo Gallery, anyone can go and save those pictures and use them on another site or something. I my sent my photo to be published here, but it never did for some reason. Now I am glad, lol!~
I think he does, and it’s in poor taste to view his photos.
But the scandal behind then is absolutely called for. Even in the world of extramarital adventures, taking a lover is different than getting a blow job from and intern which is different than sending dick pics to randos.
Why does it matter what his wife knew or didn’t know? I’m unaware of any “open marriages” currently holding seats. For the most part, big messy scandals involving cheating result in resignations. Again, I don’t think people judge him as perverse because of the sexting. It’s because there were a bajillion (or at least 6) women.
And, because you keep mentioning the “polls” showing the photos as doing the damage, not his behavior, I wanna see 'em. Please provide the polls.
In general, if I write and send you a letter, I retain the coyright in the letter, but you are nevertheless at liberty to tell anyone about the letter, show the letter to anyone you want, etc. You can pin it up on your gatepost for the world to read as they pass by.
Unless, of course, you are under some obligation of confidentiality. No obligation arises merely out of the fact that I, and not you, wrote the letter, but it might arise out of an explicit agreement between us, or out of other circumstances.
If I share an intimate photograph with an intimate partner in the context of ongoing intimate relationship, I think it’s fair to say that morally if not legally there’s an expectation of confidentiality and discretion. At the other extreme, if I send a photograph, unsolicited, to a person who is not in such a relationship with me, there is no such expectation. In between, if I send a photograph to a person who I barely know or do not know at all, and with whom I have no intimate relationship, even if she’s not actually offended to receive the picture I don’t see that the the same expectation of confidentiality arises. I’m clearly not averse to strangers seeing my junk.
So, given all the facts of the Weiner case (and I don’t care enough about it to have researched or remembered all the facts), what kind of expectation of confidentiality could Weiner have? I don’t know, but certainly not the expectation he would have if he shared this picture only with his wife, and certainly not the expectation he would have if he had aimed to store and/or back up the photographs, rather than send them to people he didn’t really know. It seems to me that passing on Weiner’s pictures might or might not have been skeezy in some degree - it probably was - but it’s altogether different from hacking into someone’s account and stealing photographs that were never shared with you.
I suspect you give explicit permission to allow retweets in the Twitter user agreement. But without that I would still think a court would find implicit permission given that this functionality is built into the service. Similarly, you are given implicit permission to play a CD to your family in your home, but not to play it to your whole neighborhood, based on customary usage.
Cite? That’s not my understanding of how copyright law works in general, though it may be true of letters specifically. In general, providing someone a copy does not implicitly grant them the right to distribute the copy without your permission in the absence of some evidence of intent to grant that right–such as by implication from the nature of the relationship or social custom.
If that’s right–and it might not be, this isn’t my field–then as I said earlier, the question is whether you implicitly grant your sext partners the right of distribution. I doubt that, and the only really argument I’ve heard otherwise is that you cannot trust people you just met (which isn’t especially relevant to your intent), and that sexting while married is immoral and therefore something something.
I’m not sure that she can’t, both because this is not my field and because fair use doctrine is muddled. But that supposition is based on three things.
First, it’s marginally harder (though not impossible) to argue that you distributed it to a media outlet in order to inform the public if you did so in exchange for money.
Second, even most news organizations are cautious about distributing the entirety of the copyrighted work in order to preserve a fair use defense, usually taking care to reveal only excerpts of written work or parts of a whole image–and presumably the leakers leaked the whole unedited photo.
And third, although I think it is doctrinally wrong, courts are generally more deferential to professional journalists. Indeed, news reporting is a whole branch of fair use doctrine and has generally been limited to professional journalists.
One of the distinctions people were making is that one act was illegal and the other was not. If it was a copyright violation and the pics were worth $2500 then it was criminal as well.
But your argument has been if a bunch of stuff then the Weiner case may be a criminal matter. The only way to test those ifs is with a prosecution. There is no such ifs in hacking the cloud. So that’s an answer to why one is worse than the other.
An absolute black and white test is not what the OP is seeking, I presume. The question is why is one situation is worse than the other. Running a stop light (while a crime) is much less worse in my opinion than a triple homicide. Just as a copyright violation seems to me to be much less worse than hacking and invasion of privacy.
If you’re saying the only way to figure out the real facts for the purposes of a criminal conviction is trial, then I agree. But, of course, neither case has gone to trial and yet they are being treated differently. I don’t see why one being investigated and the other not is conclusive proof of anything. Indeed, I thought we already knew that Weiner had no interest in asserting a copyright.
Please note that I’m not saying the two are equivalent. My first post was three reasons why they are not. But it also isn’t clear to me that criminal vs. non-criminal is a valid distinction here.
