commentary by Patrick H. Moore
In the world of criminal jurisprudence, there are the so-called victimless crimes and there are the crimes with “victims”. Typically, crimes with “victims” include sex crimes, burglaries, robberies and various types of fraud. In a general sense, to be a victim of a crime, the crime must hurt the victim in one way or another. For example, someone who loses their life savings by investing with a Ponzi artist is a “victim” of said artist. A child who is depicted in pornographic images is the victim of both those who made the pornography and the deviants who procure it on the Internet.
All of the above is fairly obvious, but I bring it up because Hunter Moore, the subject of this post, victimized people in a rather unique manner which led to him being called “the most hated man on the Internet”.
Hunter Moore’s operation was both simple and profitable. Dave Lee of BBC describes his social media business in a few pithy phrases:
Hunter Moore’s business plan was simple: he got rich by publishing pornographic pictures of men and women without their permission.
He would encourage visitors to his site to “submit noodz” (nudes) of their former girlfriends and boyfriends, as well as details about who the subject was and why they deserved to be featured.
This information would be posted in full on his site, IsAnyoneUp.com.
With a penchant for thoroughness, along with the pictures, Moore would post the victim’s full name and alleged address along with links to their social media sites, usually Facebook.
This was pretty bad but it was only part of Moore’s cruel strategy. To really rub vinegar into the victims’ wounds, like all good bloggers, he provided a “comments” sections and encouraged viewers to critique the looks and bodies of the victims they were viewing. Knowing the delight FB commenters sometimes take in dissing on their targets, I suspect that many of the comments were way nasty.
To make it worse, if anyone complained, they were ridiculed, and if they threatened legal action, they were simply ignored. Many of the site’s victims soon discovered that try as they might, they were largely powerless to do anything about the shame and humiliation Moore and his collaborators were foisting upon them.
Lucy (not her real name), a 22-year-old British woman, was a typical victim. A selection of pictures, taken by her and sent to her then-boyfriend, were published alongside a link to her Twitter account.
Soon the messages and friend requests started to pour in:
“I burst into tears knowing that everyone would see these pictures and I would be a laughing stock,” Lucy told the BBC.
“My friends, family and current boyfriend have all seen the images and it’s been made extremely embarrassing to go back to work or attend university.”
Lucy, of course, emailed Moore several times requesting that her pictures be taken down. Naturally, all of her requests were ignored which led her to turn to her local police force in desperation.
“They [did] nothing at all to help with this situation besides saying contact the website, which I have done and still nothing has happened,” Lucy explained plaintively.
When asked about his enterprise (this was while the site was still up and running), Moore remarked callously:
“I love the attention. People think I’m completely evil and what I’m doing is completely immoral, but at the end of the day I feel like I’m just educating people on technology.
“As sad as it is, hurting or ruining people’s lives as people say, is entertainment for some.”
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Happily, Moore got his comeuppance on Thursday when he was indicted by a Federal grand jury, according to an official at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.
Moore and his co-defendant, a man named Charles “Gary” Evens, 25, are charged with conspiracy to “access a protected computer without authorization to obtain information for private financial gain” and other counts in the Central District of California. This may be the first case of this nature to be brought in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The indictment alleges that on multiple occasions, Moore paid Evens to break into the email accounts of victims and steal nude photos to post on the website isanyoneup.com.
The pair are scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon.
For her part, anti-revenge-porn activist Charlotte Laws, whose daughter Kayla is one of the victims listed in the indictment, is very pleased:
“We’re ecstatic. We’re superpleased that the FBI have brought this to fruition. I’ve talked to several of the victims and they are extremely pleased, and I know all the victims are going to feel happy and they are going to feel that finally justice is being served.”
Revenge porn is a genre of pornography where explicit images are uploaded to the Web, most typically by scorned ex-lovers, without the consent of the photo’s subject. Moore’s website, “isanyoneup.com”, was one of the most prominent hubs for revenge porn posting until it closed in April 2012, when Moore, in what was initially interpreted as a change of heart, sold it to the antibullying site BullyVille.com.
Moore, however, apparently could not handle the “cold turkey” of no longer posting revenge porn and later in 2012, he launched a new site, HunterMoore.TV, which was purportedly designed t0 map revenge-porn victims’ photos with their locations. Fortunately, this site never got off the ground as a revenge-porn hub, and currently serves as a repository for party fliers.
Although victims and activists have long attempted to fight against revenge porn, few states have workable anti-revenge-porn laws on the books. Moore’s defense for his actions has been to claim that he was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that website owners cannot be held liable for content submitted by users. If he actively solicited illegal content, however, as the indictment alleges, he would no longer be granted Section 230 immunity.
In March of 2013, Moore was ordered to pay $250,000 to BullyVille.com founder James McGibney for defamation damages.
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It will be interesting to see how this shakes down. Moore’s conspiracy count probably has a five-year ceiling which means that he could not receive more than 60 months of Federal prison time. However, he could conceivably receive less. This is not child pornography and the assigned Federal judge may or may not have a great deal of sympathy for the victims who – it must be remembered – are the ones who typically shot the nude “selfies” in the first place.
But as is typical in Federal cases, a great deal ultimately depends on who is assigned to the case. When I looked up the case on Sunday, it was not yet up on the Federal website, Pacer, so it is too early to know the identities of the judge, the prosecutors and the defense attorneys.