'Revenge Porn' Site Battles Facebook

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Matt Liebowitz, SecurityNewsDaily Staff Writer


http://i.imgur.com/rwOde.jpg

On Tuesday (Dec. 6), a lawyer representing Facebook sent a cease and desist letter to Hunter Moore, the 25-year-old founder of Is Anyone Up, a "revenge porn" site featuring lewd Facebook pictures posted without their owners' knowledge.

Moore shot back as one might expect.

"I replied with a picture of my [genitalia]," Moore told Gawker. "I'm not a virgin to cease and desists — I get about a million a day."

The cease and desist order, from Joseph Cutler of the Seattle-based firm Perkins Coie, accuses Is Anyone Up of violating Facebook's terms of service by publishing users' photos without their consent, and also contends that the site uses Facebook's platform integrations "to intimidate and harass Facebook users."

"Your actions are illegal and must be stopped immediately," the letter reads. "Facebook demands that you immediately remove, delete and destroy any and all screenshots taken from www.Facebook.com and that you disable and remove any and all social plugins or other Facebook integrations from your site(s)."

The letter adds that Is Anyone Up undermines the privacy and protection of Facebook's users, which "will not be tolerated."

Facebook has disabled Moore's personal account, but, as Moore told Gawker, he doesn't plan on heeding the social networking giant's demands.

"I think [Facebook] is under pressure from users to do something about me," he said, adding an expletive. "I'm never going to stop."

[Deepsepia]

Moore is a very strange character, and he's legally well advised. DMCA has a very big carve out for user postings. So long as folks in the photos posted are of legal age, the host has a "safe harbor", that is, Moore's not responsible for what other folks submit.




The word "hated" adorns Hunter Moore's social-media bios. He has drawn the ire of the music industry, young people from all over the United States (as well as Canada, England and Australia), of privacy defenders—and, well, of many, many other people who happen to come across his website, Is Anyone Up?, and find it appalling. The death threats have not fazed him. Nor has the spectre of lawsuits; while many have been threatened, to Moore's knowledge, not one has been filed.

The stabbing, though; that did get his attention. A young woman, unhappy to have had her pictures posted on his site, ambushed Moore one afternoon in March as he walked to his mailbox. The gash to his shoulder required a trip to the hospital. Moore now no longer posts pictures of anyone from his hometown of San Francisco on his site.

Is Anyone Up? is fairly simple in concept: someone anonymously submits nude photos to Moore through the site's submission form. Perhaps it’s a jilted ex, or a recent hookup, or a vengeful friend. These days, the site receives many self-submissions as well. Provenance doesn’t matter. Moore uploads those photos and attaches identifying screen-grabs from the person’s Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter accounts—whatever’s available. He sometimes adds a pithy caption and a reaction gif at the end, usually from a television show or meme. And that’s pretty much it. Is Anyone Up? currently receives, Moore said, 30 million page views a month.

***

Moore has cleared up to $13,000 a month from the site, but that amount fluctuates and nearly all of it is put back into the site. The server bill alone is $8,000 a month. In addition, Moore, who is 25, must also pay his lawyer, a newly hired PR person, a server administrator, and two security specialists, whose primary responsibility is to age-check the submissions. I spoke with Moore at length over the phone several times in the past few weeks. While his conversation is peppered with “dudes” and “motherfuckers,” under all that seeming casualness he is clearly shrewd when it comes to business matters and the Internet. He's aware he could be capitalizing on advertisements and bringing in a lot more money, but for now he enjoys the freedom that the lack of advertisers gives him.

Moore said he generally spends 12 hours a day, five days a week uploading posts to his site. There are different varieties of posts. One category is "band whores," which include a list of all members of a band that someone allegedly slept with. There are "gnargoyles," a term reserved for people Moore deems particularly unattractive. Other classifications include: "would" or "would not" and "gay" or "straight." When Moore comes across a Facebook profile he likes, a "bounty" goes out for nude photos of that person. "Please get naked" and "just show the shaft" are also used to urge people to self-submit photos. Unlike many co-ed sites out there, Is Anybody Up? features just as many men as women, if not more.

Another of the site's regular features is "Daily Hate," outraged correspondence from people who have had their pictures posted without their consent (example—that link, like many others in this story, NSFW). Some letters threaten; others attempt to cajole him into removing the photos. Often times, Moore will post private chats between him and a postee, in which they insult him or agree to send him pictures for his personal use but not for the site. Sometimes he'll add their pictures.

The bigger the reaction, the better the traffic.

“People threaten me with lawsuits every day, which is funny, because it fuels the site,” said Moore. “The people that get mad hate my site and want to take it down. They send me all this crazy stuff, but at the same time they’re just building content for my site, which just makes me more popular.”

When Moore tells you that he does not give a fuck, it seems like he actually means it. He regularly posts photos of himself naked, and even, once, a video of him drunkenly masturbating. His cellphone number, email address and Facebook page have been regularly featured on the site. Increasingly, he posts lurid stories from his personal life.

In roughly nine months of the site's active existence, a cult of personality has grown up around Moore. An army of commenters reveres him and is quick to jump to his defense whenever he is attacked. I've seen a couple women offer up their virginity. Teenagers tell him that they will be submitting their pictures to him as soon as they turn 18. Many of these kids are “scene kids.” Swoopy hair, plug earrings, facial piercings, colorful tattoos. They listen to pop-punk and post-hardcore bands. They often have Tumblrs filled with earnest lyrics about love and love lost from bands that play on the Warped tour. And they leave hundreds of comments and responses every day to Moore on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

In these exchanges, Moore is much the same as he is on his website. When a 14 year old questioned him on Tumblr whether his site was going to be around in four years because she wanted to be on it, he replied, “Yeah, hurry up.” When people post to Tumblr saying they feel sorry for Moore, or calling him a drug addict with no future, he reposts it and adds a stock photo of himself looking sad.

In his conversations with me, Moore maintained that the site is all in good fun. But sometimes it seems like he holds a grudge, such as the situation with Emily Gimmel that took place a few weeks ago.

Gimmel, a D-list reality-tv star on a show called "Southern Belles: Louisville," had some salacious photos posted on the site. She threatened a defamatory suit alleging the pictures weren’t her, and continued to lash out at Moore through social media. She then became the subject of a number of posts.

When I questioned him about it a week or so later, he claimed to barely remember the incident. “Oh yeah! She’s dumb. She told me the FBI was going to be on it. I’m like, 'They don’t care about you!'" said Moore. "That stuff is just funny to me, but it got played out after a few days. Nobody cares about it now; it’s just another day."

http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/the-man-who-makes-money-publishing-your-nude-pics

[deebakes]

good for him :tup: