Ah, is there anything more fun and self-affirming than capturing that perfect nude sexy selfie? Run it through a few filters, give yourself some “blurred lines”, fuzz up the harsher contours, add some shadows, cascade a little peachy glow over the whole thing.
You look gorgeous!
I’ve done it myself. The first person to hack my husband’s phone will get an eyeful! The copies on his phone are the only ones in existence (right, honey?), because I delete them off my own phone so when I use Fruit Ninja as a distraction for my four year old, there is no chance of accidentally posting racy shit to Twitter.
So the question of the moment is “who owns the photos on your phone”?
I’m not the only narcissist amused by taking sexy selfies, and I’m far from the only one to polish those shots and then press “send”. The data for exactly how many people send sexy selfies is kind of all over the place, and most of the research looks at teenage sexters. You get everything from 1% of teenagers between 14-18 have sent sexually explicit texts OR images , to 40% have done one or the other. Far more people admit to RECEIVING sexts than sending them.
This is probably a self-reporting problem. Something tells me if we actually examined the data contained on phones, we would get a startlingly difference answer.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23675996
Again, using self-reporting, the PEW Research Council comes up with the following number for adults, based on a telephone survey with 2252 adults over the age of 18. That’s a good sample size, assuming it was drawn randomly from all over the country. The PEW Council is usually pretty reliable.
I’m in the 30-49 category, where 5% of people admit to sexting, but curiously, 17% report having been the recipient of sexts. PEW doesn’t offer a gender breakdown, but who wants to bet it’s mostly women who say they haven’t sent sexts, but they HAVE received them?
Just a guess.
Once you have decided to press send, who owns that image?
The topic of “Revenge Porn” is being debated pretty ferociously in the media these days. Most examples almost always feature a woman who has sent sexy nude selfies to a man, who then posts the said selfie on a so-called revenge porn site after an acrimonious break-up.
This leads to embarrassment and discomfort for the woman. She wants to decide whom, and under what circumstances, gets to see her nude body.
Fair enough.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/01/23/women_sue_to_fight_back_against_revenge_porn.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/victims-push-laws-to-end-online-revenge-posts.html?hp&_r=0
I’m not convinced we need a law to address this particular issue, when a little foresight and self-control on the part of the offended women ought to do the trick.
If you are the sort of woman who truly, deeply cares that images of your nude body are not widely circulated around cyber space, the solution is kind of simple, no?
Don’t create them. Don’t give them to other people.
In the alternative, only send photos that won’t cause crippling anxiety should they be made public. Keep your goddamn clothes on. Is it really that hard?
Personally, I wouldn’t give a crap if someone DID hack my husband’s phone and stole images of me. Meh. Whatever. I sent them to my HUSBAND, and I am not the slightest bit ashamed. And there are already laws in place to punish people who STEAL photos. Stealing is not the same thing as giving freely. If the thought of those images being freely available freaks you out, DON’T TAKE THEM AND DON’T GIVE THEM AWAY.
Rather than turn this into a huge discussion of privacy law and copyright infringement, I want to discuss why men posting sexually explicit images of women without their knowledge or consent (although I would argue if you GIVE AWAY these images, you should probably just assume they will be shared eventually) has created a giant cultural scream to THROW THE BUMS IN JAIL, but women posting sexually explicit TEXTS from men doesn’t get the same reaction.
Anthony Weiner anyone? Where is the shrieking chorus demanding that Weiner’s privacy be respected?
*crickets*
Look at this little cupcake. Her name is Quin Pu.
After two dates – TWO!! – Quin felt she was in an established relationship with this poor schmuck, and when he declined to attend her birthday party with 125 of Quin’s closest friends, she lost her little mind!
I was stunned into paralysis. I had no words–this never happens–and I just felt short of breath. There were many things that pissed me off, but I was so flustered I couldn’t even articulate them. Again, this is a serious problem for a writer and effusive communicator.
So Quin sent back the following response:
After two dates, she gets a break-up text and decides to fuck with his professional life by sending his executive committee copies of sexually explicit messages?
According to the New York Times article, revenge porn can have devastating consequences and should therefore be criminalized.
The effects can be devastating. Victims say they have lost jobs, been approached in stores by strangers who recognized their photographs, and watched close friendships and family relationships dissolve. Some have changed their names or altered their appearance.
“It’s just an easy way to make people unemployable, undatable and potentially at physical risk,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland, who is writing a book on online harassment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/victims-push-laws-to-end-online-revenge-posts.html
Oh, I see. Well that’s a problem we need to bring the full force of the law down on, and punish those terrible people men.
Where’s the cry for Quin to be arrested?
Now, to be fair, Quin hasn’t gotten nearly the reaction she imagined. Most people have quite rightly condemned her as a snobby, self-absorbed bitch who probably shouldn’t date anyone ever again.
Some people are down with Quin, but most aren’t.
haynes • 14 hours ago
The problem isn’t the breakup–the problem is he made plans with her for a day, and then totally spazzed out and backed out of the plans. That is not cool, nor okay. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. He deserves a bit of humiliation.
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/09/warning-all-men-in-dc-do-not-date-quin-woodward-pu/
A little humiliation? Actively trying to destroy his professional life is not a “little humiliation”.
Quin, meet Adria Richards. Didn’t work out so well for her.
What are we to make of this not unexpected set of double standards? When men take revenge on women by posting sexually explicit photos they likely LEGALLY OWN the right to, they should be charged with a crime.
But when women post sexually explicit TEXTS from men with the explicit intention of harming that man professionally, it’s just a bit of poor judgement?
You know, I think we have it right in the latter situation. Quin is a fucking bitch, but that guy who went out on TWO dates with her and felt compelled to send sexually explicit texts should have exercised better judgement.
Just as I would tell any woman DON’T SEND PICTURES YOU DON’T WANT MADE PUBLIC, I would tell men the same thing: DON’T SEND SEXUALLY EXPLICIT TEXTS YOU DON’T WANT MADE PUBLIC.
Anthony Weiner got nailed to the wall for his cringingly unpoetic sexting AND explicit selfies, and as far as I’m concerned, the minute he decided to press send, he accepted the consequences. And the same goes for women. The minute she presses send, she accepts the consequences of that.
http://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-weiner-lisa-weiss-facebook-radar-2011-6?op=1
This whole conversation seems to me to be a perfect illustration of what I find such bullshit about modern women: you can’t have it both ways. If men are going to be held accountable for the contents of their digital legacy, then women need to be held accountable, too.
Or we can all just grow up and accept responsibility for our OWN actions!
That IS an option.
We don’t need more laws. We need more grown-ups. Both men and women alike.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
Actually, about the only thing a person can do about an explicit selfie that is released into the wild is to proceed on the basis of copyright infringement. It’s a bit technical, but one can send a DMCA take-down notice to the hosting site, and if they want to maintain their safe harbor under the law, they’ll remove the content.
Of course, it would be almost completely useless effort, since once such pics are in the wild, they’re nearly impossible to re-corral.
So, yes, exercising some self-control and forethought would prevent this situation from arising in the first place, but I don’t expect such common sense to prevail. But as ever, this will be a legal effort aimed almost solely at men.
Because for most “modern” women, it doesn’t matter what the law is, in their solipsistic little hearts they just know that if their actions come back to hurt them, there should be a law protecting them from hurt. Though I doubt they will recognize the paternalistic irony.
As for Quin, she isn’t just “a snobby, self-absorbed bitch,” she’s a certifiable looney. Her reaction to what was–I thought–a fairly gentle break-up text after only two dates involving, from my take, a fair amount of alcohol (can you say “beer goggles”?) was so over the top as to qualify for immediate professional help.
I swear, solipsism should be classified as a mental illness…
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That blogger chick is the case study for MGTOW. Here was a guy who did exactly what men have been told to do. Be upfront, give closure, be a nice guy. To get eviscerated by some self involved harpy who threatens his livelihood.
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Honestly, I feel like what’s lost in all of this is that society, for as much as it talks about being progressive and open-minded, and for all we believe that sexting is now a common “epidemic” that isn’t at all weird…. How and why exactly does it follow that you should be fired from your job for sending sexually explicit messages to somebody (unless it was done in an unwelcome and harassing manner).
Like, if some chick calls your office and tells your boss “Hey I met this guy at a party last night and he took me home and had his way with me and I was into it at the time but now I hate him for various reasons blah blah blah” nobody would get fired for that. It’s understood that sex is like, a thing that happens among adults. Frequently for some of them.
Yet, a sexually explicit text message is somehow grounds for termination regardless of context? Why exactly? Because there is record of it? Who the hell cares. Maybe this is a generational thing, I’m 27 and grew up with the Internet, but to me, the notion that I should “be careful” sexting some random chick because she might show them to my boss some day is absurd. As far as I’m concerned, sexting is a FAR safer and more cautious way of having a little fun than actually consummating the act. I can sext with some random girl from POF without having to worry that she’s going to accuse me of having raped her, going to get pregnant, going to give me some disease, or going to show up at the date and be 200lbs larger than she claimed.
It strikes me as utterly insane that random, mindless, ACTUAL sex is widely encouraged in our society, but sexy pictures and text messages are seen as proof that someone is some sort of deviant who should be shunned from society at large. Am I alone on this?
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Bureaucratic and/or corporate culture doesn’t always make sense when you’re socially valued as a commodity and not a reasonable person.
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It’s a classic example of how women don’t handle rejection well. I saw this story on another site and from her description he was just some guy she met at a bar and went out with a couple of times. He probably figured out pretty quickly she’s coo coo for cocoa puffs and made an exit. I know I wouldn’t want to be the 100th wheel at her birthday party either.
Little miss perfect couldn’t deal with the fact she got dumped (I wonder how many times SHE’s sent the same text/e-mail to some guy she went out with twice) and instead of putting her big girl pants on and dealing with it like an adult she went full retard and sent their private conversations to his employer as “revenge.”
Also shows the double standard. She gets a “you go girl!” for sticking it to that jerk but let him do the same thing and he’d be crucified.
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What’s the copyright law for a private gift that was not intended for public display by the original gift giver? Also, if the gift recipient is not seeking to profit?
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Yeah this little stunt is why sometimes I’ll go overboard nice guy first and trick her into breaking up with me.
If I know the lady is crazy…I know how to eject and make her think that she pushed the button. Less of a headache for me to deal with.
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The thing is, they can have it both ways, so they’d be fools not to.
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Copyright law covers only certain things. If I give you a clock, it’s yours and you can do whatever you want with it. If I give you a picture I took, I still retain the copyright in the photo unless I explicitly relinquish those rights, usually in writing. If the photo is a physical one, it is yours and you can still do a lot with it. You can display it publicly no matter what the intention of whoever gave it to you, hang it on your wall, or burn it. What you can’t do, according to copyright law, is reproduce it without permission.
JB said she didn’t want to get into a long discussion on the law, but it’s when a photo is in digital form that issues arise. Generally I can make copies of a digital photo you send me on my own computer for my own use. But posting that photo to an online site means you’re effectively reproducing a copy and unless you retain copyright, that’s infringement. Whether the infringement is for commercial, profit making purposes or not only comes into consideration if you ever get as far as a court and then only to determine damages.
There are provisions for “fair use,” but they apply more to text (and maybe film or TV) and are much more restricted for photos.
BTW: I’m not a lawyer, but I have worked in Intellectual Property related industries.
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Would that infringement apply to TEXT as well?
Just curious
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And what if the image is held in a cloud? If you are posting with that URL, then have you made a copy? Other people can certainly make copies, but then THEY would be the ones who infringed copyright, no?
And if everyone simply posted links to the original cloud photo, then the link is being copied and not the photo.
Holy crap this gets complicated really fast!
But I was wrong in my post. This is an interesting discussion.
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I think her intention was that he had sent sexually suggestive texts from a device supplied by the employer and she somehow thought that this might be some sort of violation. I doubt that, in and of itself, would get him fired, though if I were his boss, I’d have a private chat about dating crazy chicks.
I don’t know if y’all remember the infamous Spreadsheet Guy from last year. (tl;dr: dweeby financial analyst kept a spreadsheet of Match.com dates, revealed to a date who proceeded to blab to her girlfriends and somehow got a copy, Jezzzzable got a hold of the story, and he was raked over the coal in national media).
A friend is an executive at the firm where he works, and while they told him to take time off, lay low, and don’t talk to the press at the time, I know that he’s still employed there.
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You implicitly touched on it by referring to your sexy selfies you’ve sent to Mr. JB: the factor that seems to be left out of the thought process in sending private, personal sexts and/or sexy selfies is Trust. As in the sender is recklessly sending them to people with whom he or she hasn’t developed the sufficient level of trusted, reliable, commitment for an intimate, private, personal cocoon of a relationship.
Two dates does not make for the same public regard for a husband, fiancé, long-term partner, or even a boyfriend for that matter. Mr. JB can still one day publish a tell-all memoir with everything you’ve ever sent him, and perhaps the legal ramifications will be the same, but there will be a different sense of Mr. JB having violated cultural norms as your husband. Or maybe not, given the on-going degradation of our culture, including the sanctity of marriage.
On the other hand, I have sent plenty of e-mails – verifiably mine – that would cause me trouble if publicly shared. Not sexts and sexy selfies, but ones where I’m personal, critical and mean, petty, un-PC, or nakedly emotional (ie, bitter beta) with rhetorical flourish. For immediate personal communication, it’s just easier to fall back on the assumption that I’m in a private conversation the other person will implicitly honor as private despite that I’ve left a potentially permanent record of it with the recipient. We have cultural norms, but I am curious what the legal norms are about that.
As an LJBF’ed nice guy, I do feel sorry for Miss Pu – somewhat. We can fairly criticize her belief there was a burgeoning relationship based on the evidence, but she did believe it and was hurt when he rejected her. She believes he led her on and I agree with her. I said ‘somewhat’ because she over-reacted. From what I can tell, he didn’t break any serious relationship promises that she would reasonably rely upon. In her case, one or a few hurt, bitter messages to him and complaining to her friends about him would be normal, but trying to directly harm his professional life is not normal.
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LostSailor,
Good points. If the device was provided by the employer, that changes the situation significantly IMO. I MIGHT fire someone in that case, just because it shows uncommonly poor judgment. Sexting someone is fine, but doing it from a phone provided by your employer is pretty idiotic.
Also, it’s good to hear the financial analyst is still employed. Usually, whenever any of these stupid stories “goes viral” it always ends in the person getting fired. Glad to know there are still some reasonable, common-sense bosses out there.
Eric,
I’m aware, and that’s sort of my point. I guess I’m trying to say that THIS is the battle we should be fighting. The problem here isn’t that sometimes nude photos get leaked to the Internet and people find out about them, the problem is that we’ve constructed this ridiculously fake society where sending nude photos of yourself is very common, yet at the same time is allowed to “ruin your life” if posted to the wrong place.
How can the same women who publicly march in “slut walks” just take it as a given that having a nude photo of yourself posted on the Internet should automatically lead to a life-ruining situation? Why are they willing to concede this so readily? Why not argue for more reasonable employment practices where your ability to do the job is considered to be of more importance than the fact that you’re really good at hiding your sexual behaviors than some other people are.
This could easily be an issue where feminists and MRAs actually agree. As a guy who has sent explicit texts and photos to women on the Internet before, some of whom turned out to be complete nut-cases, I have as much skin in this game as potential female victims of “revenge porn” do. We COULD be on the same side here, if all we called for was more common sense and less prudeishness in employment practices.
But no. They won’t even try to make that argument. Their solution is just “throw more men in jail.”
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Many areas of law are esoteric, but property law with its children (IP, copyright) is one of the fundamentally personal areas of law that work symbiotically with our cultural norms and worth incorporating into interpersonal ethical discussions like this one.
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LostSailor has it right about copyrights. I’ve been a musician for many years and dated a couple of models so I know a little about the subject. I had to contact a website once about removing some pics of me. Even though I initially posted them the tone of the site changed and I didn’t want to be associated with it anymore and it took a little schooling on copyright law to get them removed. However the advent of the ‘net and perfect digital copies has really blurred the lines about legalities.
The whole Metallica/Napster debacle that most people missed wasn’t about them losing money but an intellectual property dispute. They did go about it a little harshly though.
As far as texts being copyrighted? I would assume that it’s private conversations between two parties and might not be subject to the same legalities. Unfortunately it leaves a digital “paper trail” and there’s hard evidence so it’s not just a he said-she said issue. Don’t know if a text can be treated the same as a photo sent privately and uploaded someplace without permission. Technology runs so far ahead of the law that it’s impossible to keep up.
His big mistake however was sending them from his employer’s phone. That can open up a whole can of worms about if his employer has some kind of code of conduct and sending naughty texts from the work phone might be a violation of that. Technically it’s company property and they can dictate it’s use. Hopefully he’s learned to have a separate personal phone and use the work phone for work.
Sad what a real and virtual minefield the dating world has turned into.
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Yes, it would certainly apply to text, though text usually gets broader “fair use” exceptions depending on the context of it’s use. Most sites won’t make those fine distinctions, so large chunks of copied text–say from your blog–would probably be successfully removed with the proper notice to the service provider, but it’s still a pain to do.
The digital world, especially for photos, gets a little more dicey and the issues haven’t ever been settled either in court or in congress. Links aren’t copies, but if I put a copy of a photo sent to me on a cloud server, I’ve by definition made a copy. (Whether a complete file transfer that removes the original sent to me from my computer is a copy is an interesting question that I don’t have an answer to.)
Anyone viewing the link, as long as they don’t download it, is generally fine. However, if they do download it, that is a subsequent infringement. That was the whole basis of the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) rather disastrous campaign against kids sharing music files a number of years ago.
This legal landscape is changing and copyright in such instances is very hard to enforce. Better to just live with the maxim: if it’s digital, it can last forever on the web…
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Actually, personal correspondence, including email, and possibly even texts, would be covered by copyright.
If I send you a letter, you own the piece of paper and can show it to anyone you like or give it away. You cannot, technically, make a copy of the letter or use the content in other contexts, including performance and derivative works, without my permission, though there may be some fair use exception. Generally, unpublished works are given far less fair use consideration.
I say “technically” because since copyright is, except for specific commercial instance, civil law, so to enforce your rights, you likely have to sue and to sue you have to formally register the copyright with the copyright office (copyright still exists whether you register or not). For most people, it’s not worth it.
J.D. Salinger famously sued Random House in 1986 to stop publication of a biography that relied heavily on his unpublished correspondence that had been donated to the libraries of Harvard and others. The fact that they were unpublished outweighed fair use and the book was never published. But enforcing your rights can have unintended consequences, and some bits of Salinger’s letters were revealed in court transcripts (not subject to copyright) as well as details of his private life.
It is an interesting subject, but a tricky one to fully understand (for example, people routinely confuse copyright and trademark, two completely different things). And most people have very little understanding of it…
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The solution is to clarify for everyone the social norms that separate the work and private spheres, assuming the employer is simply reacting to publicity pressure rather than a vested interest in the particular behavior of employees (eg, priests, teachers). In the cost/benefit analysis about the misbehaving employee, if the employer can fall back on a social norm that automatically neutralizes the public harm, then that removes the need to over-react to bad publicity.
I also agree that the guy was wrong if he used his work phone to sext. That brings principal-agent liabilities into focus. Most employers allow innocuous work-unrelated communication, but the employee needs to know the line and reroute it to his personal phone, e-mail, etc..
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I wonder how much of her innate bitchiness and selfishness manifested itself before he ever went out on Date One with her? Looking at the extracts of her texts to him, it seems to radiate like the sun in the desert at high noon, something he couldn’t have not noticed even if he had lost all of his senses.
Maybe it was a case of “dare dating.” He knew before he ever went out with her that she was a complete bitchiot, but just wanted to see how much of her he could stand before kicking her to the curb. I guess that’s one way to build up your “relationship immune system…”.
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Oh my God, seriously? She wrote that long tirade about how she didn’t have plans to have a relationship with him, how his leaving didn’t bother her at all, and the proceeded to tell him that his not coming to her birthday “ruined” her birthday (not exactly compelling evidence that he wasn’t important to her, eh?) and then tried to ruin him? After she wrote that long tirade?
Is she even self-aware?
It’s obvious to a 2 year old that it bothered the hell out of her, which makes her insistence that it didn’t kind of pathetic. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
But here’s my take on the things that impressed on me about this:
1. What a sense of fucking entitlement to, and ownership of, that poor man. You go out on two dates (and my money says that HE probably paid for both of them) and now all of a sudden you own him, and you’re completely justified in trying to ruin the guy after he very politely tells you that he doesn’t think you’re the right one for him? I mean, breakups suck. Rejection sucks. Join the huge club consisting of every single person on Earth that has felt that sting, lady. Way to act like a fucking grown up and not pitch a tantrum like a 2 year old because you didn’t get your way.
2. The guy dodged a bullet, and probably knows it. He had to have seen what a self-centered loser she was. That has to be why he left. And instead of telling her straight up “you’re a self-centered loser and I don’t want anything to do with you,” he was actually quite nice and set her adrift gently. I’m not sure I’d have taken the same tack, but I’m also the type of guy that feels like it’s my duty to do a person a favor and let them know the truth. If she’s a self-centered bitch, it might do her some good to hear that from someone. Possibly get her to do some introspection.
3. No one will explain to this lady why she was wrong. No one. To the extent that she gets any feedback at all, it will be “you go, grrrl!” and not “dude, WTF is wrong with you? You realize that you’re a horrible person, right?”
4. Don’t record anything, don’t write anything down, don’t e-mail, text, tweet, or post to your facebook anything that you wouldn’t want posted on a billboard on main street in the town where your mom lives. If you wouldn’t want it on the cover of the New York Times, don’t put it out there. It won’t stay private. It can’t. Welcome to the new world order.
5. To #4 – JB, are you ready to have your pics posted to the cover of the New York Times? I ask not because I think Mr. JB would do such a thing, but because he could lose his phone, have it stolen or hacked any day now. (If this does happen, could you give us a courtesy link? LOL)
6. I think, personally, that Anthony Weiner is dealing with a humiliation fetish. I’m of the opinion that the point of the texts he sent wasn’t about the texts, but about getting caught. I mean, really, “Carlos Danger?” The guy was asking to be humiliated. He does it time and time again, and each time it is that much more ridiculous and that much more obvious that the public humiliation factor is a feature, not a bug to him. I’m of the opinion that it is high time for him to just go away (but I feel that way about most people that have ever had anything to do with Washington, DC, so that shouldn’t be news. If I had a choice between him going away and, say, John McCain, or Lindsey Graham going away, I’d choose to have him stay, because at least he’s entertaining).
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the factor that seems to be left out of the thought process in sending private, personal sexts and/or sexy selfies is Trust.
Yeah, but it’s more than that, because Mr. JB could never mean any ill-will to JB at all, ever, and his phone could still get stolen. Or lost. Or hacked. Or….
On the other hand, I have sent plenty of e-mails – verifiably mine – that would cause me trouble if publicly shared. Not sexts and sexy selfies, but ones where I’m personal, critical and mean, petty, un-PC, or nakedly emotional (ie, bitter beta) with rhetorical flourish.
This is a really, really horrible idea. My advice to everybody is that you never, ever do this. I’m in Construction Management, so my job requires me to occasionally chew the ass off of someone that hasn’t performed to standards and to contract for some reason or another. I never, ever do it via e-mail. If someone needs an ass-chewing, it is done in person or over the phone, verbally, with no record of it having happened, and then that gets followed up with a very polite, very carefully worded e-mail or letter that details nothing more than the facts, with no rhetorical flourish whatsoever.
E-mail is not private. I’ve had people “reply to all” too many times, or use my last e-mail as a lazy way to get me into the cc box by hitting forward with no consideration to what it says in the e-mail chain below, or a superintendent will leave his computer on on his desktop while he’s out directing traffic on the job, or, or, or, or…
It is really, really inadvisable to put anything in writing that would cause you public trouble, or embarrassment, or anything else.
I am curious what the legal norms are about that
E-mails are imminently subpoena-able, and they never go away. Ever. The legal norms are to never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want read on the headline news.
As an LJBF’ed nice guy, I do feel sorry for Miss Pu – somewhat. We can fairly criticize her belief there was a burgeoning relationship based on the evidence, but she did believe it and was hurt when he rejected her.
I, also, sympathize with anyone who has ever felt the sting of rejection. It sucks. But I do not feel sorry for her in the slightest. The best thing that could ever happen to this spoiled, self-centered bitch is to be told “no” a couple of times in her life. It might help her realize that the world isn’t there to do her bidding – something I’m afraid she was never taught, to her parent’s fault.
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Honestly, I would probably break up with any woman who sexted me a nude selfie. It’s just thoroughly self-centered and childish to even want such pictures to exist, much less send them over public airwaves to someone you’re only dating. If a woman wants to surprise me with fantastic nudes of her body, I’ve got no problem with this. For the love of god though, do it tastefully on non-networked devices. Don’t do it whimsically over a text/im. Porn is shared in such ways. If I’m special to you, and you’re going to share your body with me, for f’s sake try to make it special. Behaving like a tween and digitally broadcasting your bitstreamed nudity says “loose” and “doesn’t care who sees her naked”.
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I’m not sure I’d have taken the same tack, but I’m also the type of guy that feels like it’s my duty to do a person a favor and let them know the truth. If she’s a self-centered bitch, it might do her some good to hear that from someone. Possibly get her to do some introspection.
In reading through this whole thing, my distinct impression is that she’s far too much of a self-centered, arrogant narcissist to give a shit about what anyone thinks of her. In fact, she’s probably the type that if a guy told her, flat out and in the most direct and frontal of terms, what a self-centered little cunt she is, she’d probably flip out and assault or kill him on the spot.
No, it’s not likely that this “woman” is self-aware enough to ever change. I’m certainly no Cassandra, but I think it’s pretty safe to predict that her future will consist of a string of brief, failed relationships (maybe even a brief failed marriage or two), followed by a cat collection after the age of 40 and until her death, alone and lonely, at what ever age nature ultimately removes her from the gene pool.
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JB, there’s some serious discussion if this woman wrote a trolling article to get some hits and sell her books. It’s on about page 3 or 4 in this discussion.
http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-28406.html
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I happen to think is all a big fake. It is obviously a con by anastasiadate.com to make men think that American women are generally batshit insane.
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I believe there will come a time where so many people do it, the reaction is “meh”. The next generation has so thoroughly integrated electronic media into their personal lives that there no longer any barrier.
But the real problem with Quin Pu is the sense of entitlement. The man is her object to control. he has no rights other than be controlled by her. The real story is not the sexting but the total expectation of control that this person had over another person. Where does she come off thinking she owns this guy? Not after two dates, not after a thousand dates. Slavery is always wrong.
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I don’t think men need much help in realizing that American women are generally batshit insane…
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Bingo…
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BTW, if you google-image search her . . . she’s fat.
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there’s some serious discussion if this woman wrote a trolling article to get some hits and sell her books
It wouldn’t surprise me at all. She’s probably a horrible writer who couldn’t sell any of her scribblings on their own merit. Being the arrogant narcissist that she obviously is, it would only make sense that she would to try to enrich herself at someone else’s personal expense.
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Exactly. Most foreign men don’t need any help in recognizing that fact either (how many foreign websites are there out in cyberspace specializing to finding American brides for foreign men?).
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I, also, think that was her intention, or at least her hope. She thought that since the sexts came from a company phone, that she could use that fact to get him fired.
I’m also getting a little wary that this was nothing more than a publicity stunt by this woman, and that we’re all now falling into her trap to some extent.
Not that posting about her without links and so forth, on a blog opposed to her very existence is going to help her much, but still…
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though there may be some fair use exception.
There is a fair use exception. There is nothing illegal about reposting a picture that you’ve come into possession of, unless you are attempting to pass it off as yours and/or make money on it.
A DMCA notice may work to get them to take it down, but it doesn’t really have any legal backing.
Do some searching over at Popehat for discussion on this exact thing circulating around a website whose business model revolves around revenge porn. There really isn’t anything that can be done about it until they start to try and sell it.
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Thanks for the clarification LS I know way more about music copyright than photo or printed word but there are some similarities. And true most don’t have the time or money to pursue it. Look at all the thousands of sites that steal porn and upload it you’d spend the rest of your life trying to get something you own the rights to taken off of all of them. Once Pandora’s Box was opened it was game over.
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And for the record: I have dumped women through email. It avoids an argument I don’t want to have. It seems the best way.
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I’m not going to join the debate about whether a girl sending texts to a guy’s boss is as bad as guy posting nude shots of his ex, but I do want to point out one thing.
You said: “After two dates – TWO!! – Quin felt she was in an established relationship with this poor schmuck,”
This is where you got it wrong. She was actually trying to tell him that his ego needs a serious looking at if he felt that he could possibly ruin her birthday after a mere 20 hours spent together.
Just sayin’!
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Bloody hell
Last night I arrive home quite early (23.00) and I found a gal in the lifter. She lives in the same floor as I do. Foreigner woman, from Finland. New gal in town. I told her tomorrow “I am going to make a daytrip to a village in da mountains” She told me to knock her door “tomorrow at 12.00” because she wanted to join the day trip and to visit the landscapes around town.
I have just knock her door at 12.00 and she has just start shouting at me like crazy, like if would be a neighbor-harasser-potential rapits or something…
Bloody hell………. I go to da mountains now.
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Most companies that issue phones know that there’s going to be some personal use.
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I think to avoid liability for their employees actions (but maybe its just cheaper?), the organization my husband works with provides a set amount for a smartphone and then each individual gets the one they want. The phones are funded by the company, but they are the personal property of the individual. If an employee leaves, they don’t return their phone. It’s theirs.
The phones are connected to a cloud server that contains proprietary company data, so once they can no longer access the cloud, they can’t access data the company wants to protect.
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I think that if I were this guy’s boss, I would call the guy into my office, sit him down, and have a good laugh and a shot of tequila with him.
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I would also take out a restraining order advising the woman not to approach his place of employment. You don’t know just how batshit crazy this woman is.
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He referred to his rejection of a relationship just before her birthday as ‘a downer’. Not at all the same thing as ‘ruining’ her birthday – that was her – bizarre – interpretation of his polite, considerate text. If that was what she was trying to say, her text would’ve read along the lines of ‘don’t flatter yourself, mate. I’m not down, and I don’t actually need your validation.’ She massively overreacted, and spent her birthday stewing about his text and composing a vindictive response – so, explain again how he was being egotistical about his ability to bring her down?
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Well, there is the old rule of ‘don’t stick your d__k in crazy’ that he apparently ignored. Even using a virtual one is a cardinal sin that leaves you vulnerable nowadays.
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Best text convo ever-
“Look, I told you I am going on deployment. I am going to be gone for two years and you turned me down when I asked you to marry me. So like I said, we are done.”
“Hey, asshole. I sent you that video we made in Cancun so you will always remember what you can never have again. Watch at the end, because I added another tape I made WHILE WE WERE Together, of me fucking your best friend, bitch. Mike said he was totally into me, and hoped you died overseas.”
“Fair enough. I hope your mom and dad and Mike all enjoy it, because I just CC’ed it to them.”
“You are lying!”
“You are just kidding, right?”
“TIM! CALL ME RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”
“Tim? I’m sorry… please tell me you were kidding. That second video was made YEASR ago. I was just scared of losing you…”
“TIM YOU ASSHOLE! I HOPE YOU DIE!”
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Oh, only in the states. In Australia or the UK, the doctrine of precedent would have prevented this contradictory ruling.
I am a feminist. I want women to have equal (not more) rights. I am a modern woman, because I am female and alive in 2013. I am profoundly grateful that I live in a democratic western society and have therefore been able to fulfil my (considerable) academic potential. None of this harms the interests of men in general. And I have never asked to “have it both ways”. I recognise that I have rights and responsibilities, both of which are important to me. You don’t judge all men by the actions of a foolish few, so please don’t judge all women by the ravings of a few idiots on twitter. We are not all like this. Some of us just want to work hard and have successful careers.
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Do you want to have children, Bree? Do you plan on being a good mother? Because the one thing the culture will not tell you is that you can’t have both a successful career AND be a good mother.
You can’t.
Spin your little wheels all you want, but if you have children and a career one or both is going to suffer.
Most likely your children.
Make whatever choice you like. It’s your life. But it’s not a choice if no one ever tells you the truth.
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It should not fall under copy write laws once you send you give up your rights to it as your property it was ruled on by a state court unless you copywrite all your text and pics with © its no longer your property and can be distributed freely now as for a company paid cell phone. If it is part of your benefits package its yours to use for professional use and personal use its just like part of your pay check its your property andall the digital information in it. But if it is a on call company phone its specifically for company use then its their property and not yours.
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I must disagree. I’ve worked in intellectual property industries for the last 20 years, including on issues of digital piracy, and you are not correct.
As I wrote above, these photos absolutely fall under copyright. Courts have rules about the property rights for physical objects as well as the copyright rights. If I send you a physical photograph or letter, you indeed own the physical photo or letter, but you do not have the right to copy or distribute it (you can show it to others, even display it, but you cannot copy it).
Up until 1976, the requirement to include a copyright notice was in effect, particularly for text–photographs were treated somewhat differently–but the law was changed. You no longer have to include a copyright notice, since copyright is assumed at the moment of creation of a photo, painting, or piece of writing (same for music). You only need to register the work with the copyright office prior to instigating any lawsuit, but non-registration does not affect the right of copyright at all.
The same applies to digital files. If I send you a racy photo, the original file you receive is your property, but you do not have the right to make copies or distribute it. You could show it to others on a computer or phone, for example, but making copies of the digital file is a violation and infringement of the copyright of the person who took the photo (if you took the racy photo, there may be issues requiring a release of other rights held by the subject of the photo, but the copyright would be yours) or wrote the text.
In the case of a company phone, it would depend on the policies of the company who provided it. With most companies, the phone is still the property of the company, not you. Unless the company explicitly, usually in writing, says it’s yours or is an explicit part of your compensation (benefit packages are considered to be part of your overall compensation, like your wage or salary), then it’s not. Just as the desktop computer on your desk is not your property to take home. The company can also restrict the uses to which you put a company cell phone. And regardless of company restrictions, if it were to come to your company’s attention that you’re posting racy or nude photos of your ex on public websites, they might take a dim view. In most work-at-will states, you can be fired for virtually any reason, and this could possibly be considered a firing for cause, which would deny you unemployment insurance benefits.
It might be difficult to use copyright law to have photos already posted online removed, and expensive to actually bring an infringement lawsuit, but that doesn’t mean that copyright law doesn’t apply.
So, if you’re doing this, be careful…
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Yes intellectual property is protected but of text messages or pics you send or post you loss your rights to it when you send it to some one else Maine state court ruled on a case I you openly send your text messagesto someone you do not have copyright protection. Its just like TV or radio if you say it and someone hears and recorded you they can play it. is slightly different and the fact that it is something that you will charge for the future. intellectual property refers to music videos pictures that you will use to create like a model portfolios the are protected by the it’s a little property law because there something that you created to make money you’re not creating a text message to make money so your argument is good but not valid in this case and the federal district court agreed
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What makes you think that an email, text, or picture you create and send isn’t intellectual property? Whether something is created for commercial purposes (to make money) or not is completely irrelevant and always has been. Salinger v. Random House affirmed that (while also giving stronger protection to unpublished works, in this case letters, from the fair use doctrine). You can write a book or take a picture and give it away for free with no intention of making a dime, and you still retain the copyright.
The radio analogy is also inapt. Copyright specifically applies when a creative work is first made part of a “fixed medium.” That is, written down or recorded by the creator. If you say something on radio or television, you have no copyright to what you say. However, the radio station may, and the TV station certainly has copyright to their programs, so the person who records it and distributes copies of it would be infringing on their copyright.
You’d have to provide a source for your claim that a Maine state court ruled that you lose copyright protection if you send a text or a photo, since in the first place, copyright is a Federal matter, not one covered by the states who would not have jurisdiction to decide a copyright issue, and secondly, despite having access to several legal databases, I can find no case like this.
So, I still disagree. Your conception of copyright protection is incorrect.
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On a cynical political note, no-one in any country is going to get elected suggesting people have to be personally responsible for their actions, as this might suggest that, I dunno everyone using too many resources might have to curb it a little it we want civilisation to continue.
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