The Barons of Involuntary Porn

Like so many twenty-somethings in California, Kevin Bollaert thought he could make money by harnessing the power of the internet. Unlike most twenty-somethings, however, the San Diego resident decided that the best way to go about it was to get into the “revenge porn” business. “Revenge porn” websites typically run sexually explicit or suggestive photos of individuals along with identifying information. They got the name “revenge porn” because, initially, a lot of the photos and films that got online were posted as an act of revenge by a jilted lover.

But as you will soon see — if you haven’t been following these stories over the last few years — “revenge” is not the right descriptor. Considering the tactics used by many operators of such sites, a much more apt term, perhaps, is “involuntary porn.”

CRAIG BRITTAIN’S ISANYBODYDOWN (2011)

Bollaert’s site, ugotposted.com, mimicked the revenue model of IsAnybodyDown.com, a site created by Craig Brittain in late 2011. IsAnybodyDown posted nude photos daily and simultaneously advertised a service called Takedown Hammer from TakedownLawyer.com, which promised to get all photos off the site for $250. Based on the IP address of e-mails sent by a self-described attorney at Takedown Hammer, it is now believed that this service was run by Brittain himself in an attempt to extort money from people whose photos ended up on his site.

More recent reports about Brittain suggest that he may have solicited many of the sexually-explicit photos that appeared on IsAnybodyDown using services like Craigslist — something that, if proven to be true, would threaten a safe harbor defense under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

KEVIN BOLLAERT’s UGOTPOSTED (2012)

Much like IsAnybodyDown, when victims wrote in to Bollaert’s ugotposted asking to have their photos removed, Bollaert directed them to changemyreputation.com, a scheme identical to Takedown Hammer but with a slightly higher fee — between $300 to $350, made payable to ugotposted’s cofounder Eric Chanson, via Paypal. After Paypal caught on and froze their account, Bollaert started asking victims to give him Amazon gift certificates for $250.

Along with the $900 in advertising revenue that he admitted he made monthly, it’s estimated that Bollaert made over $10,000 before he was arrested in December of 2013 for extortion, conspiracy, as well as 31 counts of identity theft. (The identity theft charges are a result of a California law that prohibits publishing personal information for unlawful purposes, including the intent to harass. It is in the California Penal Code under sections 530.5 and 653m(b).)

The posting of nude photos with the intent to cause humiliation became a crime in California last year (New Jersey is the only other state with a law in place, though bills have been introduced in Wisconsin, New York and Maryland). The wording of these laws is slightly problematic and it’s questionable how long the laws will remain unchallenged, but even now, victims — such as the many Colorado women featured on IsAnybodyDown — in other states don’t have much recourse. IsAnybodyDown has been offline for months, but Brittain remains free and clear.

In October of 2012, attorney Marc Randazza offered to represent anyone who’d been victimized by Brittain pro bono, provided they were in states where he was licensed. His dance card filled up so fast, the Randazza Legal Group is no longer accepting pro bono cases unless the victim is a resident of the Las Vegas metro area, but Randazza has noted he’s glad to connect victims in other states to someone who can help them. He’s taking a copyright infringement avenue with Brittain, which could take a while and only help victims who snapped their own shots — but if successful, it will make Brittain wish he’d never registered a site.

In 2015

HUNTER MOORE’S ISANYONEUP (2010)

Because the law is never quite caught up to the tech of our time, people have been getting increasingly creative with how they deal with involuntary porn. For example, in 2012, the anti-bullying website Bullyville.com acquired one of the most notorious involuntary porn sites on the web, the infamous IsAnyoneUp.com (yes, the name of Brittain’s IsAnybodyDown is absolutely a nod to it). Lacking any real legal recourse, Bullyville’s founder James McGibney decided it was smarter to pay up for the popular site, assets and trademark than wait for the law to catch up.

Hunter Moore, the founder of IsAnyoneUp and certified “most hated man on the internet,” accepted the offer. At the time, it seemed he’d done so because he was tired of a business model that depended on exploiting people, but subsequent events, including an FBI investigation, suggest there may have been more pressing reasons to grab as much money as possible and get out of the game.

At the time of the sale, Moore wrote a note to fans claiming that he wanted to move on and channel his programming and networking skills in a positive way. “I might do some writing on bullyville.com to help people who have been bullied; I’ve been on both sides of the fence,” he wrote. “I think it’s important that everyone realizes the damage that online bullying can cause.”

But according to McGibney, Moore took to Twitter shortly after the sale went through and began to harass and bully people like never before. When the harassment turned to McGibney with accusations of pedophilia, the bully-fighting Marine filed a suit and scored a $250,000 judgment against Moore for defamation. If you look at the document, you’ll notice Randazza is on it — the guy wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted to make people who profit from involuntary porn hurt. (Randazza also took on Bollaert in late 2012 for infringing on Bullyville’s trademark for IsAnyoneUp when Bollaert and his IsAnybodyDown co-founder bought IsAnyoneUp.net, along with a host of other, similarly-named domains.)

Finally, in January of 2014, Moore was arrested on federal charges for paying someone to socially engineer his way into hundreds of e-mail accounts in order to obtain sexually explicit images to post on IsAnyoneUp. According to Ars Technica, which broke the story, Moore paid 25-year-old Charles Evens $200 or more every week for images Moore knew had been obtained illegally — peanuts compared to the $13,000 Moore was raking in every month from advertising on IsAnyoneUp. If convicted, both Moore and Evens face a maximum penalty of five years for each conspiracy and hacking count.

HUNTER TAYLOR’S TEXXXAN (2012)

Last January, a lawsuit was filed against Texxxan.com, yet another involuntary porn site, which unlike IsAnybodyDown only accepts photos of “young women.” The twist in this case is that plaintiffs are going after the involuntary porn site and the site’s host, GoDaddy. They argue that involuntary porn violates Texas state privacy laws and that GoDaddy is benefiting from Texxxan’s criminal activities.

John Morgan, the lawyer who filed the suit against Texxxan, says that involuntary porn site operators aren’t protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act because they know that involuntary porn is being posted on their site — indeed, they advertise it! The overreach against GoDaddy probably won’t help the case — but the case helped push the issue of involuntary porn into the national conversation once again. Legislation against involuntary porn is likely to be seen as an easy win for lawmakers who want to score points with constituents. Who but the staunchest First Amendment watchdogs would disagree with such a law?

For their part, GoDaddy shut down the site briefly last year after allegations that some of the women pictured in Texxxan had been under the age of consent at the time the photos were taken. The BBC reports that the FBI is investigating the allegations. After the lawsuit was filed, Texxxan became a members-only site and on January 28, 2013, finally went offline, allegedly because GoDaddy discovered it’d been registered using a false name.

Its operator, the 25-year-old Hunter Taylor claims that he never charged people money to remove their photos — something with which many plaintiffs in the case disagree. Like many operators of involuntary porn sites, Taylor claims that he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong. I find this hard to believe — Taylor must be aware that it’s difficult to recover from such an outing or else he wouldn’t have used a pseudonym while enjoying a stint in the adult industry himself.

CASEY MEYERING’S WINBYSTATE (2013)

On Valentine’s Day, 28-year-old Casey Meyering was arrested by a combination of Tulsa local law enforcement and the California Attorney General’s eCrime Unit for having “facilitated the posting of more than 400 sexually explicit photos of Californians and extorted victims for as much as $250 each to remove the illicit content.” He’s been charged with five felony extortion counts.

WinByState was the gamified version of the involuntary porn racket — users were encouraged to post images, in a sort of nation-wide contest among states, enabling them to score “wins” by sharing nude photos and video of women that users allegedly slept with. When California’s Attorney General stepped in, the site had over 400 postings in its California forum, and at least one victim was under the age of consent at the time the photo was taken.

Like so many like it, Meyering charged victims $250 to have their photos removed, using a Google Wallet account called TakeDownHammer (this one registered to Meyering, not to Craig Brittain, though it’s evident where the former got his inspiration). Agents on the case purchased “takedown service” using it, effectively tracing the money to Meyering’s bank in Tulsa.

Meyering is currently resisting extradition to California, reports the Los Angeles Times.

EndRevengePorn.org, an advocate group against involuntary porn, cleanly illustrates the issue faced by many victims of involuntary porn: “State police argue that the crime is occurring on the internet, which therefore crosses state lines and is out of their jurisdiction. The FBI claim that these cases are civil and/or do not threaten national security and should therefore be handled solely by lawyers.”

At present time, there is a lot more creative lawyering being done against involuntary porn than there is certainty for victims. Though New York started looking at legislation against it last year, a Brooklyn judge dismissed a case three days ago of a man who tweeted nude photos of an ex and sent them to her sister and employer.

Currently, victims are best advised to do some research, follow the blogs of Adam Steinbaugh and Marc Randazza and reach out to EndRevengePorn.org, a campaign organized by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative to support and advocate for people whose intimate photographs and videos have been disseminated online without their consent.

UPDATE: In January 2015, the Federal Trade Commission forced Craig Brittain to settle, destroying all the images he acquired for IsAnybodyDown. Because Brittain operated the site in conjunction with a photo removal service, the setup was a business — and one that caused “substantial injury to consumers.” In addition, he is banned from “publicly sharing any more nude videos or photographs of people without their affirmative express consent.”

In a hilarious turn of events, Brittain submitted a takedown request to Google on February 9, 2015, demanding that the search engine remove 24 pages from its search results — including links to news articles and the FTC website — claiming that they were exposing him without his consent.