If you or your small business is being victimized by a tortfeasor through the Internet, you may have a cause of action against your tormentor for defamation, invasion of privacy, civil conspiracy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, or copyright infringement. Through a lawsuit, money damages and a court order to require the removal of the unwanted content from the Internet can often be sought. As an attorney knowledgeable in Internet-related torts who has successfully sued people who use the Internet as a vehicle to cause serious injury, Attorney Kyle Bristow can help you if you have a tormentor and want the harassment to end.
In a cyberstalking or cyber harassment situation, it may be possible to resolve the civil matter short of litigation by having Mr. Bristow put the tortfeasors on notice with a demand letter that they can be sued unless they cease their wrongful conduct. If a demand letter fails to induce the tortfeasor to cease their tortious conduct, suit can be filed against them and money damages and/or injunctive relief can be sought. Through an injunction, a court can order the derogatory content removed from the Internet. Mr. Bristow can also contact search engine providers like Google and Yahoo! to request that webpages with derogatory content not be linked to in search engine results.
Revenge pornography is a relatively new form of Internet harassment which occurs when former lovers and computer hackers publish onto revenge pornography websites nude photographs of women—without their consent—, along with their contact information—such as phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, LinkedIn accounts, Facebook profiles, and employers' addresses and phone numbers—so as to cause their targets to suffer. As time goes by, many images of victims on revenge pornography websites are republished to other websites, and so it is quite common for a bad situation to become worse as numerous websites republish the derogatory content. Many women who are victimized this way report job and relationship loss, severe depression, phone harassment by anonymous third-parties, and even threats to their physical safety as sexual predators become infatuated with stalking them. Some women have gone so far as to legally change their names or commit suicide so as to put an end to the torment.
Most revenge pornography websites
are created and operated by anonymous individuals who host their websites on
servers in foreign countries. Revenge pornography website operators make money through their websites by
selling advertisement space to more mainstream pornography companies, charging
people to upload pornography content to their websites, and/or by trying to extort
money from their victims. A now-defunct
revenge pornography website was alleged to have earned the revenge pornography
website operator up to $10,000.00 per month in revenue.
Some victims of revenge
pornography try to pay revenge pornography websites to remove their content;
however, this is not a prudent course of action for one to take since the money
is wired to an anonymous—and many times foreign—bank account, and there is no
guarantee that the content will be removed from the website. Some people who fall for this extortion
scheme find that after they provide payment to a revenge pornography website,
the revenge pornography website will forward their content on to other revenge
pornography websites and the problem is exacerbated.
Other victims of revenge
pornography try to resolve the matter on their own or by hiring an Internet
reputation company to send a cease-and-desist letter on their behalf. This course of action is inadvisable to
pursue, because a company that is not licensed to practice law cannot follow
through with a lawsuit filed on the revenge pornography victim’s behalf. Most revenge pornography websites either
ignore the pleas of victims or demands of non-legal companies. Furthermore, without the help of a lawyer, it
is possible that a statute of limitations could pass if suit is not timely
filed, which could bar a revenge pornography victim from suing her tormentors.
Many victims of revenge
pornography try seeking help with law enforcement agencies, but historically
law enforcement agencies either refuse to help victims on the basis that the
matter is civil—and not criminal—in nature or fail to adequately help victims
because the law enforcement agencies lack the tools and knowledge required to
hunt down and prosecute a revenge pornography website operator.
As a licensed lawyer with
experience in shutting down revenge pornography websites and helping victims
get their images removed from revenge pornography websites, Attorney Kyle
Bristow is well qualified to assist you or your loved one with their
predicament. Although no past case can
evince the likely result of a future case, most of Mr. Bristow’s revenge
pornography clients have had their content removed from the Internet in a very
timely fashion.
To assist his revenge pornography
victim-clients, Mr. Bristow sends notices—in accordance with the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act—to websites to request the removal of the nude
photographs so long as the photographs were self-taken by the client. If a person takes a photograph of their self,
then they enjoy copyrights in the photograph per federal law and can restrict
its publication. Mr. Bristow also sends
very sternly written demand letters via electronic mail to the revenge
pornography website operators to encourage them to cease tormenting his
clients.
Attorney Kyle Bristow also
frequently contacts search engine providers like Google and Yahoo! to request
that they cease linking to webpages in their search engine results that contain
nude images of his clients. By attempting
to limit the searchability of the nude photographs and by attempting to induce
the revenge pornography website operators to outright remove the content, Mr.
Bristow engages in an aggressive two-pronged attack to better his clients’
situation.
If the revenge pornography
victim-client’s photographs are not removed from the Internet or if she elects
to irrespective of the rehabilitation of her online image, a lawsuit can be
filed against the revenge pornography website, the former boyfriend who
forwarded the nude photographs to the revenge pornography website, and other
tortfeasors for a number of civil causes of action. Through a lawsuit, money damages and/or
injunctive relief can be sought. Through
an injunction, a court can order the derogatory content removed from the
revenge pornography website.
Although many revenge pornography
website operators believe that they are immune to suit by hiding behind a veil
of anonymity, they are seriously mistaken:
once suit is filed, a civil litigant can utilize a court’s subpoena
powers during the discovery process, which will invariably result in the
identity of the revenge pornography website operator being exposed. Only a licensed attorney can assist you with
this complicated legal process, and Attorney Kyle Bristow’s methods of hunting
down revenge pornographers through the discovery process is proprietary in
nature.
If you or a loved one is being
victimized by way of a revenge pornography website, please call Bristow Law,
PLLC, for a free consultation.