What I find so amusing about all this is that the people who are so morally outraged are spending so much time talking and thinking about it, in many cases I suspect because they are titillated by it. 

Please don’t pretend you can read minds.

FIRST thing he had to think about why he would be using a pseudonym as opposed to his real name and his answer was probably that it was for personal protection and self expression. Then the

SECOND thing he does is post offensive stuff and create an offensive forum; well offensive to some anyway. Then the

THIRD thing he does is get outed by the Super Badass Troll Adrian, then he goes on Anderson Creepy Cooper and whines about being “allowed” a pseudonym and freedom and if he hadn’t been “allowed” he wouldn’t of “run wild”. He sickens me entirely. He violated the FIRST action he did above, about using a pseudonym for personal protection and self expression by copping out and saying he did what he did because HE WAS ALLOWED to do it! He doesn’t care about personal protection or self expression and probably doesn’t realize that honor and honesty come with deserving both of these things. He is a creep who got caught and then blamed it on the “man” for letting him do it! If he had manned up he would of said that he thought that what he did was just fine, that he was being himself, that what he posted was him being free, and that he used a pseudonym for personal protection and self expression and that Adrian violated that trust. DON’T APOLOGIZE FOR ANYTHING. Then say that if he did anything illegal then the authorities should arrest him. Otherwise, shut up and leave him alone. No, not that, but instead blaming his “freedom”, it’s all so pathetic.

That is a nice platitude about morals and law and is of course true, but tropes don’t make an argument. The thing is that morals are personal opinions. Laws are, at least supposed to be, based on preventing actual damage to society.
What I find so amusing about all this is that the people who are so morally outraged are spending so much time talking and thinking about it, in many cases I suspect because they are titillated by it. This really should be sparking more debate about whether or not anonymous free speech should be promoted, how we are going to deal with moral grey areas in a plural society. But in has instead turned into something akin to disdainful voyeurism. 

Every discussion I have seen on this devolves into the same generic arguments and finally people selfrichously accusing each other of being racists or pedophile apologists.

The creepshots shit…that might be for boners, I don’t know. 

But he definitely has exhibited troll-behavior in these contexts before.

This is why we have Rule of Law. And Adrian Chen and an internet mob just shit all over it.

If you’re going to invoke the rule of law, which does not have anything to do with this case, then I’m going to assume that you want to have the government take over the internet and provide all moderation services.

Or a liberal becomes subject to the Breitbart treatment by local partisans for excoriating the GOP candidate on Democratic Underground. His personal life becomes the topic of blogs and public attention.

Already happening. Why should we walk around with our hands tied to our belts while we’re getting the shit beaten out of us?

Go ahead, dig up the dirt on Adrian Chen and scrutinize him. Scrutinize the other people who have spoken up against particular forums and trolls who are aggressive, and malicious, and hateful, who are essentially being bullies towards strangers who are basically still children. I would object just as much if Jailbait was about underage boys, or if any of his other forums targeted boys. Its not like the dudes in these forums were just posting images of themselves, and getting creeped on by the other dudes there. That would be like, fair game or something.

Freedom of speech does not extend to harassment, threats, intimidation, coercion and conspiracy to commit violence. Can you imagine for a second what the family of one of the dead teenage girls would feel, discovering their daughter’s or sister’s photo in that forum, with all the disgusting comments ? What if that was your daughter or sister ? Could you see the harm, then ?

But even after that, there’s a problem of scope and scale in the response, and of that punishment fitting the crime, given that vastly disproportionate scope/scale.

This –and other events on less ambiguous moral ground that are sure to follow this precedent– are the things we need to concern ourselves with, cats already being out of their bags.

Also worth considering: look at the political divisiveness these days. Each side thinks itself a victim, and looks at the other side as bullies. Which side is right? And what are they justified to do?

This is why we have Rule of Law. And Adrian Chen and an internet mob just shit all over it.

The Articles are very specific in their wording, while the Amendments, especially the first ten, are left relatively open-ended. This is not an accident, two hundred years of legal debates along strict/liberal constructionist lines notwithstanding.

It’s not like the Bill of Rights was an afterthought. The abuses by the British governors and Parliament, those of the British Army generals in the early stages of the not-yet-a-revolution, and the natural evolution in human rights presaged, but not fully enshrined by the Magna Carta were all very much on their minds.

The Founders were just defining the variables, constants, and constraints of “the program” in their proper order.

Chen did not try or execute Brutsch — he reported a story that was obviously corroborated by Brutsch’s active involvement in forums with content that became objectionable due to the context(ie comments of adult members towards the subjects of the photos). The extent of this “trial” was revealing Brutsch’s real name. Perhaps Brutsch should be prosecuted for theft of intellectual property (ie photographs) or copyright violation, or the violation of the rights of privacy of underage girls, or criminal harassment of underage girls. There are extremely complicated issues here with regards to privacy, predatory behavior and intellectual property. It seems Brutsch’s identity was well known within Reddit, so this doesn’t seem like a super secret that needed months of sleuthing to uncover.

Objectification of a non-consenting underage person, via  a swiped photo, secret snapshot etc., in a context of intense sexualization by adults of a really hostile nature in a more of less public space (Reddit) is not the same as the fucked up homophobic fantasies of the military. The military has also had some astounding attitudes about women as inferiors, and racism, and a host of human rights violations of whoever the enemy du jour is.

People’s FANTASIES cannot be controlled — if a perve wants to get off to Sears catalog images, or whatever — no one can stop him/her from doing this.The problem begins when the fantasy exits the person’s head and these images are shared in a public place, like the internet, in a context that encourages hostile and violent commentary/attitudes with active discussion that is encouraged by other members. 

If you can separate Brutsch’s terrible nature from your analysis of this, and not see the danger of what Chen’s been permitted to do without any real scrutiny due to the “scarlet letter” nature of it, I can’t help you.

I just fear “Adrian Chen Journalism” is the new normal, and that we’re all now prone to being pulled into the spotlight for crimes real or imagined, or failures with regards to orthodoxy or conformity, at any moment any random “journalist” gets a bug up their ass and needs a new “face” for it.

Consider: let’s say I post to a womens’ rights forum asking about abortion services and access thereto, and I happen to slip up and say/do something identifiable. Fundamentalist Christians show up at my curb the next day raising hell, harassing my family and my employer, and on down the line.

(Or hell, in this Brave New World where anonymity = evil, maybe I had to post under my name to begin with, and all the evil Fundie had to do was read.)

Or a liberal becomes subject to the Breitbart treatment by local partisans for excoriating the GOP candidate on Democratic Underground. His personal life becomes the topic of blogs and public attention.

Still not seeing a problem? After all, we’re all just talking about consequences to words, and people’s reactions to them. Who watches the watchers and judges the judgers? Isn’t that what we create a government to do?

Think maybe perhaps we should condemn the Adrian Chens just as much as the Fundies and the hyper-partisans? And should be as wary of them as we are of the Brutsches?

Think maybe perhaps we should let crimes be judged in –this is a crazy notion– Courts of Law? And perhaps we should not unduly single out people who have no wide societal relevance for the perceived slights of groups, illegal or merely distasteful or unpopular, that they might belong to? (The Hollywood Blacklists come to mind here.)

Your thinking is colored by your disgust. Understandable, but not correct, especially inasmuch as Brutsch was tried and publicly “executed” by Chen for crimes he himself did not actually personally commit, but rather, was merely the public face of. So far as I know, Brutsch did not, himself, publish unambiguously criminal material, though there were instances where such material was published, and was deleted. IE, system worked as designed.

And in point of fact, Reddit *did* ban the jailbait subreddit. Three months ago. Where’s the story, except that Adrian Chen wanted there to be a story?

It’s a terrible shame that we cannot separate the issues this raises from the events leading to it. This whole matter is going to raise A LOT of issues for webmasters and the general public pertaining to “the right to be left alone”, as worded by Justice Brandeis, the boundaries of media ethics and relevance, as well as sensible policies for webmasters: moving forward, I’m personally banning all participation by minors, and possibly all material pertaining to minors, from websites I’m planning to create. If a failure to judge where “the line” is, as judged by momentary public passions, can result in my complete public destruction, harrassment, and even death threats, I’m not seeing where it’s worth it, whether it’s participation by minors in adult discussions (a right we enjoyed, coming up with the net) or a parent posting a video of their child’s athletic achievements.

After all, somebody might be having evil thoughts about that video, or try to communicate via PM with that minor child. And that’s a big-ass mountain of liability, right there, based on the arguments people are now making about where these boundaries should be, based on their momentary passions about this singular case.

Oh: And how do we ban involvement by minors or posting of content thereof? That’s right: either A.) we require “real life” credentials like Facebook, with all the privacy issues pertaining thereto, or B.) we require disclosure of personally identifying information to a much greater extent than we do now, such as credit card or drivers’ license numbers just to participate which only serves to increase the likelihood of unwanted/unauthorized disclosure, stalkerish behavior, and real-life confrontations based on internet postings.)

So tell me again how it’s these people here who are preventing you from saving the world? By demonstrating in advance how much they would support you for outing a *rilly* bad dude?

This isn’t a binary issue. Lots of people can be wrong.

1. If these considerations are applied there is a chance that there can be no justice if the violator has dependents or as someone who intends to violate would say, defences.

2. “did she deserve” is a consideration, but not much of a reason. Let’s not take the blame on ourselves for something that is squarely the fault of the violator. If I did something that legitimately cost me my job and it hurt my family, I did that.

Legitimately, whether because the employment laws in Tx suck, (they do) or because you can totally be fired for moderating reddit all day instead of working.

So make the consideration, while doing so do not forget that the harm you don’t want to see was brought down by the offender and not societies response, and then recall that the US isn’t 100% fucked yet, she still has a tattered safety net if she needs it.

And remember, he can still pump gas, go without any luxury himself (like internet) and still provide for his family.

Reddit doesn’t allow names to be attached.  Part of Brutsch’s job was to implement the protocols which existed to allow people to request their images be removed from r/creepshots.

That means people were able to prove they were the subject of a post.  The high school teacher was caught because another teacher recognised the students.  It’s ridiculous to assert that this was the only case of a third party knowing who the subject of a creepshot was.

As to r/jailbait, those were photos collected from elsewhere; with a modicum of work (tineye, google, etc.) tracking those, “anonymous” images back to their names could be done (and reddit only yanked that forum because the publicity from Anderson Cooper was more than they wanted.  They had been protecting it, under the rubric of free speech, against a lot of redditor protest).