I'm sympathetic to the idea that you shouldn't post somebody's personal information to the Web because (1) even the sleaziest fucker doesn't deserve to be threatened or harassed at home, (2) it CAN have a chilling effect on people who AREN'T sleazy fuckers, and (3) rewarding that sort of behavior leads to the sort of situation where people think it's acceptable, and then you get mistakes like Spike Lee's fuckup where he posted what he thought was George Zimmerman's phone number.
On the other hand, I have no fucking sympathy for people who post pictures of underage girls' crotches on the Internet and then act outraged that someone would violate THEIR privacy.
And I certainly think that actions need to have consequences. There needs to be some kind of negative reinforcement for unacceptable behavior -- Brutsch said that being doxed is the worst thing that could possibly happen to him, but I think it's probably kinder than an FBI investigation. (While I'm not sure he was breaking any laws -- he didn't take the pics himself and they weren't technically pornographic -- the people who DID take them were certainly breaking the law, and he could have been -- and could still be -- in line for some uncomfortable questions.) If we wanna go back to everyone's favorite example, Guy Insults Gay Couple and Gets Whacked with a Baton, well, legally and morally it's quite easy to see that the guy with the club is the guy who did the wrong thing, but from a utilitarian perspective, "Well what the fuck did you THINK was going to happen when you provoked somebody?" is a question that bears asking. Acknowledging that the guy should not have clubbed him in the head does not make the guy's head any less injured, and if it can serve as an object lesson in actions and consequences, then at least we're deriving SOMETHING from it besides head trauma.
I also think that, if someone was going to dox him, Chen and Gawker did it in the most reasonable, professional manner possible. They treated it as investigative journalism, and presented it as a news piece rather than a call to arms. I think it's a pretty far cry from Gabe posting some guy's E-Mail address and letting his fans go nuts.
Well, gee, when you frame it that way it makes it simply sound like protecting the privacy of sexual predators is better than the privacy of their victims.
Thanks for editing instead of leaving your post as another snarky one-liner.
Reddit was completely unwilling to deal with the subforum, preferring to close their eyes and screech about "free speech" as a method of ignoring their very real ability to just shut down the forum and enforce a TOS.
This is a fair point too. We've discussed the contradiction between the right to privacy and the right to speech before -- being a free speech absolutist means accepting someone else's right to publish information you would rather they not publish. And if "free speech" is the tack you're going to take, well, Gawker has a much more clearly-cut case for fair exercise of free speech (and press) in exposing Brutsch than Brutsch had in operating a subforum where people posted underage upskirt pics.
Could be some Redditors are getting a lesson in the inherent contradiction between freedom of speech and the right to privacy.
Some of them might even start to ruminate on the point that Reddit is not actually under any obligation to recognize freedom of speech on its privately-run servers.
