Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 April 15

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April 15

Sharing adult videos without the women's consent

Hi,

I've found many videos on a small free adult website. There's an old guy who shared more than 100 videos of him having intercourse with ladies and most videos are obviously shot with a hidden camera. I sent an email to the website to let them know but they replied twice that I need the IDs of the ladies in the video to be able to take the videos down. Now, I think this is extremely wrong because obviously the women do not know they are featured on adult videos online and the website owner just doesn't care. Unless the women find out (most probably because their friends or family find out first), they will have their videos online for ever. I thought adult websites were very careful about this kind of things but it seems some really don't care. What should I do now? Just nothing cause I'm not directly concerned with it or should I insist with the website owner or should I alert the autorithies? By the way, the ladies seem to come from diverse Asian countries. Thanks. 2001:EE0:4041:1F9:9824:B5:36A9:1942 (talk) 02:12, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi and welcome to Wikipedia! What I would say to you is that the website is operating on a basis of presumption of innocence. After all, the videos could be made to look like they were taken without consent in order to appeal to certain tastes, but actually have been taken with the complete informed consent of all parties involved – see List of pornographic subgenres#Reality. Of course, if you are concerned, you could contact the relevant law enforcement authority, as most countries have laws against publishing sexual imagery of a person without their consent. The relevant authority in this case would be that of the country where this pornographic website is based, which you can find out with a so-called WHOIS search. However, their ability to investigate may be no greater than that of the webhost, as it will be very difficult to contact the creator of the videos (and the women involved) unless he has provided meaningful contact details. Hope that helps!--Newbiepedian (talk · contribs · X! · logs) 02:18, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

2001:EE0:4041:1F9:9824:B5:36A9:1942 -- the technical term for this is "Revenge porn" (even if not always done for motives of revenge). You can look up the whole sordid Reddit Michael Brutsch affair for an example of extreme "carelessness"... AnonMoos (talk) 03:33, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Any performance even if free is covered by copyright rules. If he is showing it he should be able to show consent forms from the people in it to the police even if not to you. Consent is needed for the copyright. Dmcq (talk) 16:46, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

In many jurisdictions pornographers are mandated to keep exactly those types of records available for inspection to relevant agencies. But again, that's for the police or some other government entity to work out. I have no idea who the IP should contact in his situation. The IP locates to Vietnam, but we also don't know where the website is. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:05, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Dmcq -- as a technical legal detail, model releases and such are more a matter of personality rights than copyright as such... AnonMoos (talk) 03:06, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes there seems to be different things being conflated here. Copyright does necessarily provide protection when the person who recorded the video is the own who releases it in cases like there. It's true a number of jurisdictions recognise the rights of performers like musicians and actors (see Related rights#Performers, not to be confused with performance rights) but it's often untested whether these apply to someone just having sex. Personality rights may also provide some protections, or they may not. (As our article personality rights mentioned, these are often more to do with commercial use of one's image, especially when it's implied you are endorsing something.) There may be other issues which may come up like privacy rights.

Also I'm pretty sure in many cases there is often no definite requirement for record keeping. It's simply that good record keeping is your best protection against a lawsuit. And lawsuit is the right word, these are often civil matters, not something that law enforcement concern themselves with.

The thing Someguy1221 mentioned appears to be relating to record keeping requirements to try and prevent child pornography. For example, in the US there is the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act and other laws which have resulted in the 2257 regulations. These have been challenged numerous times. From what I can tell, they seem to have survived. Although whether they will apply to some random dude secretly recording people I make no comment (amongst other things, since that's getting too close to legal advice). But although this is a criminal issue, our article notes that one of the most recent challenges appears to have limited the ability of law enforcement to just demand to see the records at will. (I'd also note that for the federal law, it would generally have to involve foreign or interstate commerce as whatever the latest interpretation of the courts for that to apply [1] although states may have their own laws.)

I'm also not sure how widespread similar laws are in other jurisdictions outside the US. (Especially those which make the record keeping a requirement regardless of commercial intent and where simply lacking records is a crime rather than putting you at risk if any of the performers are underage.) The importance of the US market means that most commercial producers ensure they comply with the US law, (and also in the modern world if you have a website even if you are not targeting US customers, history suggests if you have some the US government will get very interested in you regardless) but that's a different point. Also since the records are really to do with stopping child pornography and so mostly relate to being able to be sure the performer is of age, I wonder if it is technically possible to comply with them without the 'performer' actually knowing what you're doing.

As the many cases have shown, this is an area where the law in many jurisdictions do not or did not handle very well. Jurisdictions are slowly implementing criminal laws to specifically deal with these generally requiring consent for intimate recordings and consent to release them. But many still don't really have them. Of course some jurisdictions forbid pornography completely which would mean these are always illegal although the penalties particularly for the producer may not necessarily be very strong, and the victim may actually have broken the law by checking out these recordings. (Some jurisdictions also still forbid certain sex acts, or sex outside marriage which may mean reporting these videos can actually get the victim in trouble. )

P.S. One of the specific ways copyright comes up is when the person who recorded the video/image is not the one who released it. Especially with sexting, where the recipient may release the content publicly. In these cases, the copyright holder of the image/video is likely the victim and so could use copyright law to help them, although again it's generally mostly a civil matter and can result in odd things like the person having to register their copyright by sending in the image/video to the copyright office. In addition, this is also perhaps a good reminder for people not to get too excited about the superiority of their jurisdiction, where victims may be sanctioned since in a similar vein, an underage victim of revenge porn who sent an image or video of themselves to a guy or girl they like has found themselves in trouble due to the fact that they recorded and distributed what was technically child porn.

P.P.S. The OP maybe needs to consider where they are hanging out considering that they first had a friend who was secretly impregnating women and has now come across a revenge porn site.

Nil Einne (talk) 10:23, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Do people have to obey the law of the land because they are citizens or because the government owns the land?

If a rich guy finances the construction of an underwater house and lives underwater in the middle of the ocean, or just lives in a residential submarine, then is the rich guy free from the laws of his birth nation? Or does he still have to pay taxes because he earns a salary and is a citizen of that country? If a poor guy makes a nest on a tree in the middle of a state park, then would he get prosecuted by the government for trespassing on state property? If a person voluntarily becomes stateless, then where can that person live? Or do countries just throw stateless persons in prison? SSS (talk) 02:41, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

I will answer your questions in order: Depends on the country and the registry of the submarine; Depends on the country; Depends on the country and park; Generally they are stuck wherever they are when they became stateless, or wherever they fled to, see statelessness; some countries do. The questions you have asked are very broad, and would need to be narrowed to get a more specific answer. To address the question in the title, people must obey the law of the country they are in because the state holds sovereignty over its territory - that is, the state declares it possesses a right to enforce laws on anyone in its domain. Some governments also assert total or limited sovereignty over all actions taken by their own citizens, anywhere in the world - that is, in some countries a citizen can be put on trial for a crime he committed in another country. Many countries also deny the premise that a person may unilaterally end his own citizenship, instead insisting that the state must consent to this change in status. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:02, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

There haven't been any mid-ocean underwater colonies that I've ever heard of, but there have been attempts to escape from all legal jurisdictions, such as the attempted takeover of the Minerva Reef. Nowadays, there are various libertarian "seasteading" projects (floating structures that would spend all their time in international waters). AnonMoos (talk) 03:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

See also Statelessness. Alansplodge (talk) 15:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

... and micronation. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:28, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

To my mind a 'citizen' is some one lives a society that acknowledges a common structure of law (even if the don't always abide by it – just watch Jude Judy to see what I mean). Just paying tax to one or more tax collectors doesn’t make one a citizen of anywhere. If someone chooses to live outside these boundaries then they are by definition 'outlaws' because they live out side of any recognised civilized law structure and therefore are not citizens in the true meaning of the word. I.E., Robin Hood and his merry Men. Aspro (talk) 16:34, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the submarine: merchant vessels all have to be registered in a Flag_state, and are subject to the laws of that state. (They are presumably also subject to the laws of whichever country they are in the territory of, although the article doesn't say anything about that). However, it doesn't say anything about private, non-commercial vessels, which is presumably what this house submarine would count as. But if he uses it to engage in piracy, then he would become an enemy of the human race, and any state could take action against him. Iapetus (talk) 09:37, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• The simple answer is that people are subject to the laws of the polity which has sovereignty over the land where they are located at that given time. Even stateless people are subject to the laws of the lands where they are located; people who are located in places outside of sovereign control may vary depending on the location, for example lands described as terra nullius may very well have no laws; though some like Antarctica and the world's open oceans are governed by the laws set by international treaty (Antarctic Treaty System in case of the former, and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in case of the latter). --Jayron32 12:05, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

• Technically, no one "has to" obey the law - but if they violate the law, the government has ways to punish you for it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:18, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Campaign funds for congress and senate

What happens to left over campaign contributions given to members of the U.S. congress and senate after the campaign is over? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:483:100:AEB7:40A8:A6DE:D084:4415 (talk) 04:35, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

They can save those funds for a future political campaign or donate them to the campaigns of political allies, or to a charity. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:47, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Here is a link to details at Fact check.org. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

The last I heard many years ago about "campaign contributions" in the US when a candidate does not run for reelection was that the candidate was free to spend it, with the only restriction that he had to pay taxes on it as income. This was probably before the 1980s reform law. A "campaign contribution" thus was a bribe, since the "war chest" could easily become a piggy bank, and a candidate could solicit large gifts then retire and keep it. The Factcheck link refers to an ethics reform act HR 3660 of 1989. I don't see campaign contributions in its enacted version: Public Law 101-194. Maybe I missed it amongst the verbiage and definitions. Fact Check links to the FEC Federal Election Commission: "Permissible non-campaign use of funds" to verify the limit on a candidate spending campaign funds for personal use, but it is a dead link. Factcheck links to a 1989 NY Times article, which actually says a 1980 law prevents house members from using leftover funds on them selves, but that some were still spending it on themselves or their friends. It said that the Senate had a rule against retired or defeated members spending their leftover campaign funds, but that it was not enforced. Wikipedia has an article about a 1979 ethics reform act, enacted in the wake of Watergate, but I could not find an article about a 1989 ethics reform act, nor was it linked from the 1979 article, nor did it show up in the 1989 in law category. What section of HR 3660 prohibits politicians from spending leftover campaign contributions on themselves? Does some other federal reg achieve this? This seems pretty important and article-worthy. The section on campaign contributions was not mentioned by Pres G H W Bush when he signed HR3660 in 1989: [2]. A Houston Chronicle article described former congressmen paying their family members as office staff or to store records in their homes. The charities and foundations they donate campaign funds to could employ family members, or could sere as a slush fund to pay for for travel and lodging, as the former politicians travel around the world doing "good works." Edison (talk) 13:39, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Prince Antony Liechtenstein

I've come across this name in a source I'm using for an article, and can't seem to figure out who it is or if we have an article for him. Appears to exist based on cursory Google searches, and I'm assuming it is an alternative name of some sort which is why I can't find it. The context being that he was Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor's ambassador to the Papal conclave, 1689. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:56, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

That would be Anton Florian, Prince of Liechtenstein, I assume. The German article mentions that he was "special envoy" (?) to Rome from 1689 and ambassador from 1691. --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Perfect. I was looking in the wrong years for children with some version of Anton-. Thanks. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:20, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Was his significant other named Cleopat? Clarityfiend (talk) 22:23, 15 April 2018 (UTC)