Imagery of nude celebrities
Nude celebrities on the Internet — images and video clips of famous nude females and males — are one of the more popular kinds of nudity or pornography, to be found on the Internet.
Background
Along with almost every other communication technology ever invented, the Internet has been used to communicate pornography. One genre that has become particularly popular is pictures of nude celebrities. The demand for such images has been known for many decades — Playboy magazine is renowned for offering famous women large amounts of money to appear nude in its magazine, and more downmarket pornographic magazines search far and wide for nude pictures of celebrities taken unawares — e.g., when they are bathing topless or nude at what the subject thought was a secluded beach, or taken before the individual was well-known.
The possibility of civil court action restricts the availability of such photos through the print media. On the Internet, the difficulty of applying court sanction makes circulation of such photographs much less risky. Untold numbers of such photographs circulate through Usenet, and fly-by-night commercial operators, often in countries beyond the reach of U.S. courts (the celebrities concerned are more often than not from the U.S.), also offer such photos for commercial gain. Copyright violation is rarely a matter of concern.
Origin of the Images
Images of nude celebrities fall into four categories:
Movie snapshots: Many actors have done nude scenes in otherwise non-sexual movies, typically from before the actor became famous. Snapshots from these movies are circulated widely and can usually be recognized by the low picture quality (from video).
Paparazzi photographs: Occasionally, celebrities are photographed in revealing real-life situations; the most common scenario is a woman bathing topless. The photos are usually taken from a distance and rarely reveal more than breasts.
Nude photo shoots: Mainstream sex magazines such as Playboy or photographic art magazines such as Black and White routinely feature nude shoots of celebrities. Digital versions of the photos are then either provided by the publisher or scanned in and distributed by a third party.
Stolen private materials: Rarely, private sexual photographs or videos are stolen and show up on the internet. Two famous examples are Tonya Harding's "wedding video" and private videos featuring Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.
Fake Images
In recent years, the wide availability of ever more powerful personal computers and software giving the user a wide range of tools to manipulate images has led to an increase in the production and distribution of faked images. Sometimes these fake images are designed in such a way as to look like real snapshots (even enhanced to look like they have been published in a newspaper or magazine), but more often the "fakers" proudly sign their own work, and sometimes add taglines defending it as a "visual parody" protected by freedom of speech.
The fakes not only depict celebrities in conventional nudity (posing or in shots implying unawareness of the photographer or the nudity) but also during sexual intercourse or in the context of a wide variety of sexual fetishes. The realism of the fakes varies greatly, with some images only immediately recognizable as fakes because of the nature of their content, and others the obvious result of unprofessional cut-and-pasting.
Celebrities have occasionally threatened legal action against websites archiving fake pictures. In 2001, the "Lair of Lux Lucre", a fake celebrity website, was threatened by pop star Britney Spears, after which all celebrity fakes of her were removed from the site. Currently, the "Lair" archives more than 75,000 fake images.
The large number of fake images, many of which are not marked as such, has inspired some people to try to separate fake from real images. One such website, The Case Files of the Fake Detective, analyzes in detail more than 300 fakes (not including fakes depicting sexual action, as these are deemed unlikely to fool collectors into believing they are real) and explains how they have been made.
Another growing area is completely artificially generated 3D images. Celebrity photos can be used as textures on artificial 3D bodies, which can then be manipulated as desired. At present, the software for producing such artificial images is not sufficiently advanced to allow laymen to generate photorealistic images.
A few celebrities whose nude Internet pictures have become mainstream items include Pamela Anderson, Tonya Harding, Tommy Lee, Chu Mei-Feng and Debra Byrne
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