Talk:Nude celebrities on the Internet

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The following was contributed by an not-logged-in writer. It contains some useful information which could probably be integrated into the article, with some rewriting to make it more encyclopedic --Robert Merkel. :

When you're looking for celeb porn on the net

I assume that "celebs" excludes those whose celebrity derives from pornography.

1. Most of the sites that say they offer the stuff ("e.g. "Britney Spears Nude!", etc.), have nothing more than photos of celebrities wearing a sexy dress, or perhaps a swimsuit, but nothing more revealing.

2. If you can see her vaginal lips, chances are a hundred to one it's fake.

3. If you don't think she's that kind of girl, she probably isn't.

4. If she was gonna do it, you probably would have found out about it from some non-Net source, such as seeing her name on the cover of Playboy. Think about it from her perspective: If you were Anna Kournikova (or pick your favorite DAMN-what-a-hot-babe-all-the-guys-are-drooling-over-her celeb) and you were gonna pose nude, your common sense would tell you to do the posing for Playboy to get zillions of dollars.

Oh, by the way, I WATCHED the Tonya Harding porno-which-was-not-a-porno video. It was not really a porno because they just turned the camera on and left it pointed at the bed, and basically the camera angle sucked so you couldn't really see any action.

I destroyed clickable link to the porn site mentioned in the article that got sued by Britney Spears. With the 2600.com linking linking case, we too could be sued for linking. Anyone can still use Google to find the link by placing the name of the webite in the search engine. See [1] for more info on the 2600 linking case. maveric149

How about this, then? I don't want Wikipedia to get sued, but on the other hand there's nothing that burns me worse than submitting to this kind of legal insanity... Bryan Derksen

Unfortunetely the situation is insane, and any good lawyer will tell you to be very paranoid in these cases. I like your idea -- however it is just one step removed from a direct link and might be challenged in the future (these people are allways looking for chances to expand the law in their favor -- I'm also not sure about Google's policy is concerning links to their site in this way or the "surprise factor" of a person clicking on what they think is a direct link and getting a search engine instead). maveric149

What situation is insane? 2600 has been sued because they linked to material that has been deemed illegal copyright circumvention technology. That has nothing to do with our linking to a web site which was sued in the past, lost and removed the offending material. What is the concern?

The concern is the possible expansion of case law that is quickly moving in this direction. Wikipedia/Bomis is a stable and legit larget for sue-happy lawyers. If the Lux site gets sued again, then Jimbo may find himself in a class action law suit. You think he could afford to pay a lawyer and continue to run wikipedia? Check the Most Popular page; This article is going to be the 4th most popular probably by the time you read this. See below for more reasons why linking to Lux is a bad idea. maveric149
Shying away from linking to a site because it might be sued in the future or was sued in the past is ridiculous: you couldn't link to Microsoft either. In fact you couldn't link anywhere anymore. AxelBoldt

I see absolutely no reason not to link to the web site. And in fact, we already have a link to it in the article. AxelBoldt

You are looking at the wrong link. The one that is still on the page links to a site that shows exactly how the faked nude celeb images were made. It presents photos of fully clothed celebrities next to photos of porn models, and then presents the faked composite image. The removed link (Lux) just shows the faked images. maveric149
The "detective" page is owned by Lux and is part of their site, and Lux was sued before for presenting exactly these fake celebrity pictures. AxelBoldt

In italian law, after a few proceedings, we have now recognised a full right of linking because:

  1. material publicly available on the net has been released TO BE publicly available, or it wouldn't have been released at all (it evidently cannot be there unintentionally, following a series of complex technical actions); if your linking gives those sites more accessibility, then linked site can never refuse your "unwanted help", because the site is there to be visited, or there is no need to publish it.
  2. linking is then only the offer of a non indispensable facilitation for final user in his research of that material, that he would find by your link or by whatever way else (i.e.: calling a random URL).
  3. the responsibility of each webmasters ends at the borders of his site; linked sites are at the sole responisbility of respective webmasters; in case of copyright violations, or other crimes as well, the responsibility of linked webmaster is not automatically extended to the linker one merely because of the creation of a connection, or search engines - google too - would be illegal;
  4. illegal linking to an illegal content can therefore be (in case) only a matter of accomplicity or of aiding and abetting, if there is a prooved common intention, or if the linker webmaster expects another illegal effect; it is not the linking action in itself, which is also the deep sense and main symbol of the Internet: interconnection. A general note about the purposes (a fundamental element of the crime - you must WANT to make a crime, or otherwise you must INTEND breaking a rule, to effectively make a crime) usually keeps science and culture and generic learning out of these schemes: the simple link to a sex site doesn't mean by itself your are promoting controversial behaviours (special laws, such as about pedophilia sites, can however require special cares and include the prohibition of THAT linking, but these are special cases - and in Roman Law, a law should generally be issued... before its application). In case linker does not intend making a crime (if this is true at a serious consideration - not simply asking him), there should be no crime.
Unfortunetaly the Italian legal system is more level-headed about this than the American one. Bomis is a US company, and their ISP (Tabnet I think) is also a US company. maveric149

If 2600 wanted to damage that company by helping criminals (those who released illegal content), this would only be a matter of 2600's accomplicity, not a linking matter. Besides, final user has always the opportunity to choose what to do, visit link or not, gain a profit from other people's crime or not, and this is out of webmasters' power. Why should it be so different there? I believe that Wikipedia can link any site that any special law hasn't already prohibited to link. If you know such cases, please add: it would be useful not only for Wikipedia.

There wasn't any special law prohibiting linking before 2600 either -- It was an interpretation of the law that then expanded it. These things build upon one another like snowballs. The 2600 decision set a dangerous precedent that can now be further expanded by the next judge. Do we want to needlessly subject Jimbo to legal expences for us linking to smut?
Certainly not at all! I would like to help, not to damage. :-)
OK go ahead and link the porn site back to the article and leave this as a possible test case to further expand the already oppessive US laws in this regard (US, not Italy -- Bomis and there ISP are both in the States). On top of this, there still is no encyclopidic value in linking to the lux porn site. Should we talk about and link all porn sites that have been sued? This article would then be a pointer page to the best celebrity porn on the internet -- how quaint. Has anyone besides myself actually visited the web site in question? It is border-line smut. The other link (Detective) does have value since it has the source images of celeb A in clothing and porn queen A without them, and then it presents the composite image with the body of the porn queen and the head of the celebrity. That has explorative value for the site itself, and for us linking it. The Lux site only has the composite images. maveric149
Actually, I believe there is no indispensable need of linking to a porn site in Wikipedia, nor I meant that this site, rather than this other one, had any special value to be linked for. I would however think that it would not be illegal as long as it is not linked to with the specific purpose to achieve an illegitimate goal. As often seen (in Europe, at least), legal debates about the Internet are born from porn or similar matters, so I did not find it strange to talk about linking in this page, but the argument has a general content and this I was referring to - besides, encyclopedic value obviously better regards other subjects. My company works on the Net and, like most similar companies, we have on our pages some thousands of links to resources physically located wherever in the Planet (no porn, though ;-), then to US pages too which legal correctness (i.e. about copyright) I cannot verify, so I think that this US "peculiarity" might be interesting at many levels for really many people, single "personal homepagers" included. What I had found in italian sentences, and this is why I was reporting them, seemed to contain some basic elements that I thought could have been of general consensus worldwide (in other countries too, other senteces will certainly have been issued of similar content) because I cannot see, by now, a potential difference among western countries in the legal correctness of linking, being the same action worldwide, with supposedly the same effects and meanings worldwide (or let's keep at western culture countries, at least).
In this sense, I would be quite worried about the main corps of the Internet depending on the personal beliefs of a single judge and on his... state of mind of the day (if this is how we could express a paradoxal extreme), this would be far from our comprehension and in fact I am sure that I will be explained it isn't so.
The different approach, in other words: we both know well about Michelangelo, let's suppose we link a site that illegally talks about catholic censorship and Vatican gets angry with us too: in Italy, Vatican would not be able to create a prohibition or prosecute us simply by a single judge (let's imagine an integralist catholic judge - and we do have some) extending the interpretation of an existing law (it is true, however, a special law could be appositely issued the day after by Parliament), but still we would need an existing formal law, a judge would have no analogic power (completely forbidden for penal law, severely limited for civil law). I wouldn't become a Vatican offender myself just because of my eventual linking to a Vatican offender, no law currently certifies this. So if we have laws that say linking, or a form of linking is illegal, illegal it is; but if we don't have such laws (as I seem to read in previous notes it happens in the US), what sort of divination can be expected from the single citizen about a judge's interpretation?
I am not at all "promoting" a system (I wouldn't describe mine as a model) and obviously I would never be insulting another one (there would be no need of a juridical competition, and first of all I hope that all my notes can be seen as completely respectful), but exactly because we are dealing with US system it could be useful to sharpen the differences, since we relate with your system and sometimes do necessarily have to, so this talk suggests some deeper acknowledgement also in a Wikipedian regard.
I think at this point that Wikipedia could deserve an article, or a Talk, about linking or similar legal arguments. Maybe Talk:Links would be a fine place to do it.

I personally think there is nothing wrong with linking to that site from the legal standpoint. Even though there might be some very minor risk, taking it is better than acting like the law was already expanded to cover all linking. However, in this case I just don't see how the reader will benefit from what apparently is a paysite (protected by an AVS). Paranoid 14:44, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

Are quite so many examples necessary? Not everyone who wants to research nude celebrites on the Internet necessarily wants to see nude celebrities on the Internet. Also, any fair use claims seem shaky.

(I'm not supporting censorship, I'm supporting taste and appropriateness. I created List of big-bust models and performers; I'm no prude.) tregoweth 20:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

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