The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Brittain, a website that posted revenge porn. The site’s operator, Craig Brittain, had fraudulently obtained many of the photos. Brittain agreed to seek permission for running any photos and to erase content collected in the past. An ACLU spokesperson said it was a stretch to ask any site with nudity to have approval from subjects on record but said charges of fraud were appropriate as the FTC could regulate business practices. (Huffington Post, January 29, 2015, by Dana Liebelson)
Danielle Citron and Woodrow Hartzog, The Atlantic, February 3, 2015, defended the settlement as an important step to protect confidentiality essential to the practice of doctors, lawyers, therapists, financial advisers and others. “…the law has long prohibited breaches of confidence as well as the inducement to breach a confidence. Such protections do not transgress a commitment to free speech because what is penalized is the breach of an implicit or explicit agreement, not the publication of information. Theories of inducement similarly focus on acts, not speech. In other words, the publication of photos isn’t restricted – but inducing others to breach a trust that leads to publication is,” they write.