Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/18/mugshots-com-owners-charged-wi.html
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Are you sure? I just searched for them on the site and they’re not listed. Must be fake news!
More seriously, a site like that must be highly automated, I wonder if they were posted for awhile before some admin noticed and censored it.
Or maybe they’ve been arrested before and already had themselves on the filter list?
So many possibilities! 
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I’ve often wondered how sites like this and the newspapers like them that they sell at corner stores are legal. I understand mugshots are presumably in the public domain but they are taken with cameras purchased with what I assume is public money and yet these sites and papers make money off of them… Also fuck those sites and papers…
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and yet these sites and papers make money off of them
Are you also outraged that bicycle couriers make money using public roads and sidewalks?
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No, because they aren’t exploiting people who may have made a bad decision and could now lose their job because their boss saw them on the cover of ‘Busted’ while filling up on gas.
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So if the site shuts down, what will the cops masturbate to?
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AW YEEESSSSSSSS!
is the COMPLETE SENTENCE I am trying to post.
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Step 1 - buy alternate domain
Step 2 - scrape content from mugshots.com
Step 3 - charge them for removal
Step 4 - profit!
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Over a three-year period, the defendants extracted more than $64,000 in removal fees from approximately 175 individuals
Lessee, 64,000/175 = 365.7 … I wonder if the takedown was good for just a year, at $1/day? That’s the $64,000 question.
Nationally, the defendants took more than $2 million in removal fees from approximately 5,703
$2 million / 5703 = 350.6…well it says “more than $2 million”, I bet it was exactly $2,081,595
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Christ, what a bunch of assholes.
Textbook ‘Bro subculture’. Because extortion just seemed easier than forging a real career path.
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Hell, a lot of them would’ve been found to have never actually committed a crime. The very existence of a mugshot sure forces a narrative tho.
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So… why are mugshots public records, anyway? The problem here is sites containing mugshots, especially of innocent people; the only reason the fee for removal is a problem is that it creates financial incentive to create such sites.
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And no mention of the GDPR and how they may be sued out of existence come the 25th?
That would only apply to mugshots of EU citizens. Also it’s not user content so I’m not sure it would apply anyway. Right to be forgotten more likely.
All you need is one EU citizen to register, demand all info be deleted and have them fail to comply, and then European courts will be involved.
The police gleefully releasing mugshots to the public seems to be a uniquely American thing to start with. Part and parcel of the extrajudicial punishment powers that US police arrogate unto themselves.
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The root of it is habeas corpus and the idea that arrests are public record and not secret for protection of rights and freedoms. Naturally people have found a way to weaponize it. At one end of the scale, people vanish into “Night and Fog”, and at the other end, there’s public live streaming from police bodycams. Finding the balance is tough with the Internet added on.
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Register for what? Delete what? I’m not sure you understand GDPR.
