I should know better than to argue with people who are so emotionally involved that they ignore the very first sentence on the page they are using to prove they’re right, established legal definitions and the definition in the f’ing dictionary since Webster put it in.
Fine, words don’t matter. This guy raped these people. He murdered their lives. He assaulted them with a deadly weapon. He is clearly the same violent criminal as someone who commits second degree murder which gets you 15 years in California.
I can’t parse your post above. Possibly because I’m so over-wrought with emotionality that my mind just can’t clear the fog for long enough.
Perhaps you would care to elaborate. You said it wasn’t violent. I said it was… What happened after that?
Also, are you saying “Fine, words don’t matter”, or “Fine words don’t matter,”? Not that I think it will clarify your ratiocination for me, I just thought it was an amusing formulation of words without the comma.
As for the rest of it, do you also think that the gravity of the crime is not amplified by the sheer weight of people upon whom it was perpetuated?
[LOL, I haven’t done this in so long, I almost forgot the thrill of an internet-drawing-of-sabres!]
Do you want a deterrent (for which effect it is more important the probability of getting caught than, above some threshold, the length of sentence)? Do you want a correction of the offender? Or do you want revenge?
Of course the gravity of the crime is increased with more victims. It was not violent though. Good god, it can be incredibly severe and not violent. Nigerian scammers who steal the life savings of hundreds of people are not violent criminals even though in absolute terms they cause significantly more damage to people’s lives than this asshole.
Ah, so you wish to consider the effectiveness of prisons. That makes an inroad into your thinking.
Well, lets just say that prisons are not effective at acting as a deterrent to a determined criminal.
Given the reality of the court system as it currently exists, if one was to perpetrate this crime on one person and get, say, 3-5 years for it, because of some notional reciprocity based on the damage done to another’s life, doesn’t it stand to reason that the impact of the crime, and accordingly, the way in which that crime has effected society at large, should factor into how the punishment is confabulated?
These are all nebulous constructions of moral legislature and we are dealing with the crime and the courts as they currently exist.
I’m more than happy to get into the morality of prisons and what they actual function as within the gestalt of society but I think that’s not central to the idea that an approbate level of punishment should fit the crime of extended interpersonal violence.
I don’t know. There’s an element of violence in posting people’s contact information/address alongside nude photos (and the presumption of “revenge”). I mean, in a different context, were he posting that same information about, say, abortion providers or people of color in the hope/knowledge of starting a harassment campaign (up to stalking and death threats) against those people… hard to not see that as fundamentally different than fraud or even straight up extortion.
I understand why you’re not comfortable with this, but this guy messed up his victims’ lives as badly as if he’d beaten them up. Judging the severity of crimes on a linear scale of years will always be problematic, but if we’re going to operate that way, I think it’s fair to at least consider the idea that deliberately, maliciously, premeditatedly wrecking hundreds of people’s lives for profit might be comparable to a single non-premeditated killing done in the heat of the moment.
This is substantially true in aggregate, but it isn’t as clear (nor, unfortunately, are the data as easy to come by) if you want to try to break down your offenders into finer categories.
It does appear to be true that the dumb, impulsive, late-teen-to-20-somethings(statistics on crime by offender age are quite dramatic, particularly for crime that requires violence in-person) who provide the bulk of the crimes are not substantially deterred by longer sentences. Whether they feel invulnerable, are acting without any premeditation that includes considering the consequences, or are just fatalistic about their odds of ending up in prison anyway, I don’t know; but it appears to be true.
However, our guy in this story is a slightly different character: he just runs a web site, nothing hands on, no face-to-face, no spur of the moment crime committed in hot blood, numerous repetitions of the same crime over a period of time(with the option to bow out at any time just by shutting down the site and walking away). Operationally, running a revenge porn site is more akin to a really, really, sleazy version of insider trading.
It’s possible that this class of offender is also undiscouraged by longer sentences; but it’s certainly far from obvious based merely on a consideration of all offenders in bulk.
Unfortunately, we really know too little about some of the less common flavors of criminal, and what makes them tick.
Also, from our high-moral horse, let us not forget that prisons can serve as more than a deterrent or as a rehabilitation factor in society.
You also have to think about the stabilising effect on society that sentences like this have.
I often compare this style of thinking to the dole, social security.
Middle aged people I talk to often talk about the handing out of free money to ‘vagabonds’ and ‘layabouts’ with extreme disapproval. And I love, I fucking love reminding them that social security contracts were drawn up to appease the revolutionaries of the working classes. The fucking middle classes used to be called the ‘revolutionary class’ for fucks sake. They were bought off by the upper crust with wealth and security.
No such luck for the weak and downtrodden working classes, who don’t have the time or education to revolt en masse.
Just the fucking dole.
It’s a bribe.
Don’t guillotine us!
As is much of the work of the courts. Don’t start a riot over this! Look! We’re doing barely just enough to appease human nature.
This is the real world, people. And it is chock fucking full of people who mindlessly contribute to the gestalt state of being a hysterical, unreasonable, screaming mess.
You have to distinguish between ‘non-violent’ offenders who are non-violent because no violence actually happened; and ‘non-violent’ offenders who aren’t stupid enough to handle the dirty work themselves. Without this distinction, there are cartel leaders and warlords who are just as non-violent as some sad sack who stole a pack of twinkies from 7/11 or got busted for possessing a joint.
Intent here matters. If he posted people’s names and addresses so that others could track down these men and women and assault them (sexually or otherwise), then yes, it would be violent and he deserves his f’ing sentence. If he did it because he thought people would pay to remove embarrassing photos of themselves and they’d find out by googling their own names, then he still deserves prison time, but the amount seems completely disproportional.
Since he wasn’t charged with intimidation or assault, we’ll probably never know.
Shouldn’t it be clear to any human being who has been a human being for any length of time that the consequences of his actions very well could be to induce violence where before there was none?
Also, I categorically think that the actual invasion of privacy given the nature of the content, specifically counts as a kind of violence. I’m not trying to project that violence into notions of inducing it, even though that should also be a consideration.
Have we strayed into, ‘Kill a couple of people and you’re a monster, kill a couple of million and… I don’t know what to think… Congratulations?’ territory.
No I really don’t. Because right now you are making the the same argument that the anti-drug types make. You are making the argument that Manning should be in jail forever. You are two steps shy of “for the children”.
Ha. No. I think the vast majority of people are oblivious to how their decisions can affect others - especially when they have no personal experience with the consequences (the fear of rape is not particularly high with men).
I hereby acknowledge this style of defence goes waay further than it should. Within the context of the courts as they currently exist, upon which the notion of my point squarely rests, alongside your own.
How, because they were naked? It sounds as if these were clothed photos of people, no one would be especially worked up about it. I don’t doubt that the guy was an opportunist creep, but if nude photos “ruin people’s lives” then this is because people generally hold foolish attitudes and treat each other poorly. Locking this jerk away isn’t going to fix that greater problem.
I hope I’ve been clear about the division between how I feel about the nature of crime and punishment and the reality of the system as it currently exists. If anybody is searching for a reason for why he was handed such a severe sentence, I can’t think why. It seems obvious.
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