Best response to the "FREA SPEACH!!" creep defenders, EVER.
Via 
happiestsadist: The Gawker article about Michael Brutsch's CNN interview has some marvelous pwnage at the top of the comments.
ThatBurnerNameSo basically you ousted an internet troll and ruined his and his wife's life for some sort of magical crusade against online bullies.
Sorry, but the internet is a wild and unruly place. Trolls are ingrained into the webculture and they won't be going anywhere any time soon. I like the internet open and free, and I have dug through the trenches and (gasp) even managed to survive years browsing its underbelly without getting photos of my breasts smeared across the web. I consider the internet to be one of the very few open forums left in the world, and I don't believe in these passionate crusades against well-known trolls just because you disagree with their activities.
Was he a dick? Absolutely. However, I don't find any amount of heroism in hunting him down to announce his dickage.
godsfake @ThatBurnerName:You're a fucking hypocrite. You want the internet to be free, but you don't want the rest of us to be free on it. You want YOUR version of freedom. Well, guess what? Brutsch hasn't been banned from the entire internet. He can still use the internet and be as shitty as he ever was. No one is stopping him. He hasn't been silenced. You know what he's getting? He's getting the full free speech experience, not the distorted one you and your clown-ass compatriots have made up in your head. Free speech means that people get to speak back, to engage you, to confront you, to force you to defend your ideas, and to hold you accountable via discourse. You want to stifle a free press. Love it or hate it, Brutsch made himself a public figure and a figure in whom people had an interest. When the Amanda Todd story came to public awareness, there was even more interest in people who do things like sexually exploit and humiliate teens online. Women and girls who don't show their breasts to people were also targets of people like Brutsch. We have an interest in knowing just who are these people who take upskirt photos of us when we're going about our day. You want to cut off the right of people to have access to information via our free press. Why do you hate that aspect of free speech?Adrian did what people who do investigative journalism do: he investigated. He gave Brutsch a chance to defend himself, to tell his side of the story. George Orwell said it best: "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is just public relations." Guess what? We're not going to let you whiners turn our free press into a PR campaign for the exploitation of others. You can champion it if you want, but other people have a right to hear the other side and express their opinion.
Brutsch and his wife courted attention online. They were both attention whores. Brutsch and his wife loved telling salacious stories about how he had oral sex with his step-daughter and gave porn to his son when he was six. Brutsch organized and attended Reddit meetups. He gave out t-shirts with his unique Reddit icon. He wasn't some clandestine figure who was the Rosa Parks of non-consensual videos and pictures (it's only porn when the subjects agree to participate). Brutsch made himself a public figure by courting internet infamy every chance he got. When you make yourself a public figure, even under a pseudonym, you invite scrutiny. The press have a right to examine them and hold them up to the public for that scrutiny. Sorry if you missed that part of civics class or you're just too dumb to get it. Even if you don't get it, just get the fuck over it.
As for this creep's life being ruined, you are once again encroaching on someone else's right to free speech. You know what else is an exercise in free speech? His boss firing him. His boss exercised his right to express his stance on Brutsch's behavior by firing him. That's an act of speech. The public have a right to express their disapproval by ostracizing, isolating, and refusing to have any dealings with people they dislike. You know what that's called? Freedom of association. Not only are we immunized from being barred from associating with someone, we are immunized from compulsory association. Refusing to associate with someone is an act of speech. For someone who is criticizing everyone else for trampling freedom, you sure don't have a problem doing it yourself.
But, if you want to express your butthurt in a manner more productive than whining here, why don't you engage in an act of free speech of your own? Raising money or starting a petition to support Brutsch is an excellent way of making your voice heard. Sure, you'll be pissing in the wind, but you'll be doing precisely what you say you want to do: protect and engage in free speech. Put your money where your mouth is and show the world just how devoted to the cause you are.
In response, Godsfake got a couple of idiot comments (check out this one comparing Brutsch to Amanda Todd, if you haven't had your quota of rage today yet) and nearly 100 kudos.
I don't think I want to watch the CNN interview. David Futrelle says it's worth watching, despite CNN's lackluster handling of the topic, if only to note Brutsch's lack of empathy for his victims, self-pity, and desperate attempts to shift blame.
Futrelle links to a few Reddit threads. One of them, on the interview, features occasional appearances by Brutsch. "Generally speaking, the more he posts, the less sympathy he gets from the crowd." In the other, a /r/forhire thread in which Brutsch offers his programming services, someone with experience in the adult-content industry says that such businesses don't want to associate with "people associated with underage materials."
Another Manboobz link is to this New Yorker piece connecting the Amanda Todd case with the Violentacrez case:It is a cultural myth-one particular to the Internet-that the methods of a harasser are fundamentally “legal,” and that the state is helpless to intervene in all cases like this. The systematic way the harasser allegedly followed Todd to new schools, repeatedly posting the images and threatening to do it again, makes it textbook harassment regardless of the medium.
The article also notes that despite John Perry Barlow's high-flown declaration that "our identities have no bodies" in cyberspace, women have not escaped being embodied online, as documented by legal scholar Mary Anne Franks. Yep, we're still the sex class, online and off.
It's a week old now, but I also recommend Lindsay Beyerstein's commentary on the Violentacrez case. She opposes outlawing creepshots because she doesn't see "how we can legislate against them in a way that preserves a photographer's right to take pictures in public." This is a legitimate concern; relevant laws could be used to suppress the video of the Rodney King beating or other visual recordings of malfeasance by the powerful. However, that doesn't mean Beyerstein thinks creepshots are harmless or should be tolerated: Mores have to keep pace with technology. In this age of tiny cameras and internet connections, we need an ironclad norm that You Do Not Creepshoot. We have to enforce this norm through our free speech rights, because the law is not an appropriate tool for this job. The norm should be that if you disregard women's dignity and privacy by posting creepshots, we'll disregard your pseudonymity.
She also observes that any violations by Brutsch of extant law (whether federal or state) should be prosecuted as fully as possible.
Finally, note that chronic victim blamer Emily Bazelon feels sowwwwweeeee for Brutsch. Of course she does.
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1904436.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.
happiestsadist: The Gawker article about Michael Brutsch's CNN interview has some marvelous pwnage at the top of the comments.
ThatBurnerNameSo basically you ousted an internet troll and ruined his and his wife's life for some sort of magical crusade against online bullies.
Sorry, but the internet is a wild and unruly place. Trolls are ingrained into the webculture and they won't be going anywhere any time soon. I like the internet open and free, and I have dug through the trenches and (gasp) even managed to survive years browsing its underbelly without getting photos of my breasts smeared across the web. I consider the internet to be one of the very few open forums left in the world, and I don't believe in these passionate crusades against well-known trolls just because you disagree with their activities.
Was he a dick? Absolutely. However, I don't find any amount of heroism in hunting him down to announce his dickage.
godsfake @ThatBurnerName:You're a fucking hypocrite. You want the internet to be free, but you don't want the rest of us to be free on it. You want YOUR version of freedom. Well, guess what? Brutsch hasn't been banned from the entire internet. He can still use the internet and be as shitty as he ever was. No one is stopping him. He hasn't been silenced. You know what he's getting? He's getting the full free speech experience, not the distorted one you and your clown-ass compatriots have made up in your head. Free speech means that people get to speak back, to engage you, to confront you, to force you to defend your ideas, and to hold you accountable via discourse. You want to stifle a free press. Love it or hate it, Brutsch made himself a public figure and a figure in whom people had an interest. When the Amanda Todd story came to public awareness, there was even more interest in people who do things like sexually exploit and humiliate teens online. Women and girls who don't show their breasts to people were also targets of people like Brutsch. We have an interest in knowing just who are these people who take upskirt photos of us when we're going about our day. You want to cut off the right of people to have access to information via our free press. Why do you hate that aspect of free speech?Adrian did what people who do investigative journalism do: he investigated. He gave Brutsch a chance to defend himself, to tell his side of the story. George Orwell said it best: "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is just public relations." Guess what? We're not going to let you whiners turn our free press into a PR campaign for the exploitation of others. You can champion it if you want, but other people have a right to hear the other side and express their opinion.
Brutsch and his wife courted attention online. They were both attention whores. Brutsch and his wife loved telling salacious stories about how he had oral sex with his step-daughter and gave porn to his son when he was six. Brutsch organized and attended Reddit meetups. He gave out t-shirts with his unique Reddit icon. He wasn't some clandestine figure who was the Rosa Parks of non-consensual videos and pictures (it's only porn when the subjects agree to participate). Brutsch made himself a public figure by courting internet infamy every chance he got. When you make yourself a public figure, even under a pseudonym, you invite scrutiny. The press have a right to examine them and hold them up to the public for that scrutiny. Sorry if you missed that part of civics class or you're just too dumb to get it. Even if you don't get it, just get the fuck over it.
As for this creep's life being ruined, you are once again encroaching on someone else's right to free speech. You know what else is an exercise in free speech? His boss firing him. His boss exercised his right to express his stance on Brutsch's behavior by firing him. That's an act of speech. The public have a right to express their disapproval by ostracizing, isolating, and refusing to have any dealings with people they dislike. You know what that's called? Freedom of association. Not only are we immunized from being barred from associating with someone, we are immunized from compulsory association. Refusing to associate with someone is an act of speech. For someone who is criticizing everyone else for trampling freedom, you sure don't have a problem doing it yourself.
But, if you want to express your butthurt in a manner more productive than whining here, why don't you engage in an act of free speech of your own? Raising money or starting a petition to support Brutsch is an excellent way of making your voice heard. Sure, you'll be pissing in the wind, but you'll be doing precisely what you say you want to do: protect and engage in free speech. Put your money where your mouth is and show the world just how devoted to the cause you are.
In response, Godsfake got a couple of idiot comments (check out this one comparing Brutsch to Amanda Todd, if you haven't had your quota of rage today yet) and nearly 100 kudos.
I don't think I want to watch the CNN interview. David Futrelle says it's worth watching, despite CNN's lackluster handling of the topic, if only to note Brutsch's lack of empathy for his victims, self-pity, and desperate attempts to shift blame.
Futrelle links to a few Reddit threads. One of them, on the interview, features occasional appearances by Brutsch. "Generally speaking, the more he posts, the less sympathy he gets from the crowd." In the other, a /r/forhire thread in which Brutsch offers his programming services, someone with experience in the adult-content industry says that such businesses don't want to associate with "people associated with underage materials."
Another Manboobz link is to this New Yorker piece connecting the Amanda Todd case with the Violentacrez case:It is a cultural myth-one particular to the Internet-that the methods of a harasser are fundamentally “legal,” and that the state is helpless to intervene in all cases like this. The systematic way the harasser allegedly followed Todd to new schools, repeatedly posting the images and threatening to do it again, makes it textbook harassment regardless of the medium.
The article also notes that despite John Perry Barlow's high-flown declaration that "our identities have no bodies" in cyberspace, women have not escaped being embodied online, as documented by legal scholar Mary Anne Franks. Yep, we're still the sex class, online and off.
It's a week old now, but I also recommend Lindsay Beyerstein's commentary on the Violentacrez case. She opposes outlawing creepshots because she doesn't see "how we can legislate against them in a way that preserves a photographer's right to take pictures in public." This is a legitimate concern; relevant laws could be used to suppress the video of the Rodney King beating or other visual recordings of malfeasance by the powerful. However, that doesn't mean Beyerstein thinks creepshots are harmless or should be tolerated: Mores have to keep pace with technology. In this age of tiny cameras and internet connections, we need an ironclad norm that You Do Not Creepshoot. We have to enforce this norm through our free speech rights, because the law is not an appropriate tool for this job. The norm should be that if you disregard women's dignity and privacy by posting creepshots, we'll disregard your pseudonymity.
She also observes that any violations by Brutsch of extant law (whether federal or state) should be prosecuted as fully as possible.
Finally, note that chronic victim blamer Emily Bazelon feels sowwwwweeeee for Brutsch. Of course she does.
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1904436.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.