Well, I get that it was extortion, and I completely agree that it's extortion... and that's exactly my complaint -- extortion has nothing to do with revenge porn.
From reading the Slate article, they mention the new "revenge porn law" specifically, and then list other charges. The contents of the site could have been anything -- credit card numbers, blackmail information, etc., etc., and the CA legislature would still have the exact same case that they have -- extortion.
I suppose I glommed onto your argument because I assumed (from your other post) that you'd been following it, but I think that the implications of a 'revenge porn' law didn't actually come into play here, which sort of makes whatever point I had -- that there's no purpose for it.
Whatever implications the first amendment has here, origination shouldn't play a part in it. If the images are obscene, that can be determined independently of how they were obtained or distributed. If they violate someone's personal copyright, that's an independent claim. If they violate local pornography statutes, that's again, a separate crime.
What it seems to me is that we've taken a number of things that were already illegal and drafted up a new set of feel-good measures that make them illegal under a different heading. Perhaps the net result is in sentencing, but that seems about as efficient to me as "hate" crime sentencing, where we'll end up with mandatory minimums and such.
Anyway, sorry for pestering, you just seemed to have more knowledge on the matter than the Slate article, and I thought you'd implied that there were free speech implications.
From reading the Slate article, they mention the new "revenge porn law" specifically, and then list other charges. The contents of the site could have been anything -- credit card numbers, blackmail information, etc., etc., and the CA legislature would still have the exact same case that they have -- extortion.
I suppose I glommed onto your argument because I assumed (from your other post) that you'd been following it, but I think that the implications of a 'revenge porn' law didn't actually come into play here, which sort of makes whatever point I had -- that there's no purpose for it.
Whatever implications the first amendment has here, origination shouldn't play a part in it. If the images are obscene, that can be determined independently of how they were obtained or distributed. If they violate someone's personal copyright, that's an independent claim. If they violate local pornography statutes, that's again, a separate crime.
What it seems to me is that we've taken a number of things that were already illegal and drafted up a new set of feel-good measures that make them illegal under a different heading. Perhaps the net result is in sentencing, but that seems about as efficient to me as "hate" crime sentencing, where we'll end up with mandatory minimums and such.
Anyway, sorry for pestering, you just seemed to have more knowledge on the matter than the Slate article, and I thought you'd implied that there were free speech implications.