Hunter Moore: Amateur
Craig Brittain: Lightweight
Looks like posting compromising photos of unsuspecting victims is not enough. Someone, who obviously once sat on a copy of the nutshell on copyright and online speech to sit at the grown-ups table, decided that merely posting photos was insufficient. This vile person decided it was all hunky-dory to simply solicit photographs of so-called prostitutes without any credible evidence (not to be confused with Smoking Gun, which publishes mugshots and such of people actually arrested).
For your disgust, I present: PotentialProstitutes.com
Solicits submissions and offers removal for $99. Thinks Sec. 230 is a safe harbor, when he is choosing to publish. Libel per se, anyone?
h/t Ethics Alarms
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The Legal Satyricon 
Less than 30 seconds on the site and I’ve already found a blatant lie: “PotentialProstitutes.com has been sued on many occasions based on the content which our users have created and posted.”
Really? A launched within the past two months has already been sued and won?
But that probably sounds awfully convincing to someone who’s pictured there: “they’ve already been sued! I guess I should just fork over the $99, rather than waste money on a lawyer trying to get my actual damages.”
Wow. I hope the lawsuits commence. The guy is so stupid that he’s playing a Grady Judd / Polk County arrest video! As if it’s a secret that Judd lures people out to Polk County houses in gated communities and arrests each whether there is evidence of a crime or not. Well, he’s picked a huge fight with this new agenda…
This would be a criminal act in Canada. How is it legal in the US?
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if they are exercising any sort of editorial discretion or just letting anything appear that is submitted. So, I attempted to submit a non-existent person. The system accepted my upload, but the profile has not been published. Sorry chaps, no safe harbor for thee.
Yeah, I’m not clicking that link.
Site seems to be offline for me here in Colorado
To stop PotentialFuckheads (oooh I like that.. Might make a site called that with these morons and their ilk on it) from getting hits could I suggest all future references to this site and any others like it to be formatted like such “MoronicIdiotSite [dot] com”
That way they can have no link back nor any Search engine SEO ability (though there url name is searchable) and the spaces even stop some autolinking scripts from allowing it. If anyone wants to link to it they do it manually
Just a thought
Color me disgusted. Sites of this ilk are popping up all over the place. One should not have to pay to remove defamatory information. But it looks like since they’re screening their content and controlling what gets published after all – no safe harbor under sec. 230
More than one person has posted about safe harbor under s 230. Removing things that are against their TOS does not immediately disqualify. If it did, then FB and unicornworld.com would have been toast long ago.
It is correct that editorial discretion over what to publish does not remove 230 immunity (see, e.g., Barnes v. Yahoo!), but it is insightful that there is some discretion exercised. The submission form just includes name, phone, location, photo–it is the site that is then applying the label “potential prostitutes”, which may then result in them being deemed a generator of content, not just publisher.
Of note, there really isn’t a good dmca takedown provision and I suspect some of the subjects own copyright in their images.
That said, the site is down for the time being. Of course, Craig Brittain decided to get back in the act today and post a few more private photos. There’s a guy who needs a-suing.
And they publish the associated telephone numbers, so people can call and harass the women whose photos have been posted. How delightful.
Hello, I looked at this site today but I believe it to be fake. If you are in a small, rural type location, plug in your zipcode and see what the results are, you will likely get the same 10+ pages of too-hot-to-be-believable images. Now google some of the phone numbers, and chances are you’ll hit an escort service or two. This is an ad scam by said websites to generate traffic.