People going out of their way to re-post the pictures in perpetuity just because of who she is and the fact that she made an ignorant mistake (again, that she has no doubt learned from). Teenagers in high school end up killing themselves A LOT because of this attitude of these vigilante justice internet users. Who makes people such an authority? And why does it never work the other way around? You can only use the internet to destroy, not to help, apparently.

I do not think sympathy is called for, but I do see a lack of empathy from many of the people who comment on this subject. I feel like empathy is discarded too often in or current society. Blame in capitalistic competition, blame it on history, blame it on the law. Whatever it is, no one is willing to entertain the thought that other people have experienced a different life than you.

Yes, I read what you are saying. And for the record I haven’t looked at the pics either. I’m generally speaking not interested enough to sort out the mass of photoshops, lookalikes, troll attempts and outright fakes from the bona fide originals of an actress i don’t even have a passing interest in. Or, for that matter, who took the pics intending to show them privately to someone else.

A sandboxed browser and redtube is quite enough if casual nudity is what you want. Or any google search, for that matter.

I’d probably turn in the money to the police after attaching a note saying something like “how dumb can you get”?

My beef is this – when you use modern technology you, as an end user, do carry the responsibility of what you are doing with it. The rest of the world is not your nanny. And when people start using it as a harmless toy without even the most basic understanding it becomes a case where you’d have to ask yourself how much sympathy they should expect.

Today everyone is expected to understand that handing out your ATM pin code to everyone or keep it written on the card is a bad thing. The “transition period” was just long enough for people to understand that having your card pinched would mean your money was gone from your account. A very brief amount of time.

Online the basic rules and guidelines haven’t changed since the early BBS. And yet we see more suckers every day springing for scams even their parents can see through.

In that regard hackers of the type which went after JL, lowlifes that they usually are, do fulfill the very important social task of spreading awareness. Like scavengers in any ecology.

It’s not so much that the TF community applauds the hackers in question. More, I believe, that we all recognize that willful refusal to even learn the most basic guidelines which have been around, unchanged, for all of your existence, is something which reality will eventually punish you for if you insist on using the tech relying on those guidelines.

Yes, we have bad hackers. and JL deserves no sympathy here. These are not mutually exclusive views.

In time.

However after reading of her ‘trying’ to censor the Internet I’ve gone and found the pictures for myself.. Well done Jenifer! I’ve now seen you nude thanks to you publicising the leak.

Congrats!

We differ in our interpretation about how much people know about modern technology. Look, we might have followed the Snowden revelations closure than some, but there are large amounts of people that don’t even know who he is, or what he revealed. Sure, Jennifer Lawrence has done something dangerous, but you do not understand how little people actually understand technology at this stage. Remember Snap Chat? People lost their minds over this. You can send any picture you want, and it is gone the next second? Oh the possibilities for playful raunchiness! I remember talking to some younger friends about this, and they did not have a clue how unsecured it was. So much of the technological world is presented to people as is. With the number of EULAs you sign on a daily basis, you can’t help but assume that your privacy is protected in there somewhere, but it isn’t. Like, if you think the NSA isn’t stock piling your emails, you’re crazy. I never would have thought that before Snowden. I assumed Google had integrity, ya know? I followed those events closely, and I changed my perception of the world as a result. I try to share the information with everyone I can though (in the least preachy way possible).

Okay, so still, I am not defending dangerous actions. What I am defending is the attitude of the people who are spreading the photos. They act as if these photos are their right. So many people acting like the scorpion you described. Not just the hackers who hack all the celebrities and share photos in a ring. But the regular people who flock to see the pictures.

There is an ethical hangup if people know the circumstances of which photos were obtained, but look at them anyway. By the time I had heard about this event, I decided that looking at the pictures would be the same as supporting this type of hacker’s activities. Which is also like supporting the NSA who also spy on even more secure private communications. I do not support this behavior and want to see it changed. Stop the NSA, and stop the mentality that we should exploit our technological understanding to steal personal information from people who have no understanding. Give everyone understanding.

We ARE in a transition where by some people have the technological means to shatter the lives of others, but does that mean they should? It takes a lot of control to not steal a wallet full of money that was left on a table. But it takes even more control to grab that wallet and find the owner. You see what I mean?

Imagine if a hacker found these photos and then anonymously contacted Jennifer Lawrence to inform her how unsecured her photos were? Chastise the shit out of her there too, it doesn’t matter. The polar opposite thing to do would be to take the photos and publish them online where tens of millions of people would see them.

That’s not really a high horse. That’s just a decency horse. The only reason I said anything about it is because I believed the TF community understood our roll in the future. We all know that file sharing is the direction the future is headed, but it almost certainly never will be if this is still our mentality. Dangerous actions aside, do you steal the money, or get it back to the owner?