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Comment by cowlevel | Hacker News Reader

Maybe make it illegal to publish a video of someone without their consent.

That doesn't work, at the very least, for two simple reasons.

First that you can't attest who filmed something without a lot of effort that law enforcement for sure won't bother with.

In many countries caught doing such activities in public spaces falls under public indecent exposure, if not something more draconian that puts you on a sex offender list. Morally people will feel obliged to report it there.

Can't attest who murdered someone or stole something or drew graffiti either, but making it illegal makes it happen a lot less, because of the chance that someone actually can attest it.

For example if you post it to Instagram or YouTube they'd know it was you, and you could go to jail.

So you go have a shag in an alley and I'll stumble upon you and your partner with my camera. How will you know I published it and where? Maybe I'll just upload it to some seedy website that you never visit.

I don't think "if you can't do it perfectly, always, you shouldn't even try" is a very good argument against nearly anything, and it certainly isn't engaging with the substance of the discussion.

It's almost like there's a spectrum of things. Some that you'll never catch and some that you will with reasonable effort. Where the above falls in this spectrum is clear, and should be thought about accordingly.

If I never find out, I care a lot less, this law just makes it your problem if it manages to impact my life.

You could find about it after 1, 2, 3 years or a decade. A person you know might find it and use it to blackmail you. Lots of potential for damage.

Fortunately, if someone is blackmailing you, that is a crime and you can use the police to send them to jail, as well as whoever posted it.

Yeah. Like if I break into you house and take two non-matching socks and leave quietly, how will you know that I did?

Or a civil liability for you and/or the platform. That and taxing advertising and heavily taxing anything that looks like gambling (very short term speculation) would solve a lot of problems.

People steal, assault and even murder people and film themselves doing it and publish it on the internet.

And it's always very useful in their own prosecution.

But the point is that that's AFTER the crime, so doesn't stop it.

That will stop it surely

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