Oh, the irony. A revenge porn king wants a squeaky clean Google record.
Craig Brittain raked in thousands of dollars by posting naked photos of women online. Now, he wants his own revenge: on the websites that wrote about him.
Brittain, the operator of the now defunct site www.isanybodydown.com, submitted a request to Google to remove links containing “unauthorized use of photos of me and other related information” from its search engine. He lists 23 links, including news sites like Forbes, Salon and the Huffington Post. He even includes the FTC.
He filed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) request, claiming the sites pulled unauthorized statements, identifying information and photos from his Facebook page and his old site.
For Google to act on a DMCA request, Brittain would be required to be the rights holder or it would need to be a case in which “fair use” laws didn’t apply.
“He doesn’t have much to stand on,” said Mary Anne Franks, associate professor at University of Miami School of Law.
She said that he doesn’t own the copyright to most of the material contained in the links. The only caveat would be if Brittain owns rights to any of the photos, but even then, that would mostly likely fall under “fair use.” (If it didn’t, he would still need to go to each site individually to get the photos taken down.)
Even in Europe, which has a “right to be forgotten” rule, his request is likely to be ignored.
In January, the FTC banned Brittain from posting any more nude photos and required him to destroy the images.
Brittain ran the site from 2011 to 2013, posting 1,000 photos of women, oftentimes with their contact information. The pictures were submitted to him by an ex or solicited by Brittain on Facebook. He allegedly charged women $200 to $500 to remove the pictures.