Mosley thrash'n'tickle vid case against Google opens in Hamburg Google is being sued in a Hamburg court by Max Mosley, who is claiming that the company has broken German privacy laws by continuing to host a video online which shows the erstwhile Formula One chief engaging in a sordid sex pantomime. Mosley told the Leveson Inquiry nearly a year ago that he would bring a lawsuit against …
If you can bear it, watch Adam Boulton's face as this gets broadcast some 8 hours before the 'watershed'.
Well that's one approach.
Another would be to either ensure that the only copy of your "home video" is kept somewhere safe or, better still, choose your videocamera moments a bit more carefully.
I'm always amazed that allegedly clever people manage to get themselves into a situation where someone who'll happily fuck them over for a bit of cash ends up with their rumpy-pumpy footage.
Actually, I kind of do.
The News of the World called him a Nazi and used his father against him - it's not as if he can help who his father was. To get away with this and make certain that they made money on the deal, they paid a prostitute to film his private party.
Then they made money off the film coverage existing, using still frames and general public prurience. I call that "living off immoral earnings". James Murdoch, if there was any justice, should get 5 years and forfeiture of property it along with an organized crime investigation.
Alas for that idea, there's no such crime as 'living off immoral earnings' and never has been. Millions of bankers are very grateful for that: see Brecht.
The other organisation that needs investigating is the Labour Party. If more than one person is offering sex somewhere, it's a brothel. In 2003, the Sexual Offences Act increased the penalties for owning / running / managing a brothel involving prostitution. But there was going to be an exception: brothels with only one client were going to be ok. Brothels with only one client?!? It took a while for the penny to drop for me - that's what the flat that Mosley used for his orgies was, and the lovely Labour government was going to add a special exception just for him and others in his position.
It's the rich wot get the pleasure...
Well, you have your conspiracy theory supporting a wealthy donor who liked whores, while I have my theory that wanted to make the law consistent to allow a lone client to hire multiple prostitutes in the same way a lone prostitute can be hired by multiple clients.
He's rich and he engaged in a sexual act that wasn't the missionary position or for procreation! Clearly he has to be punished!
On a serious note, I constantly hear complaints of "it's one rule for them, another for the rest of us". This to me seems rather hypocritical if we're unwilling to grant the rich the protection of the law (i.e. a right to privacy) that the rest of us have.
Good on him, it's good to see people not roll over and hope things go away in order that big business get away with whatever they want to do. Mosely appears to have the money to deal with Murdoch/Google/etc and the balls to stand up and not be blackmailed by their threats of "if you try to stop us, we'll make sure that even more people know about what you did."
If the law says that something shouldn't be hosted as it's an invasion of privacy with no legitimate public interest, it shouldn't be hosted. It's not it shouldn't be hosted if the victim has the ability to sue the hosting companies over it.
How about you read what he's after before commenting?
Google don't host the video (though I don't doubt a few keep trying to post to YouTube). What they do is link to it from Search results, which allows people to find it. He can have those links taken down if he points them out, but what he wants is for Google to auto-detect the links so he doesn't have to keep sending takedowns.
I can understand where he's coming from, takedowns are an uphill battle for something like this. I don't think, though, that he'd actually feel any better if Google complied anyway. The video will still be online (that's unlikely to ever change) and people will still find it and pass it round. If anything, by launching the lawsuits he has, he's renewed interest in it.
The thing about the online world is your mistakes never go away. It sucks, but really the best thing to do is just accept that, as distasteful as it may be.
quote: "Wouldn't be unreasonable that News International should be paying his legal costs either since he won the case against NOTW."
Max Mosely vs. The Internet - legal costs supplied by a newspaper that no longer exists
Yeah, I can see that going well. Just look at how successful Paris was at getting her home video erased from the internet :D
Does this class as flogging a dead horse?
I understand and agree with the invasion of privacy aspect, albeit with some reservations given there seemed at their time to be a link to his daddies political past. If Max likes a whallop and tickle thats his business. If the girls were underage it's different. Just like the Harry 'pool' pictures or the Kate M holiday shots, tabloids know they can ignore rules because the great unwashed will pay more to see the pictures than the fines will be.
The Spanish royalty shooting Elephants was a perfect example of when there is a public interest (of the none pervy kind). Shooting pics from a road half a mile away with an 800mm lense and stacked 2x tc's of someone famous sunbathing is an invasion of privacy.
Very, very true. Much harsher penalties are in order! Including ones for the photographer, not just the publisher. I know it's fun to bash the rich and famous, and what they do in public is fair game. What they do in a hotel room, a hookers basement or on a balcony 1/2 a mile from a road is not fair game, especially if its legal. If the fines were a percentage of turnover it might help.
If he had simply shut his mouth the whole thing would have blown away.
If you think Max is bad, go and check out his father's Wikipedia sheet. Talk about keeping his philandering in the family ... Oswald, the notorious Fascist, during one marriage he had an extended affair with his wife's younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, AND with their stepmother, Grace Curzon.
Unfortunately video cameras hadn't been invented then.
"Oswald, the notorious Fascist, during one marriage he had an extended affair with his wife's younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, AND with their stepmother, Grace Curzon."
And that is a near *perfect* demonstration of the idea that "There is a difference between 'in the public interest' and 'what interests the public'."
IOW
Who gives a s**t?
That's the point and that's what the papers wanted him to do so they could pedal their rags. He didn't want the papers to continue to get away with wholesale invasion of privacy for nothing other than the titillation of the public, so made a big thing about it. Good on him too.
I also don't see why you're still going on about who his father was, anyone who is remotely politically aware knows who his father was and what he did. I don't see any evidence, that's not been made up by NOTW, that says Max has any fascist leanings.
Has El Reg started employing someone who used to work for the News of the Screws? Do the readers need your sub-editors to put in judgemental comments like this because they need to be told what their opinions should be?
These were *consenting adults* engaged in legal, consensual sexual activities which were the business of NOBODY but themselves, unfortunately one participant decided that picking up a big cheque from the gutter press was more important than respecting her client's (and her fellow worker's) right to privacy and thus engaged in completely unethical behaviour which in no way is justified by any phony "public interest" defence.
There was no benefit to the public for her to video the session and sell it to the NotW, the only benefit was to News International who think that splashing people's private business all over the pages of their rag (no matter how illegally it was obtained) is a good way of making money and we've seen from the Leveson Inquiry et al how wrong that was.
Has the law changed in England or is owning a property where sexual services are offered for money illegal? If so why has Mr Moseley never been charged with that since he owned the building? Not that I'm against that sort of thing but the law is the law.
the News of the world made the connection between Max and his Nazi Dad because the basement was done up like a concentration camp and since there was no pictures of hammers and sickles then obviously one might think about the Nazis. Might you, if someone did have Nazi inclinations, one would expect them to be giving out a beating rather than on the receiving end.
"Might you, if someone did have Nazi inclinations, one would expect them to be giving out a beating rather than on the receiving end."
It always amused me that the Murdoch press (having spent *pages* setting up the whole "Nazi" theme) were *so* discrete in mentioning that in fact he's a masochist.
There are *definitely* reasons why someone's sexual interests could be *valid* subjects for new reporting. Obvious ones being *genuine* coercion, underage partners, organized trafficking or the hidden link between people involved in some form of unfair contract awarding.
Mosely's case has *none* of these justifications.
Also if said individual is known for the "holier then thou" shtik. If you are supporting laws declaring similar acts to be "deviant sexual behavior" or some such, that does happen to be in the public interest.
(I'm not familiar with Mr Mosely's politics, so you would have to enlighten me if he falls into this category.)
"Also if said individual is known for the "holier then thou" shtik. If you are supporting laws declaring similar acts to be "deviant sexual behavior" or some such, that does happen to be in the public interest."
Fair point. The old "family values" routine so beloved of certain politicians from the UK to the US and Canada.
Mosely was a senior officer in the organisation that runs F1 car racing. AFAIK his politics would mostly centre around working with his boss to get Tony Blair to delay banning cigarette advertising on the vehicles.
I'm not sure if he's *ever* made any kind of political statement, *except* in relation to UK libel laws, news paper self "regulation" and (I think) cross media ownership, like the way News International (which is not even *based* in the UK) can own both newspapers and stations that can broadcast in to the UK.
Unlike his notorious father I don't think he's that interested.
"Has the law changed in England or is owning a property where sexual services are offered for money illegal? If so why has Mr Moseley never been charged with that since he owned the building? Not that I'm against that sort of thing but the law is the law."
Well:
- It's not a public place
- It was just him
- He wasn't profiting financially
Running a brothel, "to which people resort" is illegal but the language doesn't really suggest that one person hiring multiple prostitutes who come to their home is doing anything illegal.
ITs not going to happen. The more he tries to get rid of all evidence of this video, the more people will reproduce it. Once something has been released onto the net, you are never going to be able to get rid of it...
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore 1993
Whereas, I would be proud to have him as one of my customers because he's standing up for the right of people who may also be my customers to engage in consensual and legal activities *without* having the gutter press sticking their prurient noses in because they can make up an "isn't is shocking?!" story which has *NO* benefit to the public, but only to News International's coffers.
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