Teen Sues TV Station For Broadcasting His Genitals

Megalith

Megalith

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“Ars has been unable to locate the offending footage…” Why would you even go looking for it?

A South Carolina teenager has sued a Colorado television station over allegations the station broadcasted a picture of his erect penis taken from a cell phone video uploaded to YouTube. The case, known as Holden v. KOAA, asks for $1 million in damages and accuses the station, its reporter, its parent companies (NBC and Comcast), and other defendants of violating federal child pornography laws, invasion of privacy and negligence, and other allegations.
 
No one at the news studio noticed a boner in the screenshot used for footage?
 
This will get thrown out.

Being uploaded to YouTube...he forfeits any expectation of privacy, hell he probably forfeited any hope of suing on copyright DMCA grounds.
 
Said penis was probably too small... therefore the inability to locate the picture thereof.
It simply got lost!
 
Ocellaris said:
No one at the news studio noticed a boner in the screenshot used for footage?
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Depends, maybe they thought it was a little Vienna sausage or a cocktail wiener? If this kid is going around texting pictures of his junk to a bunch of people, then I have no sympathy for him.
 
If you read the article it says that someone else had taken the video for the purpose of blackmail, and what the TV station aired was a thumbnail image from Youtube of said video. The station must pay, and I expect more outrage would be heard if it were a video of some young teen girl's boobies.
 
This guy has a right to be afforded the same standards as others are held to.

Life is a 2 way street, or should be.

Hope he gets a huge pay out.

The problem with this and his attorneys know this ( I think they are hoping to catch a hail mary pass ) is that with nearly all court cases of this type, you have to prove that someone was trying to cause harm.
 
SixFootDuo said:
This guy has a right to be afforded the same standards as others are held to.

Life is a 2 way street, or should be.

Hope he gets a huge pay out.

The problem with this and his attorneys know this ( I think they are hoping to catch a hail mary pass ) is that with nearly all court cases of this type, you have to prove that someone was trying to cause harm.
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If life is a two-way street, it's lit in shades of gray. Since the original story was at the behest of the boy's family, it's not clear that KOAA was intending to do him any harm. However, the legal standard here is not that stringent. I expect them to settle and for the boy's family to successfully make their money grab. Next time they'll have to be more careful when airing stories on little boy's wieners.
 
aeliusg said:
If life is a two-way street, it's lit in shades of gray. Since the original story was at the behest of the boy's family, it's not clear that KOAA was intending to do him any harm. However, the legal standard here is not that stringent. I expect them to settle and for the boy's family to successfully make their money grab. Next time they'll have to be more careful when airing stories on little boy's wieners.
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The only one that will stick is child porn laws. And that is a fine and not a payout to the kid/family.

Seriously. Once it was on Youtube all bets are off. Comcast/Fox/CBS they all "appropriate" YouTube content every day of the week without the content holder's consent or the consent of those filmed....and don't even offer attribution or compensation. The people who should be sued for invasion of privacy are the twits who took the video.
 
I guess there was nothing to see there, and it moved along.
 
Skripka said:
This will get thrown out.

Being uploaded to YouTube...he forfeits any expectation of privacy, hell he probably forfeited any hope of suing on copyright DMCA grounds.
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The cell phone video had been taken of the teen and put online as a way to blackmail him...
"collected thumbnail image of the YouTube video" which "depicted Plaintiff’s erect penis" and showed his name "directly above."
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welp, either way someone is going to have a hard life showing underage penis on tv.
 
Skripka said:
The only one that will stick is child porn laws. And that is a fine and not a payout to the kid/family.

Seriously. Once it was on Youtube all bets are off. Comcast/Fox/CBS they all "appropriate" YouTube content every day of the week without the content holder's consent or the consent of those filmed....and don't even offer attribution or compensation. The people who should be sued for invasion of privacy are the twits who took the video.
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I wouldn't exactly say that is true. They can get fined for a few different things, child porn is one of them plus if they were not given the ok to release the name they can get sued for that. You can file civil suits for lots of different things. If you go on a show and are supposed to be blurred out, change your voice and not list your name and they do all 3 you can most definitely have a civil case against them. There has even been cases like this before. Some woman was on a show when you go on a nude date, think it is some MTV twist on the bachelor type shows. They accidently forgot to blur out the contestants for one segment and showed her naked when the show aired. She sued for embarrassment, mental and emotional damages and other things.

In this case, a video was taken and yes the person who took it was in the wrong. However the new broadcast was also in the wrong and spread it to more people by airing it along with his name and the picture during prime time. It is bad enough to have your friends know about this, but for everyone within a 100 miles or so? HUGE difference. And as a sad turn of events, now the entire nation can know about it due to the lawsuit. Because like every single other story like this where they say they won't release a name all you need to do is look at the suit they link to and you see the kid's name. That said every other site is perfectly ok with listing his name.

That said this is also part of the reason that people shouldn't run to the news for their 15 minutes of fame for every little thing that happens. They called the news station to come to their house and interview them and talk about this, they told them the store and while they did ask to have their names left out and the news broadcasters should have not shown a picture of a penis on air, they slightly brought this upon themselves. This should have been taken to the police and the person charged with a crime.
 
Oldie said:
Not every picture of a naked minor is pornography. The law allows room for non-prurient images.
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Good luck with that. The idiots they put on your jury won't care and won't be able to render a verdict in a rational manner. They will go into think of the children mode and that will be it. (All the more reason to eliminate juror trials, BTW, since the average juror has the intelligence of a rock and is not qualified to render a verdict on what they should eat for dinner let alone decide someone's fate).
 
damicatz said:
Good luck with that. The idiots they put on your jury won't care and won't be able to render a verdict in a rational manner. They will go into think of the children mode and that will be it. (All the more reason to eliminate juror trials, BTW, since the average juror has the intelligence of a rock and is not qualified to render a verdict on what they should eat for dinner let alone decide someone's fate).
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This isn't going to be tried as a child porn criminal case so that isn't an issue here. This is a $1 million civil case. Much easier of a case to try. Did the new broadcasters not listen to the request to not give the child's name by posting a image of his facebook page with his name and friends on air? Where they wrong to have air an image of his penis on air, especially along with his name? Did what they do cause him to be emotionally hurt and/or become the result of harassment? If so then he wins if not he loses. If he does win, next is deciding is $1 million a valid amount of payment for this or should he get less. That would be about the only part where a jury might not be the best at judging as there is no form that says you should get X amount for certain things. That said $1 million is kind of on the low end compared to what most try to get so...
 
porn is photographed sex, art has some redeeming value, everything else is questionable.

sounds like the kid got screwed over thus porn...
 
Skripka said:
The only one that will stick is child porn laws. And that is a fine and not a payout to the kid/family.

Seriously. Once it was on Youtube all bets are off. Comcast/Fox/CBS they all "appropriate" YouTube content every day of the week without the content holder's consent or the consent of those filmed....and don't even offer attribution or compensation. The people who should be sued for invasion of privacy are the twits who took the video.
Click to expand...


Even then, there is a line between simple depictions of nudity and what constitutes child porn. The story being done at the behest of the parents blurs that line even further.
 
On February 24th 2014, the Defendants prepared, recorded, and aired a news broadcast
that aired at 5:00 p.m., which depicted an image of the erect penis of the Plaintiff, who was
only fourteen (14) years old at the time. The image was aired with Plaintiff’s name directly
above the image. Defendant’s also, as part of the same story aired an image of Plaintiff’s
Facebook page showing his contacts and friends. The news story was aired locally in Pueblo
and southern Colorado as well as on NBC’s Broadcasting airways and online at KOAAs
website.
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From: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2704674/Holden-v-KOAA.txt

I'm rather baffled as to why they would call a news outlet instead of the police. After all it is a blackmail case.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/02/03/nbc-news-station-sued-over-penis-shot.htm
 
aeliusg said:
If you read the article it says that someone else had taken the video for the purpose of blackmail, and what the TV station aired was a thumbnail image from Youtube of said video. The station must pay, and I expect more outrage would be heard if it were a video of some young teen girl's boobies.
Click to expand...

Bingo, if this was a woman / girl apologies would already of been given, bank accounts full and all sorts of new laws in place..

But because it is a guy.. well... see what happens.

Men, we want equality too..
 
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