Anyone can search for just about everything on the web. From text information, to images and videos. With this fact, material is abundance, and improper usage can affect others.
This happened to Karen Hepp, a Philadelphia news co-anchor for Fox 29's "Good Day Philadelphia".
She filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, accusing several online services, after a convenience store photo of her started appearing in dating and erectile dysfunction ads.
Hepp’s lawsuit alleged that a creepshot of her showed up in a Facebook ad promising meetups with ‘single women,’ an ad for erectile dysfunction on XNXX, a Reddit forum for sexualized pictures of older women [r/OBSF], and the ‘MILF’ tag on Imgur.
She also alleged 10 other operators of unnamed websites, that included GIPHY, where her picture was modified, saying that: "A video appears in the background of a man—who is hiding behind a glass commercial freezer door and masturbating—to what would appear, from his perspective, to be the backside of Plaintiff."
She said that the ads containing her picture had violated her rights of publicity, as well as injured her reputation.
The image in question, according to Hepp's complaint, was surreptitiously taken by a convenience store security camera in New York City, around 2017.
At that time, she was wearing a low-cut shirt, not enough to be defined as revenge porn by the laws in Pennsylvania.
Hepp claims to not remember the exact name and location of the business or how the picture was disseminated.
She became aware of the use of her image without permission when her Fox 29 co-workers alerted her.
Hepp that is a native of the Philadelphia area and has worked at Fox 29 for nearly a decade, said that the distribution of the picture has her suffered irreparable harm.
Hepp v. Facebook et al by Adi Robertson on Scribd
Hepp’s legal team added in the documents that she "maintains an exclusive entitlement to control the commercial value of her name and/or likeness and to prevent others from exploiting it without permission" and "would never have permitted any of the Defendants to use her image to promote prurient and base interests."
Hepp’s claims were filed under Pennsylvania’s “right of publicity” statute.
"Plaintiff’s image is instantly identifiable and automatically associated with her professional persona," the complaint said. "Defendants’ sexualization of Plaintiff’s image and use for prurient and illicit purposes is abhorrent and disgusting."
And for that, she demanded $10 million and the immediate removal of her picture from those websites.
But unfortunately for Hepp, the controversial Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act states that websites are not responsible for content posted by their users.
In other words, websites have significant liability protection from user-generated content, including ads generated by third-parties.