Kevin Barrett 
Chrissy Chambers, the YouTube celebrity who sued her ex-boyfriend after he uploaded private videos of her without her consent, was victorious in court and won a “substantial” amount of money.
Per the terms of the settlement, the man who uploaded the so-called “revenge pornography” to a adult website can’t be named.
Chambers, 26, is one of the most popular creators of lesbian content on YouTube—as is her current partner Bria Kam, to whom Chambers recently got engaged. Roughly one million people subscribe to them on YouTube, and the videos produced by the pair have been watched hundreds of millions of times.
Chambers’ case against her ex-boyfriend is groundbreaking in the sense that it is the first civil case of its kind in England. An American, Chambers sued her ex for harassment as well as misuse of private information. She only did so after learning that law enforcement would not charge him with any crimes for what he did.
Chambers was only 18 when she had a relationship with a British man’ it lasted only 9 months. He filmed several videos of the pair having sex. Two years after they broke up, the unnamed ex uploaded the videos to the internet. Unsurprisingly, those videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
While it is illegal in England to post sexual images without consent—and it has been since 2015—the videos in question were posted in 2011, so the law didn’t apply to Chambers’ case.
Chambers has described her victory in court as “crucial” in the fight against revenge pornography, stating that she and her legal team have set a precedent. She said that she made the point that you can’t post revenge port with “impunity.” People who do so, she said, will be held accountable for their actions.
She also urged anyone living in fear of having revenge video used against them to come forward, as there has never been a better time to do so.
Chambers’ lawyer Georgina Calvert-Lee reiterated that victims of revenge video shouldn’t live in fear, stating that the law can stop it as well as the industry that thrives on it. Victims, she said, can take back control of their identity and image.
Calvert-Lee added that people who post revenge video count on the fact their victims feel humiliated and powerless.
So things worked out For Chambers at the end. It was a long struggle, though. The legal battle cost her 4 years of her life. She did win the copyright to the videos, however, which means she can go after the websites that will likely keep hosting them indefinitely. If they do continue the videos, we hope she does pursue legal action.
Let’s be honest here: if you’re over the age of 20 or so, you probably don’t want to be judged based on the decisions you made when you were 18. There’s no reason Chambers should be forced to endure what happened with her ex-boyfriend before she came out as gay.
That said, this story can and should serve as a good reminder to all that you should be very careful about who is taking pictures of you and filming you. I don’t care if you’re having sex or just having drinks at the pub with your best mates, you should be wary—people have cameras on their phones, and they can easily photograph and film you. If those photos and/or videos get uploaded to the internet, they will not go away. They’ll probably live on long after you’re rotting in the ground.
I recently wrote about the so-called “Tide pod Challenge”. That I even have to report on the fact teenagers are eating detergent makes me very sad for the future of humanity. More to the point, however, I really ended up wondering if the young people eating bleach on camera as a dare thought that the videos would go away one day when – for example – they happened to be applying for law school.
The obvious joke: if they’re eating detergent on camera, they’re probably not going to law school.
The point is that you have to be really careful about what you do and what you post online. It seems like an obvious point, but it is nonetheless one that needs to be made. In Chambers’ case, though, she apparently didn’t intend for the videos in question to be made, and she certainly didn’t consent to their being posted on adult sites.
We wish Chambers and her partner only the best going forward.
H/T – Source
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