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Tumblr releases info of users who shared revenge porn

Tumblr has released account information for close to 300 anonymous users to a revenge porn victim in what online privacy advocates say is a major violation of the First Amendment.

The 27-year-old New York victim, who first learned that an unauthorized video of her having sex with a boyfriend when she was just 17 had been posted on Tumblr ​​last winter, plans to sue the users for disseminating child pornography.

“The ultimate goal is to expose these people,” said attorney Daniel Szalkiewicz, who represents the Bronx victim.

“There is no First Amendment protection for child porn,” Szalkiewicz said.

On Monday​,​ Tumblr complied with a June 7 order issued by a Manhattan state court judge to release the email addresses and account names of 281 Tumblr users.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group with 35,000 members, had tried to delay the release by 14 days.

“Loss of anonymity irreparably harms speakers and discourages other speakers from exercising their own anonymous speech rights,” EFF attorney Frederic B. Jennings wrote in a July 6 letter to Justice David Cohen.

“The First Amendment requires that courts afford anonymous speakers adequate time to learn that they may be unmasked so they have a meaningful opportunity to challenge those determinations,” Jennings wrote.

The judge declined to delay his order. Tumblr warned users on June 28 that it would release their private information by July 10.

Lawyer Ryan Long, who’s been contacted by ​10 Tumblr users identified in the case, said some of the clients are public servants who’d have difficulty paying “a few thousand dollars” to avoid being sued.

Long criticized the judge for ordering the release of the account details without first establishing the facts of the case.

“I don’t now how young she looked. I don’t know if she posted the video,” Long said.

“I’m concerned about people coming forward and saying, ‘I’m going to smear your client unless you give us money,’” he said.
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Szalkiewicz, the victim’s attorney, said he has already been in touch with attorneys for a handful of the users who want to keep their identities private. The two sides have started settlement discussions, but Szalkiewicz declined to discuss the details, including dollar amounts.

“I will tell you that the statutory penalty under the law is $100,000 an image and generally you get $100,000 in punitive damages after that,” Szalkiewicz said.

His client has told The Post that she was “devastated” when she learned that the private X-rated video had been shared 1,200 times after it was posted in December 2016.

She’d received obscene messages via Facebook with men asking her, “Did you like the way his c–k felt? Sure looks like you did.”

Tumblr removed the images months later and only after receiving a query from a Post reporter.

The disclosure means people who share revenge porn — or the release of private, sexually explicit images or videos by ex-lovers and others — “can’t hide behind a computer anymore,” she said.

A Tumblr spokeswoman said the company’s “policy for handling requests for user data, whether compelled by a court or other legal process, make clear that we always work to protect the privacy of our users.”

“That said,” she added, “we consistently need to weigh the right to anonymous speech against the safety and security of our users, and the facts alleged in this case suggest a disregard and violation of Tumblr’s community guidelines.”