7

[Editors Note: This article discusses and excerpts material that is sexually
graphic and violent. Please read with care.]

Book Review

HATE CRIMES IN CYBERSPACE. By Danielle Keats Citron.
Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press. 2014. Pp 1, 343.
$29.95.
CARRIE GOLDBERG, ESQ.*

very social disease spawns its cultural cure. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
is the antidote, bred from the explosion of online personal attacks, a
societal ailment seeping into the online and offline fabric of our
communities, targeting women and members of other historically
subjugated groups. This book sirens to the world that digital hate is an
epidemic that costs us all, some far more than others. It cries for a free and
equal Internet, where we can all engage without obstruction in the
revolutionary new opportunities provided through the Internet
communication, innovation, commerce, recreation, and occupation.
As you will see, this is going to be one sugarplum tree of a review.
However, the sugarplums will be vibrating and fizzing, overrun with
creeping maggots and rot. That is because Professor Danielle Keats Citron,
Esq., penned a superb book about foul things, and we cannot talk about the
book without discussing what festers on its branches.
The book is a manifesto, but without fitful hurricanes of passion and
grandiosity. Citron devises a cautiously regulatory Cyber Civil Rights
framework that hones in on online abuse. Three premises anchor Citrons
book: (1) cyber-abuse exacts real harms on individuals; (2) subordinated
groups, particularly women, are the individuals disproportionately
targeted by cyber-abuse; and (3) the ubiquity and severity of cyber-abuse is

* Carrie Goldberg, Esq., litigates online privacy invasions and civil remedies for victims of
sexual abuses at C.A. Goldberg, PLLC located in Brooklyn, New York. C.A. GOLDBERG LAW,
http://www.cagoldberglaw.com/.
E
8 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
creating a cumulative cost to society. If the Internet is the Wild West,
Citron is our Wyatt Earp, unapologetically applying justice to the digital
frontier. Throughout, she is mindful of the daunting challenge of the
libertarian, every-man-for-himself, digital status quo. Rather than the
would-be internet-killer that critics brand her, Citron is aware of and
vigilant toward the liberties pinched by her scheme, such as free and
anonymous speech. Because of her evident personal commitment to
constitutional liberties, condescension toward overregulation, and
cognizance of the inevitable legislative and courtroom challenges new
regulations will produce, she calls for surgical precision in reform,
especially statutory drafting. Citron aspires to remove only the cancerous
elements of the digital eraand, like all good surgeons, has no interest in
removing any more tissue than is strictly required. She argues against
creating new categories of unprotected speech, and instead situates cyber-
abuse, including nonconsensual distribution of sexual and nude images,
within the framework of existing First Amendment doctrine. This permits
the regulation of certain categories of low-value speech and accords less
rigorous constitutional protection to other speech as a historical matter,
including defamation, true threats, crime-facilitating speech, certain cruelty
rising to the level of intentional infliction of emotional distress, and privacy
invasions involving purely private matters.
1

Citron immediately addresses the question of why it is even necessary
to distinguish online abuses (e.g., cyber-harassment
2
and cyber-stalking
3
)
from offline abuses. That is, [w]hy affix the cyber label to the abuse?
4
She
answers the question as follows:
The cyber label adds something important, however. It captures
the different ways the Internet exacerbates the injuries suffered.
The Internet extends the life of destructive posts. Harassing
letters are eventually thrown away, and memories fade in time.
The web, however, can make it impossible to forget about
malicious posts. Search engines index content on the web and
produce it instantaneously. Indexed posts have no built-in
expiration date; neither does the suffering they cause. Search
engines produce results with links to destructive posts created

1
DANIELLE KEATS CITRON, HATE CRIMES IN CYBERSPACE 19091 (2014).
2
Cyber-harassment: [T]he intentional infliction of substantial emotional distress
accomplished by online speech that is persistent enough to amount to a course of conduct
rather than an isolated incident. Id. at 3.
3
Cyber-stalking is a more narrowly defined term than cyber-harassment: [A]n online
course of conduct that either causes a person to fear for his or her safety or would cause a
reasonable person to fear for his or her safety. Id.
4
Id. at 4.
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 9
years earlier. Strangers can put abusive posts to malicious use
five days or five years after they first appear.
5

Like the individually tailored online experience distinguishing Web 3.0
from its predecessors, contemporary cyber-stalking and cyber-harassment
are equally personalized with their emphasis on doxxing,
6
revenge porn,
7

and humiliation for its own sake. This is all evinced by the burgeoning
online industry that commercializes mortificationwebsites that profiteer
from such things as hosting nonconsensual pornography, outing people
(with names and pictures) as sufferers of sexual transmitted diseases, and
publishing mugshots of unconvicted arrestees. Citron coins the term Hate
3.0 to capture the full rubric of harmful online behaviors aimed at
individuals. She stresses how networked technologies exponentially
expand the audience for cyber-harassment.
8
It is limitless and free:
anonymity disinhibits the bad actors and eliminates their concerns about
accountability. Perpetrators of online abuse benefit from a sense of safety
and removal from the impact of the harmsas if bombing remotely via
drone plane. Additionally, the interconnectedness of the Internet makes it
easy to recruit strangers for stalking by proxy and caters to the easy
formation of cyber mobs that gather online and one-up each other in the
competitive abuse of their targets.
There is no question this book needed to be written. In Professor
Citrons own words, words that resonated with many, [i]ts getting
worse.
9
Take, for example, a brief list of events relating to online abuses
and privacy invasions that hit the news in the several weeks since I was
asked to write this review:
New York struck down its cyber-bullying law because the statute was
overbroad;
10


5
Id.
6
Doxxing: Attacking an individual by posting on the Internet personal and private
information (e.g., phone numbers, addresses, social security numbers, date of birth, email
address, social media page, names of relatives, workplaces) about him or her. Id. at 53.
7
Revenge porn is the common term used for the nonconsensual distribution of nude or
sexual images. CITRON, supra note 1, at 17.
8
See id. at 5.
9
Julia Dahl, Audrie Pott, Rehtaeh Parsons Suicides Show Sexual Cyber-Bullying Is Pervasive
and Getting Worse, Expert Says, CBS NEWS CRIMESIDER (April 12, 2013, 4:29 PM),
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/audrie-pott-rehtaeh-parsons-suicides-show-sexual-cyber-
bulling-is-pervasive-and-getting-worse-expert-says/. The power of these words is examined
by Jim Nico, Co-Host of The Social Network Show, in My Second Open Letter to Mark
Zuckerberg, LINKEDIN (July 19, 2014), https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/
20140719130103-115521047-my-second-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg.
10
Daniel Wiessner, New Yorks Top Court Says Cyberbullying Law Violates the First
Amendment, RAW STORY (July 1, 2014, 12:28 PM), http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/01/new-
yorks-top-court-says-cyberbullying-law-violates-the-first-amendment/.
10 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
George Wills claimed that the glorification of rape victimization
delivers a coveted status to victims and induces false accusations,
which received an overwhelming online response;
11

A Seattle computer repairman was arrested for trespass and cyber-
stalking after hacking into a womans computer, threatening to tie her
up and rape her, and distributing twenty-four stolen nude photos of
her;
12

A man in Kansas City tricked a sixteen-year-old into giving him nude
pictures and threatened to distribute them unless she agreed to have
sex with him;
13

Police in Virginia obtained a court-ordered search warrant to take
photos of a teenage boys erect penis as a taste-of-your-own-medicine
remedy after he distributed sexual images of himself;
14

American Apparel founder Dov Charney was rehired by the board,
despite his involvement in the dissemination of nude photos of an ex-
employee;
15

Parents in San Diego announced that their fourteen-year-old sons
suicide was the result of a masturbation video that went viral,
subjecting him to harassment;
16

An online club that traded child pornography was discovered to have
1 million images;
17


11
CNNs News Day, (CNN television broadcast July 2, 2014), available at
http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/07/02/sexual-assault-survivor-lisa-sendrow-explains-
t/199966.
12
Arturo Garcia, Police: Seattle A*shole Threatened to Rape Woman After Smearing Her On
Revenge Porn Site, RAW STORY (July 3, 2014, 8:59 PM), http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/
03/police-seattle-ashole-threatened-to-rape-woman-after-smearing-her-on-revenge-porn-site/.
13
Michelle Pekarsky & Judy Le, Prosecutor: KC Man, 22, Threatened to Post Nude Pics of Girl
if She Didnt Have Sex with Him, FOX 4 NEWS (July 7, 2014, 11:12 AM), http://fox4kc.com/2014/
07/07/prosecutor-kc-man-22-threatened-to-post-nude-pics-of-girl-if-she-didnt-have-sex-with-
him/.
14
See Jenny Kutner, Virginia Police Have a Warrant To Take Photos of a Teenage Boys Erect
Penis, SALON (July 9, 2014, 5:42 PM), http://www.salon.com/2014/07/09/virginia_police_have
_a_warrant_to_take_photos_of_a_teenage_boys_erect_penis/.
15
Paul Donnelley, American Apparel Boss Fired Over Sex Slave Claims Is Rehired as a Strategic
Consultant and Keeps $832,000 Salary, DAILY MAIL (July 11, 2014, 4:14 PM),
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2688603/American-Apparel-boss-fired-sex-slave-
claims-rehired-strategic-consultant-keeps-832-000-salary.html.
16
Tony Perry, Bathroom Video, Bullying Led To Teens Suicide, Parents Say, LA TIMES (July 14,
2014, 5:08PM), http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bathroom-video-bullying-
suicide-20140714-story.html.
17
See Josh Halliday & Hatty Collier, UK Police Arrest 660 Suspected Paedophiles, GUARDIAN
(July 16, 2014, 5:14 PM), http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/16/660-suspected-
paedophiles-arrested-uk?CMP=twt_gu.
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 11
Tumblr refused to remove videos taken surreptitiously of people
going to the bathroom;
18

A Virginia woman whose ex posted a nude image of her on Facebook
had to campaign law enforcement for two warrants in order for the
accused man to face arrest, despite Virginias revenge porn law;
19

Edward Snowden stated that NSA employees routinely obtain nude
pictures under the guise of surveillance and exchange them;
20

Twitterpurge occured, a campaign for men to download all nude
female pictures and videos from their devices and post them to
Twitter. Thousands participated;
21

Post-rape nude images of a sixteen-year-old girl went viral on Twitter
and became an Internet meme, including widespread participation of
people emulating her pose and posting the images. She spoke out;
22

A cop hacks into police computers to stalk his ex, co-workers, and
their wives and girlfriends;
23

CNBC interviewed Twitter CEO and more than 28% of the 8,464
questions submitted concerned harassment and abuse on Twitter. He
did not address the issue or explain why rape threats are not a
violation of Twitters Terms of Service;
24

A Virginia man, posing online as a teen, forced a thirteen-year-old
into sending him porn;
25


18
Lewis Parker, Why Wont Tumblr Remove These Illegal Bathroom Creepshots?, DAILY DOT
(July 16, 2014), http://www.dailydot.com/crime/tumblr-bathroom-creepshot-photos/.
19
See Jon Burkett, Henrico Man May Be First Charged Under New State Revenge Porn Law,
CBS 6 (July 16, 2014, 11:43 PM), http://wtvr.com/2014/07/16/henrico-man-may-be-first-
charged-under-new-state-revenge-porn-law/.
20
George Washington, Snowden: NSA Employees Routinely Pass Around Nude Photos
Obtained Via Mass Surveillance, ZERO HEDGE (July 17, 2014, 3:41 PM),
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-17/snowden-nsa-employees-routinely-pass-around-
nude-photos-obtained-mass-surveillance.
21
Hannah Jane Parkinson, Twitter Trend Based on The Purge Films Exposes Horror of Revenge
Porn, GUARDIAN (July 21, 2014, 11:45 AM), http://www.theguardian.com/technology/
2014/jul/21/twitter-trend-purge-film-anarchy-revenge-porn-laws.
22
Caitlin Dewey, How a 16-Year-Old Rape Victim Becomes an Internet Meme, WASH. POST
(July 10, 2014), http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/07/10/how-a-16-
year-old-rape-victim-becomes-an-internet-meme/.
23
Kirstan Conley & Rich Calder, Ex-Cop Will Go to Prison for Hacking NYPD Over Love
Triangle, N.Y. POST (June 2, 2014, 2:19 PM), http://nypost.com/2014/06/02/ex-cop-will-go-to-
prison-for-hacking-nypd-over-love-triangle/.
24
Amanda Hess, Twitter Wont Stop Harassment on Its Platform, So Its Users Are Stepping In,
SLATE (Aug. 6, 2014, 11:00 AM), http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/06/
twitter_harassment_user_created_apps_block_together_flaminga_and_the_block.html.
25
James Kleimann, Virginia Man, Posing as Teen, Forced 13-Year-Old to Send Him Porn,
Bergen Prosecutor Says, NJ.COM (Aug. 6, 2014, 3:44 PM), http://www.nj.com/bergen/index.ssf/
12 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
New Jersey arrested revenge porn victims and charged them with
child pornography for their own selfies found on others devices.
Victims face steep jail sentences, fines, and registration as a sex
offender;
26

A lawsuit was filed against Facebook for ignoring womans pleas to
remove naked pictures;
27

Jezebel comments were inundated with violent rape pornography. Its
parent company, Gawker Media, was slow to react;
28

Anonymous threatened to dox the daughter of Fergusons police chief
on account of his failings in connection with the case;
29

Zelda Williams was bullied on Twitter immediately after the suicide
of her father, Robin Williams, receiving doctored photos of a dead
body. She disabled her Twitter account as a result of the abuse;
30

Reports from India said that gang-rapists film the sexual assaults and
secure silence from the victims by threatening to distribute the
material online;
31

A female video game critic was the victim of brutal online bullying;
32

A woman who created video game about depression was brutally
attacked by anonymous mobs;
33


2014/08/virginia_man_impersonated_teen_conned_children_into_sending_him_nude_photos
_bergen_prosecutor_says.html.
26
Seth Augenstein, Little Falls Sexting Investigations Charges 6 Teens, Raises Legal Questions,
NJ.COM (Aug. 7, 2014, 11:41 AM), http://www.nj.com/passaic-county/index.ssf/2014/08/little_
falls_sexting_investigation_charges_6_teens_raises_legal_questions.html.
27
Danielle Citron, The Facebook Justice System, SLATE (Aug. 6, 2014, 6:49 AM),
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/08/facebook_revenge_porn_laws
uit_social_network_should_change_abuse_reporting.html.
28
Jezebel Staff, We Have a Rape Gif Problem and Gawker Media Wont Do Anything About It,
JEZEBEL (Aug. 11, 2014, 12:10PM), http://jezebel.com/we-have-a-rape-gif-problem-and-gawker-
media-wont-do-any-1619384265/all.
29
Adam Weinstein, Anonymous Backs Off Its Threat to Dox Missouri Police Chiefs Daughter,
GAWKER (Aug. 12, 2014, 4:46 PM), http://gawker.com/anonymous-backs-off-its-threat-to-dox-
ferguson-police-c-1620336931/+adamweinstein.
30
Mary Anne Franks, The Many Ways Twitter Is Bad at Responding to Abuse, ATLANTIC (Aug.
14, 2014, 4:30 PM), http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/the-many-ways-
twitter-is-bad-at-responding-to-abuse/376100/?single_page=true.
31
Rama Lakshmi, Video Recordings of Gang Rapes on Rise in India in Effort to Shame, Silence
the Victim, WASH. POST (Aug. 14, 2014), http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/video-
recordings-of-gang-rapes-on-rise-in-india-in-effort-to-shame-silence-the-victim/2014/08/13/
41d8be42-3360-4081-9ff0-dee2df54f629_story.html.
32
Evan Narcisse, The Problem with The Casual Cruelty Against Women in Video Games,
KOTAKU (Aug. 27, 2014, 12:30PM), http://kotaku.com/the-problem-with-the-casual-cruelty-
against-women-in-vi-1626659439/+evnarc.
33
David Auerbach, Letter to a Young Male Gamer, SLATE (Aug. 27, 2014, 3:14 PM),
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 13
When 101 celebrities emails and/or cloud accounts were hacked,
nude images went viral, sparking a national outcrymuch of the
Internet blamed the celebrities for creating the pictures in the first
place;
34

A popular YouTube personality posted a video sexually assaulting
women and calls it a prank. Another popular YouTube personality,
Laci Green, successfully advocated for its removal and then received a
torrent of online abuse from him and his fans;
35
and
Actor Emma Watson delivered a speech at the United Nations calling
for men to support women and received an avalanche of violent
sexual assault threats and cyber-bullying.
36

And those are just the newsworthy events. The actual number of people
harassed and stalked online is exponentially higher. For example, in a
quarter of that time just one website alone victimized 280 people by
hosting nonconsensual pornography that users, in many cases scorned
exes, posted without the subjects consent. With the average individuals
page receiving 30,000 views, and there being an average of five
pornographic images per person per page, we can deduce that there were
2.1 billion image viewings just in the past two months. That is the
equivalent of Yankee Stadium at capacity every day for the next 115
yearsand that is just the new inventory of revenge porn victims on that
one site. It does not include the thousands of people whose images have
been posted online for longer or the individuals being shamed on any one
of the at least forty (at last count) other sites dedicatedin full or in part
to hosting nonconsensual pornography. Of course, it also does not account
for the immeasurable volume of nonconsensual pornography distributed
via text, email, and larger social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Instagram,
Snapchat, Facebook). Because online abuse aims to humiliate, frighten,
embarrass, and silencemuch like what we see with victims of sexual
assaultsthe default is for victims to hide and not report, lest they draw
further attention to themselves and undergo societal victim blaming wrath,

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/08/zoe_quinn_harassment_a_letter_to_
a_young_male_gamer.html.
34
Jessica Valenti, Whats Wrong With Checking Out Stolen Nude Photos of Celebrities,
ATLANTIC (Sept. 1, 2014, 1:36 PM), http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/
leaked-photos-nude-celebrities-abuse/379434/.
35
Laci Green, Sam Pepper Exposed, YOUTUBE (Sept. 25, 2014), https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=r9qVaMhnJB8.
36
Owen Jones, Men Need To Stand Together with Emma Watson Against Misogyny, GUARDIAN
(Sept. 24, 2014, 7:20 AM), http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/24/men-
stand-together-emma-watson-misogyny.
14 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
or suffer through indifference among law enforcers who may, as in the case
of journalist Amanda Hess, ask What is Twitter?
37

Terrorized, victims reputations are ruined, their privacy annihilated,
and lives riddled with fear, especially when real-world rape and assault
threats are incorporated into the bombardment, as is commonly the case.
Many people, like Zelda Williams, retreat from online activities to
minimize their points of targetshutting down their Facebook, Instagram,
or Twitter accounts, or discontinuing their blogging or gaming. Victims
who have the money spend thousands of dollars attempting to remove the
offensive material and paying for search engine optimization, or de-
optimization as the case may be, to bury the rest. Victims may be less
professionally viable: in a day and age when the majority of employers use
the Internet to screen job applicants, bad Google results that reveal false
information or naked pictures can be ruinous and curtail a victims
candidacy well before the interview stage.
38
Even if a victim is given the
opportunity to explain unflattering online material, many employers
develop a negative bias immediately, assuming a wake of drama generally
trails the victim, and instead select somebody with a cleaner digital
persona. Additionally, victims who retreat from the Internet also face
consequences, given that social media influence is now measurable and
some employers expect their employees to come with robust online
presences (e.g., numerous followers, likes, updates, shares, or
connections).
39

Hate Crimes in Cyberspace is divided into two main sections: (1)
Understanding Cyber Harassment, and (2) Moving Forward. While the
first part is educational in an anecdotally jarring and eye-opening way,
chronicling the harassment of victims and suppression of their speech in an
indifferent society, it is the second part that gleams with Citrons
crystallized knowledge and highlights her expert concepts for reform. In
this second part, she contextualizes cyber-abuse by comparing it to other
historical inequities, such as domestic violence and workplace sexual
harassment that were likewise initially marginalized and have since been
accepted and tolerated as legitimate issues requiring regulatory correction.
Importantly, Citron refuses to sanitize the verbiage used by the online
attackers. Throughout are stomach-churningly septic quotations, examples
of the hateful digital shrapnel lodged at the victims she details. On page
one were already exposed to the vicious and inexplicable online attack of

37
CITRON, supra note 1, at 8384.
38
Id. at 8 & nn.2527 (referring to a 2009 Microsoft study revealing that nearly 80% of
employers consult search engines during hiring and about 70% of the time applicants are
rejected because of the results they find; additionally, social media firm Reppler found that
90% of employers conduct online searches when hiring).
39
Id. at 9 & n.30.
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 15
Anna Mayer, whose only offense was authoring a pseudonymous blog
about her weight struggles:
Over the next year, the attacks grew more gruesome and
numerous. Sites appeared with names like Anna Mayers Fat
Ass Chronicles and Anna Mayer Keeps HoIng It Up. Posts
warned that guys who might be thinking of nailing her should
know about her untreated herpes. A post said Just be DAMN
SURE you put on TWO rubbers before ass raping Anna Mayers
ST diseased pooper!
40

Citrons decision to quote the attackers infuses the book with the
violence of a Brett Easton Ellis novel, but without the consolation of fiction.
By chapter three, my twenty-six-year-old summer intern was in the ER
with a cardiac event, emphasizing that the faint-hearted best leave this
book on the bedside table. Closed. Had he continued reading, optimism
awaited in the second section with Citrons proscriptive plan for
conforming the Internet to better model the values enforced offline. But
before we move on, just as she hazes her readers with anecdotes of the
awful truth, using her words, I will do the same with mine:
In some cases, online abuse has resulted in just what victims [sic]
dread: rape and real-world stalking. In December 2009 an online
advertisement on Craigslist featured a womans picture next to
her interest in a real aggressive man with no concern for
women. The womans ex-boyfriend Jebidiah Stipe wrote the
post; he had previously impersonated several other women in
online advertisements. But this time, more than 160 people had
responded to the ad, including Ty McDowell. Stipe sent
McDowell text messages with the womans home address and
false claims of her fantasies about humiliation, physical abuse,
and sexual abuse. McDowell attacked the woman as she
returned home, forcing his way inside. He shoved her into the
house and wrestled her to the floor. At knifepoint, he bound and
blindfolded her. Then he raped her and abused her with a knife
sharpener. During the attack, he told her, You want an
aggressive man, bitch, Ill show you aggressive. The woman was
left bound and gagged on her kitchen floor. When caught by the
police, McDowell said that the woman had asked him to rape
her. He was responding to her advertisement, he insisted.
41

And then . . . .
In 2012 a similar case unfolded in Maryland when strange men
began showing up at a womans doorstep, claiming they had
been e-mailing with her and were there to have sex. Her ex-
husband had posted Craigslist ads in her name that expressed a
desire for sexual encounters with titles like Rape Me and My

40
Id. at 12.
41
Id. at 56.
16 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
Daughters. Other ads offered to sell the sexual services of her
then-twelve- and thirteen-year-old daughters and twelve-year-
old son; the childrens photos appeared next to the familys home
address. The womens fake profiles appeared on popular social
networks like Facebook and pornography aggregators like
XTube. More than fifty men came to her home demanding sex.
Some tried to break in. The woman moved out of state, pulling
her children out of their schools. She found a new job, but it paid
less and barely covered her bills. Despite the womans repeated
requests to remove the ads, several remain online. Many people
think you can ignore stuff thats posted online, she said. Virtual
reality [can] [become] reality, and it ruins your life.
42

Both of these stories appear in the first six pages, a decision Citron
admits was purposeful to awaken the reader to the situation. And while
those two examples unequivocally implicate existing criminal laws
frequently not the case with many cyber-abusesthey also illustrate the
weaponry that motivated and creative abusers have at their fingertips
thanks to the aggregating power of the Internet, and the availability and
willingness of strangers to participate in the most horrific crimes when
offered the chance. Both vice and virtue of the Internet is how wide a net it
casts.
Citron shows a deft touch when delving into case studies, chronicling
the egregious harassment of the cases she highlightsthe blogger, the law
student, the victim of revenge pornwith what is best described as a
professional warmth, and without capitulation to soppy sympathies. The
restraint in her writing is all the more impressive given the real life
connection she has developed with some of the people presented in her
work. This writer personally witnessed the radiance of Citrons kindness
when she scrambled to track down a victim (who we both knew) in the
aftermath of a disappointing court date, going so far as to email the
victims mother. Truly, the heft of her devotion toward the issue of online
persecution and those victimized by it could capsize a moderate-sized
kayak.
Again, it is the second section of her book where Citrons cyber-civil-
rights agenda truly spread-eagles. After identifying the chasms left from
the patchwork of current criminal, tort, and civil rights laws, chapter six
and seven together provide the mortar for filling them in. The proposed
reform mostly aims at harassers and website operators.
Her recommendations to deter the harassers:
43

Update stalking and harassment state criminal laws to include
Internet conduct and look at the totality of the abuse;
44
such laws

42
Id. at 6.
43
For a discussion of the following recommendations, see generally CITRON, supra note 1,
at 14266.
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 17
must be drafted carefully to avoid constitutional challenges for over-
breadth under the First Amendment;
Stalking and harassment should be felony-level crimes. This mirrors
the Federal Cyber Stalking Law, is commensurate with the harm
caused to the victims, and will draw in prosecutors who would
otherwise not devote the time or attention to misdemeanors;
Train law enforcers, prosecutors, and judges about digital social
space;
Improve law enforcement forensics when unlawful online conduct is
perpetrated by an anonymous culprit;
Track, compile, and release statistics and data about the number of
cyber-stalking and cyber-harassment criminal complaints and their
outcomes;
Pass state laws outlawing the nonconsensual distribution of nude or
sexually intimate images via carefully worded statutes, meaning those
that would pass constitutional musterCitron supplies a model law
in the book;
Apply state civil rights laws when cyber-harassment is motivated by
gender, race, or religion and interferes with a persons employment,
contracts, education, or expression;
Pass federal reform modeled after Section 1981 that protects women
and sexual minorities who are harassed online;
Amend Title VII to punish not only employers who discriminate, but
also individuals who use cyber-harassment to interfere with a
persons gainful employment;
Amend Title IX to put an onus on educational institutions to
investigate cyber-harassment complaints that allege an interference
with educational opportunities because of membership in a
subordinated group;
Amend Section 245 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 to address threats
to employment, employability, or education based on gender or
sexual orientation (currently, threats must be based on race, religion,
or national origin);
Amend Section 2261(A) of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)
to punish online harassers when they interfere with a persons
employment or employability because of gender or sexual orientation;
Enforce the Department of Justices policy statement urging federal
prosecutors to pursue enhanced sentences for defendants when
motivation for alleged online harassment was due to the race, gender,
or sexual orientation of the target;

44
Id. at 143.
18 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
Apply federal bans on anonymous cyber-mob conspiracies that
interfere with targets free speech; and
Establish a presumption favoring pseudonymous litigation in cases
that involve cyber-harassment and privacy invasion, such as revenge
porn.
Citrons recommendations to shift some responsibility to the site
operators:
Amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA);
45

Amend the Federal Cyber Stalking Law to include provisions for
removing certain private or defamatory content from the Internet.
This would preempt Section 230 immunity;
46
and
Federally prosecute offending sites (e.g., revenge porn sites) under
other federal laws for relevant violations.
47

The book expands on these ideas; nevertheless, the reader cannot avoid
an autonomic eek! upon perceiving the size of the magna carta Citron
has written. Citron has no delusions about the effort needed to effectuate
any one of those bullet points. If the mandate seems ambitious, and
execution details under-described, that is because it is and they are. The
book is not a how-to. It is a what-to. We are at stage one: describing
the problem and developing the cure. The baton will pass to a larger group

45
The CDA went into effect in 1996 with the purpose of creating a hospitable environment
for the infant Internet to thrive and innovate, attract financial investment, and motivate the
exchange of ideas. Worrying that an overabundance of defamation suits against Internet
service providers would chill speech and deter Internet development, Section 230 contains
special provisions immunizing online service providers, intermediaries, search engines, and
websites from liability for user-generated material. The intention was to eliminate the
motivation for service providers to censor users, something the service providers would do
more of if they risked being sued for material that users posted on their sites. The expectation
was that user content would self-regulate. Now, some argue that online service providers no
longer warrant the CDAs nest feathering and that the CDA needs to be amended to better
match the maturation of the Internet and wealth of Internet companies. They also argue self-
regulation doesnt work when it is so easy to be anonymous online and users bear little
consequences for corrosive behavior. See id. at 17072. Courts have roundly immunized site
operators from liability even though they knew or should have known that user-generated
content contained defamation, privacy invasions, intentional infliction of emotional distress,
and civil violations. Id. at 171 (citing Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under
Law, Inc. v Craigslist, Inc., 519 F.3d 666, 670 (7th Cir. 2008)). This is why sites devoted to
revenge porn or defamation continue to exist. Under the law, sites do not feel legally
obligated to remove harassing content, despite pleas from victims. Id. at 17172.
46
See id. at 172.
47
Citron references the conspiracy charges (to hack into computers to steal nude images)
lodged against Hunter Moore, the operator of revenge porn site Is Anyone Up, as well as the
aiding and abetting cyber-stalking charges under Section 2261(A)(2)(A) he arguably could
have faced. CITRON, supra note 1, at 172.
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 19
of soldiers when it comes to making it happen. Actually, strike that. This
book signals that the baton is now passing to those of us on the ground to
effectuate the cure.
Industrious, possibly sleeplessly so, Citron teaches law school,
48
blogs
and publishes continuously,
49
and occupies a myriad of professional posts
in the realm of privacy and the Internet.
50
Pieces about online culture not
written by Citron are unlikely to be sent to publication at The Guardian,
Vice News, Forbes.com, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Politico,
Slate.com, The New York Times, etc., without Citrons erudite two-cents
quoted. Her productivity is astounding: she averages two law review
articles a semester, will deliver fifteen presentations around the country
this year, and is a frequent guest on National Public Radio and television
news segments. On a single day in August, The New York Times and Slate
published op-eds by Citron on the regulation of big data
51
and much-
needed changes social media must make to respond to online abuse,
52

respectively. Suffice it to say, Citron has earned her credibility, and readers
can be confident in this book, which is no doubt the first of many spines
that we can expect to populate the Citron shelf.
Citron, with her frequent collaborator University of Miami Professor
Mary Anne Franks, is to the Internet what Lin Farley was to the 1970s
workplace. In 1975, Farley noticed a problem impacting a tremendous

48
Danielle Citron is the Lois K. Macht Research Professor of Law at University of
Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, teaching Information Privacy Law and Civil
Procedure.
49
Danielle Citron, Parents Facilitating Facebook Use for the Under 13 Set: The False Promise of
Minimum Age Requirements, CONCURRING OPINIONS (Nov. 6, 2011), http://
www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2011/11/parents-facilitating-facebook-use-for-the-
under-13-set-the-false-promise-of-minimum-age-requirements.html. See also Danielle Citron,
CENTER FOR INTERNET AND SOCY, http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/people/danielle-citron
(last visited Sept. 30, 2014); Contributor: Danielle Citron, FORBES, http://www.forbes.com/
sites/daniellecitron/ (last visited Sept. 30, 2014).
50
Danielle Citron is an Adviser at American Law Institutes Restatement Third, an
Affiliated Fellow at Yale Information Society Project and Stanford Law Center on Internet and
Society, a Task Force Member on the Task Force on Internet Hate of Inter-Parliamentary
Coalition Against Anti-Semitism, a Board Member of The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, on the
Advisory Boards of Electronic Privacy Information Center, Without My Consent, Teach
Privacy, The Future of Privacy, and the SSRN Journal on Information Privacy Law, and was a
2013 Privacy for Policymakers Google Fellow.
51
Danielle Keats Citron, Op-Ed, Big Data Should be Regulated by Technological Due Process,
N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 6, 2014, 6:43 PM), http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/08/06/is-
big-data-spreading-inequality/big-data-should-be-regulated-by-technological-due-process.
52
Danielle Keats Citron, The Facebook Justice System, SLATE (Aug. 6, 2014, 6:49 AM),
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/08/facebook_revenge_porn_laws
uit_so cial_network_should_change_abuse_reporting.html.

20 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
segment of our country, named it sexual harassment, and discussed it
publicly. Letters were written, lectures delivered, articles published, and
hearings heldall of which raised awareness. Other activists entered the
movement and proposed new interpretations of Title VII of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act. The problem was too pervasive for tort law to remedy and
called for sweeping federal action. Farley, her colleagues, and allies
repackaged the harms of sexual harassment so that the longstanding
practices of using sex and power to subjugate women in the workplace
began to resonate for people beyond just the victims who experienced it. A
cooperative movement beganvictims came forward, lawyers
experimented with plaintiff lawsuits and reinterpreting old laws, and
advocates kept talking about sexual harassment until finally this toxic,
harassing behavior was reclassified as unlawful. In Meritor Savings Bank v.
Vinson, the Supreme Court officially recognized that unwelcome sexual
advances in the workplace which create an offensive or hostile work
environment amount to a Title VII violation.
53
With Citron and company at
the helm, cyber-harassment is following that trajectory, though the pace of
cyber-regulatory reform must match that of cyber-innovation, which may
account for Citrons production output.
Detractors, at this point mightier in clamor than number, claim Citron
is the Internet school-marm, wagging a prudish finger at those who
threaten polite online society, slapping the knuckles of free speech. They
claim her agenda is to sanitize the Internet with hearts and rainbows, and
convert it into a warm-and-fuzzy factory. They dismiss the harms caused
by cyber-bullying, revenge porn, and cyber-stalking as nothing more than
hurt feelings. Her ideas about online anonymity are among the most
controversial and misunderstood. Relying on basic social psychology, she
posits that most online crimes and tortsespecially cyber-harassment,
online defamation, cyber-stalking, and the distribution of private images
and informationare committed by persons enjoying the cloak of
anonymity, and that if the worst offenders were uncloaked of their
pseudonyms much of the unlawful behavior would dry up. She
brainstorms creative ideas to curb the anonymity problem, calling for
intervention from the online platforms where the conduct occurs. While
the intermediaries (i.e., the websites where anonymous articles and
comments are posted) are immune from liability pursuant to Section 230 of
the Communications Decency Act for user-generated content, she argues
they nevertheless should share the burden of reducing and mitigating the
harms. It is when online comments devolve into cyber-harassment and
cyber-stalking that websites must become more active gatekeepers,
intervening to revoke the harasser or stalkers anonymity and monitoring
the abusive speech that violates the intermediarys own guidelines as well

53
477 U.S. 57, 73 (1986).
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 21
as the law. She is not arguing for intermediaries to censor user material,
but for them to share some liability if they are on notice that unlawful
material is published on their site and yet they do nothing about it.
Her critics, usually taking her ideas piecemeal, claim that any
restrictions on anonymity are another way this pearl-clutcher is breaking
the Internet. However, her solutions on this front are not as radical as her
grandstanding opponents characterizations. In chapter nine, she
wholeheartedly rejects real-name requirements:
Eliminating anonymity is too costly to self-expression and its
benefits are illusory. If online platforms require users to use their
real names, they run the risk of chilling conversations essential to
a democratic citizenry. Without anonymity, people with
unpopular views would not express themselves in online
spaces. . . . Private platforms should retain online anonymity as
the default rule.
54

She notes the value of anonymous spaces where support groups for
drugs, alcohol, and diseases can assemble and where gay and lesbian teens
can help one another during the coming-out process. She suggests some
solutions to hold people accountable for their actions: blogs and discussion
boards giving higher preference to real-name comments, having sites
demand the disclosure of verifiable real names after a user breaches the
user terms as a condition to continue using the site, and having sites
incorporate new design strategies to promote human awareness.
Citron and Franks are ushering in the next iteration of feminism, a
feminism that advances an individuals right to unique expression of his or
her sexuality. This is Feminism 3.0. It includes the right to sexual identity,
sexual privacy, and an internet free from abuse that targets and
discriminates against persons based on gender or sexuality. There are no
others more active, indefatigable, effective, or risk-taking than this duo
when it comes to improving the modern world for women. Infused with
some of their joint efforts, especially on revenge porn legislative reform,
Citrons book is Exhibit A. The world is rightfully taking notice of their
leading role.
Unlike the MacKinnons of days of yore, Citron and Franks approach
to Internet gender equality, using revenge porn as the obvious example,
recognizes the entitlement to sexual expression. For some, the answer to
the revenge porn problem is to discourage people from taking nude and
sexual photos of themselves. Franks and Citron do not endorse this
solution because it blames the victim for taking the picture and attacks a
type of free speech worth protecting. The rest of us can talk about the need
to stop blaming victims of these privacy invasions for taking the pictures in
the first place, but the revenge porn criminal legislation promoted by

54
CITRON, supra note 1, at 2728.
22 Ne w Engl and Law Revi e w On Remand v. 49 | 7
Citron and Franks through the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative actually
codifies this attitude. The idea is that people should have the right to share
intimate images of themselves privately with their partners, and that doing
so is a form of communication worth protecting. Emails, texts, and photos
exchanged between partners are a form of free speech, after all. The
attitude that all electronic communications are fair game for public
distribution results in chilling a tremendous segment of free speech.
While Hate Crimes in Cyberspace addresses the notion that [i]ts getting
worse, it also stands as an optimistic reply to that dismal truth. Or, rather,
it reveals that perhaps Citrons original three words are just the first part of
a conjunctive sentence: [i]ts getting worse, but heres how it can get
better. In the weeks those awful privacy invasions occurred online,
55

signifiers of change were occurring concurrently, some of which can be
attributed to Citrons own work, especially in revenge porn reform:
Pennsylvania passed a revenge porn law;
56

Virginia used its revenge porn law for the first time after images of a
woman were posted on Instagram and Twitter;
57

Delaware became the fourteenth state to criminalize revenge porn and
the first to include enhanced sentences for doxxing and running a
website;
58

California legislators voted to expand its revenge porn laws to apply
when selfies are distributed without the subject/creators consent;
59

and
Mainstream media attended to the hacking of celebrity nude photos,
looking critically at the nonconsensual distribution of nude and
sexual images, and the FBI announced that it would investigate the
crime.
Anyone with an Internet connection should read this book
particularly legislators, judges, law enforcers, teens, parents, and
educators. For one, they will benefit from the consolidated lexicon
incidental to it (e.g., cyber-cesspools, trolling, lulz, doxxing, information

55
See supra notes 1036 and accompanying text.
56
Tara Murtha, Pennsylvanias Revenge Porn Bill Heads to Governors Desk, RH REALITY
CHECK (July 3, 2014, 5:13 PM), http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/07/03/pennsylvanias-
revenge-porn-bill-heads-governors-desk/.
57
Chelsea Rarrick, Chesterfield Woman Gets Revenge Porn Charges for Posting Pics of Woman,
CBS 6 (Aug. 5, 2014, 11:54 PM), http://wtvr.com/2014/08/05/chesterfield-woman-charged-after-
posting-inappropriate-photos-of-other-woman/.
58
See The Associated Press, New Delaware Law Criminalizes Revenge Porn, NEWSWORKS
(Aug. 12, 2014), http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/delaware/item/71553-new-delaware-
law-criminalizes-revenge-porn.
59
S. 1255, 2014 S., Reg. Sess. (Ca. 2014), available at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/
billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB1255.
2014 Review of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace 23
cascade, smart mobs, Google-bomb, transient anonymity, hecklers veto,
and digital citizenship). More importantly, those most instrumental in
creating a safe digital climatepoliticians, judges, and law enforcersare
those whose jobs least rely on the Internet. This book, the equivalent of
cyber-Lasik, focuses the blur.