On Thursday, following a two-day trial, Hillsboro resident Benjamin Barber was sentenced to six months behind bars and five years of probation for posting sex videos featuring himself and the victim, who he had been in a relationship with, onto several porn websites.
Barber pleaded not guilty, asserting that the videos he posted were all copyrighted, and that he had the right to upload them wherever he wanted.
"Is it creepy to post commercial pornography? Is every porn star a creep?" he questioned in an interview with KOIN5. "There was a lot of evidence that was not included in the testimony, specifically like the fact that we were both advertising to produce porn commercially."
Barber claimed that his former lover had attempted to blackmail him with the same videos.
Surprisingly, the initiative met protest among civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). According to the ACLU, one should not need permission to, for instance, "post images of horrific torture from Abu Ghraib or the ‘Napalm Girl' photograph that contributed mightily to changing American attitudes about the Vietnam War."
