The Hacked Scarlett Johansson Photos Are Being Posted Around L.A. By Artist
September 23, 2011 by Hollywoodite
It would appear the menacing letters sent by Scarlett Johansson’s lawyer, Marty Singer, to the people who hacked and distributed photos of the actress are doing nothing to curb their distribution. There are still many, many websites the lawyer seems to have missed with the same photos up.
Lawyers do a slightly lethargic, cursory sweep of bigger sites when something leaks; forgetting the smaller ones or the ones they know they can’t threaten with a legal letter because they’ve been ignored in the past (in practice, it’s implausible to really sue every website who leaves the photos up, so they puff hot air and get a fraction of webmasters to take the leaks down). And a cease and desist sent to an artist has done nothing to stop an L.A. artist from making and plastering up posters either.
Despite her best legal efforts to the contrary, Scarlett Johansson’s leaked nude pics continue to blight our planet. Our favorite pancake painter’s already incorporated one into his work. Now a guy is posting them around Los Angeles as an “art project.”
LA-based street artist XVALA is pasting up Scarlett Johansson’s nude pics around the city, according to E!. On the internet, the pictures have been a legal hot potato, with Johansson’s lawyer, notorious attack-dog-to-the-stars Marty Singer, sending out scary legal threats to anyone who posts the pictures. But this is the streets, man, where no law rules, except net-savvy self-promotion and, apparently, decency laws? (XVALA is putting “strategically placed stickers” on the pictures. So square.)
“We’re prepared for it,” XVALA’s rep told E!. “I’ve received a cease and desist letter, but they’re never acted on when it’s claimed as an art piece. There are a lot of hacked photos out there.”
So, what would happen if a blog posted a picture of the Scarlett Johansson nude pic after it had been slapped up outside a parking garage by XVALA and thus magically transformed into art? An important legal question that will hopefully be decided by the Supreme Court next year because pretty soon all art is just going to be repurposed hacked celebrity nude pics. It’s of the zeitgeist. – via Gawker.
They’re probably puffing hot air with the artist too. It’s fairly unusual for threats to go beyond too-long emails and hard copy letters full of legalese circular logic for pulling the material. Sounds like a publicity stunt by the artist and there appear to be no photos of the posters… yet.
PHOTO CREDIT – FLYNET PICTURES
