Adam Steinbaugh's

And a “rapeutationist.”

In other news, Carreon cries “censorship!” after Photobucket deleted his movie, and requests a refund.  Photobucket deleted Carreon’s account, citing complaints of “over 100″ complaints by users and citing its terms of service:

(a) [material Photobucket] deems unlawful, obscene, harmful, threatening, defamatory, or hateful; (b) invades the privacy of any third party; (c) contains nudity, illustrated nudity, pornography, illustrated pornography, child erotica, or child pornography; or (d) photobucket deems otherwise objectionable.

Carreon responds, in part — prepare for /facepalm:

the fact that you received complaints doesn’t mean that the tos were violated. there is nothing “harassing” about the video, and “artists” don’t have a special privilege to censor speech. i used photobucket precisely because i believed you would honor your tos, and instead, you are breaching them.

[...]

i’m well aware of what the first amendment means, but there is nothing in your tos that says a video may not refer to anyone by name. everyone has a name, that name is public, and their privacy is not invaded by using a name that everyone knows already. no personal information was posted. so you are just inventing excuses to justify a breach of the tos.

While I’m not very adept at identifying whether something is classical irony or not, I find it amusing that Carreon cries censorship when Photobucket deletes his video, but had previously asked Indiegogo to stop the Oatmeal fundraiser on largely the same grounds: that it violated their terms of service because it was (as later highlighted in his First Amended Complaint – hat-tip, Popehat, and emphasis Carreon’s):

You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal; (ii) may create a risk of any other loss or damage to any person or property; (iii) may constitute or contribute to a crime or tort; (iv) contains any information or content that we deem to be unlawful, harmful, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, harassing, humiliating to other people (publicly or otherwise), libelous, threatening, or otherwise objectionable; ….

Additionally, Carreon has offered to provide evidence to counter my skepticism that his site has suffered a Denial of Service attack.  If he’s right about that, then I’ll gladly concede the point.  [Update: Carreon proffers evidence of a DOS attack -- my take in the update here.]

Despite the irony of all this, Carreon is right. Photobucket can decide whether it wants to be associated with the video, of course, and has every right to remove it (at least under the First Amendment — contract rights are another story).  People also have the right to complain to Photobucket — that’s their right.  But there’s nothing harassing or invasive of a third party’s interest in the video.  Photobucket’s justifications for deleting it fall flat.

We might disagree vehemently with what Carreon’s saying.  We might find his “rapeutation” site jaw-droppingly offensive in its flippant comparison of criticism to sexual assault. That doesn’t justify trying to shut him up through means extending beyond criticism.  Criticism, after all, should be expected when you launch a site based on a rape pun, but if someone is DOS-ing his sites, that’s not only wrong, it’s criminal.  And a lot of Carreon’s critics — myself included — would join him in condemning it.

But he’s wrong about my being good-looking.