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Revenge Porn King Owes $250K for Defamation

LAS VEGAS (CN) - The founder of a revenge porn website owes $250,000 for falsely accusing a BullyVille.com CEO of pedophilia and owning child pornography, a judge ruled.

Hunter Moore founded isanyoneup.com to let users anonymously submit nude photographs to its database. The photographs were allegedly posted by spurned lovers, who would also provide material from the online profiles of those pictured.

Bullyville.com took responsibility for shutting down the so-called "revenge porn" website in April 2012.

Four months later, Bullyville CEO James McGibney filed suit claiming that he had been maligned on Moore's Twitter feed.

"Specifically, without basis or explanation, Moore accused McGibney of a) possessing child pornography, b) failing to report such content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and FBI, c) sexually abusing underprivileged children, and d) being a pedophile," according to the complaint. "Simultaneously, Moore publicly threatened to rape McGibney's wife."

Though additional Twitter posts show that Moore acknowledged having been properly served with the complaint, he declined to defend the case and the Clark County Court District Court closed the year by entering default judgment against him.

Relying on the testimony of a pair of communications experts, Judge James Bixler ordered Moore to pay McGibney $250,000 in damages plus more than $11,500 in attorneys' fees, as well as costs and interest.

"McGibney clearly and convincingly proved that Moore's statements were false, injurious, and defamatory," according to the Friday judgment. "Although it is difficult to pinpoint the precise amount of damages plaintiff suffered," testimony supported the $250,000 judgment.

The complaint describes the "simple" business model of Is Anyone Up, or IAU, as posting "nude photos of people, without their consent, and without regard to their age or privacy rights."

The website "quickly became a controversial repository for salacious images," McGibney added. "Spurned ex-lovers who had compromising photos of their former partners, and hackers who unlawfully accessed strangers' e-mail and cellular phone accounts to obtain compromising images, became a significant source of the IAU's content."

McGibney said he bought the site's domain name "to put an end to Moore's unlawful and unethical conduct." Isanyoneup.com now redirects visitors to BullyVille, one of McGibney's Internet properties.

Shortly after McGibney sued Moore, Bullville's owner, ViaView, claimed in court that Blue Mist Media had tried to capitalize on Moore's work by registering domain names similar to that of isanyoneup.com. The knockoff sites redirect to a pornographic website called yougotposted.com.

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