Florida Today reports that the proposed bill would prohibit the "knowing use of a computer or other device to transmit or post any photograph or video of an individual which depicts nudity and contains specified information relating to the depicted individual without first obtaining the depicted person’s written consent."

This means that if an ex wanted to share naked pictures of you in Florida, he'd have to have a signed note from you saying he can do so before putting them on the web. If he didn't get that note and posted the pics anyway, he could get up to five years in prison.

“I’m not trying to address the nude picture issue,” Representative Tom Goodsen, who's working to get the bill on the floor, told Florida Today. “I’m trying to address that if you’re doing this to hurt a person, if you’re doing this for malice, that’s where you’re breaking the law."

A law like this could provide much-needed recourse for victims of revenge porn, many of whom have difficulty finding lawyers willing to take on their cases. However, the bill's language may be subject to change as it goes through the legislature, as it could be deemed too overly broad.

New Jersey and Florida aren't the only states where revenge porn is under siege. Several women in Texas have mounted a class-action suit against a Texas-based revenge porn site and its hosting company GoDaddy for publishing their photos without their consent.

“I think 99 percent of victims get told no [by lawyers] so they give up,” Hollie Toups, one of the members of the class action suit, told Betabeat back in January. “I apparently was born with a hardheaded trait that came in handy for once, and I refused to accept the fact that there was nothing that could be done.”

Ms. Toups (Photo: Twitter)

John S. Morgan, the lawyer helping victims of revenge porn site Texxxan.com launch a class action suit against the site and its host GoDaddy.com, announced today that two more women have signed on to the claim. Unlike Hollie Toups, the 32-year-old Beaumont, Texas resident who came forward in order to encourage others to confront their struggles with revenge porn, these two victims are allegedly underage. New allegations of child pornography further muddle the already complex case--the most aggressive legal action taken against revenge porn thus far.

The release says that the women have filed an amended cause of action against Hunter Thomas Taylor, the 24-year-old proprietor of Texxxan.com, as well as his parents, whose Internet connection (and occasionally their credit card) was used to maintain the site. The claim also names Austin Ray Ponthieu, whom Mr. Morgan described as the site administrator.

Mr. Morgan said he has found at least two underage victims whose photos were uploaded to the site. The victims have signed onto the suit along with their parents. Mr. Morgan is working with the FBI to report the instances of underage pornography that he says he's encountered while building the case. "I'm a civil lawyer," he told Betabeat. "We enjoy the opportunity to work with law enforcement because this is such an important issue, but ultimately the FBI makes its own decision on how it handles criminal investigations. My indications are that the FBI is taking this very, very seriously and is going to do a very thorough and excellent job prosecuting people for underage photos."

The case will be pursued under state law instead of federal law, as the victims and proprietors are all located in Texas. Mr. Morgan argues that uploading and hosting photos on the site without subjects' permission is "invasion of privacy, unauthorized use of name or likeness and what we call negligence or gross negligence: that their actions were completely negligent because they didn't think about the ramifications."

Mr. Morgan also said he is going to continue to add defendants to the case. "I'm going to try to start listing the people who have uploaded the photos as defendants and start listing the subscribers once we attain that information," he said.

According to Mr. Morgan, Mr. Taylor lives with his parents in Orange, Texas, and was the anonymous "James Smith" who called in to the Anderson Live two week ago in a segment about revenge porn. Little other information is known about Mr. Taylor.

Ms. Toups, however, said that she knows Mr. Ponthieu, whom Mr. Morgan said was the Texxxan.com web administrator. "Austin used to date a friend of mine so that's how I met him," Ms. Toups told Betabeat. "He's been around me and that makes it a little bit more disturbing." Ms. Toups said she lives about a 15 minute drive from where both Mr. Ponthieu and Mr. Taylor reside in Orange, Texas. "The only thing that separates us is a body of water and a bridge," she added. "I talked to some of the other girls and you just assume it's some creep that lives far away."

Ms. Toups and the other women involved in the Texxxan.com suit have served as a lightning rod for the controversy, encouraging other women to discuss their struggles with revenge porn. Last week, two women in Colorado spoke out against Craig Brittain, the founder of the website Is Anybody Down.

"It's kind of like the beginning of a healing process because for so long of course they've been hiding and kind of controlling our lives from the shadows," Ms. Toups said. "To be able to know who it is, it's kind of like forcing them to be held accountable for their actions. I know people have said before that we made the choice to take the photos and to deal with it. Well, they made this choice, so now they have to deal with the consequences."

Below is the press release and the updated claim. We emailed an address for Texxxan.com and calls to a listing for a home number for Mr. Taylor were unanswered.

Texxxan.com Lawsuit - Press Release and Amended Complaint by Adam Steinbaugh

A very "old" photo of Mr. Brittain.

Here at Betabeat, we've done some extensive reporting on the scourge of "revenge porn" websites, places where scorned exes or angry friends can upload intimate photos of women--and sometimes men--without their consent. Victims of revenge porn have been sexually and violently harassed, lost jobs and friends and even had to change their names because their photos ended up on one of the numerous revenge porn hubs.

Now, many women are bravely fighting back in a class action lawsuit against one site and its hosting provider, GoDaddy. Hackers, lawyers and activists are working diligently to confront a complex legal issue. Still, revenge porn sites continue to operate largely unaffected, despite the fact that more and more victims are speaking out about what happened to them.

“I call it entertainment,” Craig Brittain, the proprietor of Is Anybody Down, told CBS News earlier this week. “We don’t want anyone shamed or hurt, we just want the pictures there for entertainment purposes and business. I would say our business goal is to become big and profitable.”

Mr. Brittain also allegedly runs a service, Takedown Hammer, which charges $250 to remove the photos. He claimed Takedown Hammer is helmed by a New York-based lawyer named David Blade III, but several news outlets (including ours) have attempted to track him down and determined that no such person exists. Recently Mr. Brittain admitted Takedown Hammer is run by one of his friends.

In the post that we wrote about victims coming out against Is Anybody Down, Mr. Brittain himself took to our comments section. He did not defend his actions or seek to shed some light on just why he's decided to make a living ruining other people's lives. Instead, he took issue with the photo we had used of him, which he said was very old.

We find it rich that Mr. Brittain would take issue with the photo, given that he makes money publishing photos of others without their consent, right next to contact information and screencaps of their Facebook profiles. Mr. Brittain has said in interviews that his site helps desensitize people to intimate photos so that having naked pictures on the web won't hinder getting hired. To get so miffed by a clothed picture of yourself that you're compelled to leave a comment about it seems particularly laughable in comparison.

So, we'll swap out the old photo for a new one--if you pay our "friend" $250.

In a letter sent to GoDaddy customers Wednesday, interim CEO Scott Wagner said GoDaddy owed customers "a big apology" for the service outage, which the hosting provider insists "was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables."

Mr. Wagner did take a moment to defend the company before making the big announcement:

Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level of performance we expect from ourselves. Monday, we fell short of these expectations. We have learned from this event and will use it to drive improvement in our services.

As a result of this disruption, your account will be credited for the value of 1-month of service for each of your active/published sites.* This credit will be available to you for the next 7 days. Please click the button below to redeem your credit.

Mashable's Zoe Fox noted that for many GoDaddy customers, the credit doesn't actually amount to much. Ms. Fox writes that for anyone who bought a $12.99 dotcom domain name from GoDaddy, Mr. Wagner's generous offer "adds up to roughly $1."

Ms. Fox isn't giving GoDaddy due credit for its guilt-driven generosity--one free month at that rate actually adds up to $1.08. Which will totally buy you a 12-ounce soda, if it's on sale.

GoDaddy, back up and running (Screengrab)

GoDaddy has issued a statement saying the outage that took down several thousand websites for a good portion of the day on Monday was caused not by any sort of hack or Directed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, but "internal network events that corrupted router data tables." TechCrunch posted GoDaddy Interim CEO Scott Wagner's statement about the outage. Mr. Wagner acknowledged the outage and wrote:

The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a “hack” and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.

@AnonymousOwn3r, the Brazil-based hacker who claimed credit for the outage, responded via Twitter to GoDaddy's denial:

whooa @godaddy is denying that it was hacked by me! they don't wanna show their cybersecurity is badthis way they would lose customers !

— Anonymous Own3r (@AnonymousOwn3r) September 11, 2012

AnonymousOwn3r threatened in a second tweet "to bring down godaddy.com again, so this way they would admit instead of hiding the attack."

We're not popping the popcorn yet, but the hacker does claim to have the power to bring down an entire nation's Internet service, so we'll sit back and watch for falling nations.

Screengrab

A Brazilian hacker with the Twitter handle @AnonymousOwn3r has taken credit for a substantial cyber attack against domain host GoDaddy. Millions of web pages hosted by GoDaddy and even domain names simply registered through the service were affected.

As of 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time Monday, the attack was 5 hours old. The New York Times's "Bits" blog gives some idea of just how much trouble this epic attack has caused:

Go Daddy customers vented their frustration on Twitter and elsewhere. Bob DeLuna, director of public information at the United Hospital Fund, a nonprofit health organization, said four domain names it had registered with Go Daddy had been down for three hours. He said that when he contacted GoDaddy’s customer service line, a representative said that 750 people were waiting in line behind him. She told him that during service outages, the typical wait list was 20 people.

For his part, @AnonymousOwn3r seems to be enjoying the chaos, tweeting multiple links and chatting with angry and admiring fellow tweeters. He appeared to explain his motives in a response to a question from a follower:

@film_girl I'm taking godaddy down bacause well i'd like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now

— Anonymous Own3r (@AnonymousOwn3r) September 10, 2012

AnonymousOwn3r has also claimed responsibility for a Facebook outage in May. In tweets posted at the time he said he'd attacked the social networking site because Facebook was "blocking google crhome," (sic) for which he gave them "a #tangodown."

AnonymousOwn3r appears to have made a habit of posting snippets of contentious IRC chats with other hackers on Pastebin.com.

If the conversations posted on Pastebin are to be believed, AnonymousOwn3r often appears to use the nick "Own3r-anon" in IRC. In this exchange published on May 17, 2012, the hacker wanted to know why he was not part of a hacking group calling itself @AnonATeam.

Addressing at least three others in the chat, AnonymousOwn3r wrote, "you guys can't do nothing without me." Two fellow hackers agreed but after one told him, "Own3r-anon your ego is amazing," another said, "our team is noobs and kids [...] we dont deserve u."

Eventually AnonymousOwn3r wrote, "I have power to down a entire country."

A fourth hacker responded, "Thats the prob Own3r. You do have the power. you are a great member to have on the team. but just cause you have the power doesnt mnean you have to use it."

On June 7th, this tweet appeared on @AnonAteam's Twitter account:

This profile has been hacked by: Own3r!

— AnonAteam (@AnonAteam) June 7, 2012

Meanwhile, GoDaddy has posted a message on its home page acknowledging the outages and stating that service to many sites was restored by 5:45 p.m. In bold it asserts that "At no time was any sensitive customer information, such as credit card data, passwords or names and addresses, compromised." GoDaddy further states it will provide another update "within the next 24 hours."

Domain registrar GoDaddy, previously a supporter of the much-derided SOPA, or Stop Internet Piracy Act, suddenly pulled it support for the bill earlier today, after widespread Internet outcry and calls for a boycott.

In a conversation with Betabeat, brand-new GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman credited "the sum of feedback from various sources," including emails from customers, stories in the technology press, feedback from Internet leaders, and anti-SOPA blog posts, as being the impetus that forced them to take another look at the situation.

"In it's current form, it's not ready," Mr. Adelman said of the bill. Mr. Adelman also cited his short term in the CEO role - he's been there only a week! - for giving him the flexibility to take another look at the bill and GoDaddy's corporate support for it.

But withdrawing its support for the bill doesn't necessarily mean that GoDaddy will put its political muscle towards stopping it, at least right now. "We're going to observe and see what others propose," Mr. Adelman said, noting that GoDaddy was not precluding trying to actively prevent the bill's passage in the future, but, at this time, they were content to let "others" take more of a leadership role around this bill.

So, what was the straw that broke the camel's back? Mr. Adelman insisted that GoDaddy was responding to the outcry in the aggregate, and that there was not one particular person whose feedback was the tipping point. When asked whether support for a boycott from actor-slash-Internet investor Ashton Kutcher had affected the decision, company spokesperson Elizabeth Driscoll remarked "With all due respect to Ashton, we were well underway with creating the news release" by the time he expressed his opinion.

And how effective was that boycott, organized by a user on Reddit to convince people to move their domains from GoDaddy? While Adelman did not know the number of cancelled GoDaddy accounts off the top of his head, he did not that the company "didn't see any statistical change" in the number of accounts.

The full statement from GoDaddy:

Go Daddy No Longer Supports SOPA

Looks to Internet Community & Fellow Tech Leaders to Develop Legislation We All Support

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 23, 2011) - Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

"Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation - but we can clearly do better," Warren Adelman, Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO, said. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. Jones has fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS filtering to ensure the integrity of the Internet, more significant consequences for frivolous claims, and specific provisions to protect free speech.

"As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy," said Adelman.

In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.

"Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.

@aplusk just tweeted out: "I am moving my domains off of @Godaddy due to their support for #SOPA. Paul Graham is also doing the right thing (cc @paulg)"

We all know what a tweet from Ashton can do to promote a brand, but can an Ashton sanction pull it under?

According to the post, self-prodigy claims to have already transferred 51 personal domains and 300 professional ones in his/her capacity as IT director. Go Daddy, the perpetrator of those tacky spokesbabe Superbowl ads, has more than 50 million domain names under management, and is currently largest domain name registrar worldwide.

GoDaddy previously released a statement supporting SOPA before the House started hearings on the act, near-universally loathed by Internet natives. Despite the fact that GoDaddy opens itself up to potential liability under SOPA, the company writes that, "Go Daddy has a long history of supporting federal legislation directed toward combating illegal conduct on the Internet."

As self-prodigy notes, the call for action has already gotten attention beyond just Reddit. Today, GoDaddy posted its statement of SOPA support dated October 28, 2011 in response to customers asking about the company's position. In bold font just above the statement, the company writes, "Online copyright laws won’t prevent a flourishing Internet." Sorry, dudes, bolding it doesn't make it true.

The post also garnered interest from competing domain registrars including Name.com and HostGator, which offered discount codes under the name NODADDY and NOSOPA. I believe this is what they talk about when they talk about the free market.

UPDATE: Note from the field, CheezBurger Nation CEO Ben Huh, tweeted out, "We will move our 1,000 domains off @godaddy unless you drop support of SOPA. We love you guys, but #SOPA-is-cancer to the Free Web."