Now I realize that even in this mass media age people claim that nothing can happen without people knowing about it. The truth is that public perceptions of famous events is as skewed as ever. One such event is the Alyssa Milano nude pictures controversy. The public perception is a simple chain of events.
1. Alyssa's brother searched for websights about her. He ended up finding nude pictures. After her brother was traumatized by seeing his sister naked her and her mother decided that something had to be done.
2. The Milanos searched for as many sights as they could find containing her nude pictures of her. They sent cease and desist letters to all of the sights. After several sights ignored the warnings they took them to court.
3. The courts ruled against the websights in every case. The money that the Milanos have made was used to set up Cybertrackers, which monitors uses of celebrities images. Conclusion, DO NOT post any nude pics of Alyssa or face her in court.
1. Alyssa finds out about the websights posting nude pictures of her. The story of her brother stumbling across them by accident and her having not known about them before sounds like something that was whipped up for publicity purposes to create sympathy. What sounds better "I do not like seeing links that read Alyssa Millano NUDE all of the time" or "my poor little brother found them by accident and was traumatized by seeing his sister naked".
2. Several cease and desist letters were sent to net porn sights. Most just laughed it off.
3. Several sights were taken to court and the courts ruled against the websights. There is one small detail that was removed from this part. There are two kinds of nude pics out there real and fake. Real ones were taken from the direct-to-video flicks Embrace of the Vampire (1994), Poison Ivy 2: Lilly (1995) and a spread she did in Bikini magazine (SIDE NOTE: According to Alyssa's mom, as taken from the E! True Hollywood story, Alyssa considered those pictures art. You have to admit that Bikini magazine really sounds like an artistic magazine if ever there was one.) The fake ones are what happens when some cyber- geeks have too much time on their hands and edit Alyssa's face onto another person's body, the other person is often involved in some sex act with a stranger, themselves or a farm animal. The only sights that were ever taken to court were the one's who were passing off fake pics as real. Passing off fake pics as real is tantamount to printing a false story about someone in the news paper. Alyssa has no legal basis to take the sights trading in real nudes of her. When she agreed to do those movies she agreed to let her image be used in that way. The only one who could go after the sights would be New Line Cinema, who holds the copyright on both films; technically vid-caping (video capturing) pics from a copyrighted source is piracy. New Line would never do that for a very important reason. Those pics are free advertisements for both videos, after seeing that Alyssa is naked in it many guys will want to go rent or buy it. The lonely guy crowd is about the only market who would be interested in ether movie, as a whole both movies suck. Jennifer Tilly, who was in Embrace of the Vampire, defends being in it with "everybody's got to pay the rent."
4. Alyssa and her mom have used to money they were awarded from the fake pic sights to set up cybertrackers, which monitors uses of celebrity's images on-line. Cybertrackers sends cease and desist letters, which threaten legal action, to anyone who posts nude pics of Alyssa. No one posting real pics has ever been taken to court, since there is no legal claim against them. Presumably anybody posting fakes but not passing them off as real would also be safe. Much like in the case of Jerry Falwell vs Larry Flynt Hustler was not liable for an article that described Falwell having sex with his mother, because the article clearly said this is a parody and not to be taken seriously.
Alyssa and her mom are the one's who have spread this rumor the most. They are no doubt hoping that they can scare people out of posting any nude pics of Alyssa.