The rapper 50 Cent, who as recently as three days ago was deemed “a Renaissance man”in an adoring New York Times profile, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, the rapper (real name: Curtis James Jackson III) filed in Hartford, Connecticut, reporting assets and debts “each in the range of $10 million to $50 million.” In a press release, 50 Cent’s lawyer explained the reasoning behind the filing: giving 50 Cent the space “”to reorganize his financial affairs, as he addresses various professional liabilities and takes steps to position the future of his various business interests. Mr. Jackson’s business interests will continue unaffected in the ordinary course during the pendency of the chapter 11 case.”
But what’s really notable about the filing — aside from the obvious noteworthy nature of how someone so rich, as in, has-a-net-worth-of-$155-million rich, and successful could go broke — is what happened two days before 50 Cent declared bankruptcy: he was ordered, by a jury, to pay $5 million to Lastonia Leviston over the release of a 2009 sex tape. Leviston claimed that the rapper obtained the tape, which Leviston made with her boyfriend, and posted it online without her permission.
As Rolling Stone reports, “The invasion of privacy lawsuit stemmed from a 13-minute clip that circulated online in 2009, featuring 50 Cent — playing a narrator named Pimpin’ Curly — making explicit remarks about Leviston and the rapper’s rival Rick Ross, who has a daughter with Leviston.”
Leviston’s then-boyfriend gave 50 Cent the video. According to 50 Cent’s lawyers, the rapper did not post the video himself but heard from the boyfriend that Leviston wouldn’t have a problem with the video being made public. But Leviston’s testimony reportedly tells just the opposite story: “This was something done to me. I didn’t have a choice. I would never, ever do this to myself.”
There was a time not too long ago when we would have only called the sex tape just that: a sex tape. When the electrician Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee fired from their Malibu mansion renovation managed to extract and saw open a 500-pound safe in the couple’s garage and found the now-famous Anderson-Lee sex tape inside, the most Anderson and Lee were able to get back from any of the pornographers who distributed the stolen footage was $1.48 million. The widespread assumption was that the stars had leaked it on purpose; there was not room, in the lexicon of 1995, for calling out the response to the tape as victim-blaming, slut-shaming cruelty. There was only the sense that, even if Lee and Anderson weren’t asking for it, they were probably enjoying it.
But now, our collective response to the humiliations not just of everyday citizens but of celebrities is one of empathy and outrage. Now a sex tape distributed without the consent of every person in it is not a sex tape. It’s revenge porn.
Take the widespread horror at the 2014 celebrity photo hack, and the reaction of its most famous victim, Jennifer Lawrence, who told Vanity Fair that “it is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting. The law needs to be changed, and we need to change.” In 2012, Christopher Chaney, the hacker who broke into bunch of female celebrities’ email accounts — including Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera — and stole and posted nude photos and personal data, was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.
On the non-celebrity front, more than 20 states have revenge porn laws on the books. Kevin Bollaert, one of the most infamous revenge porn site operators in the country, was found guilty of 27 counts of identity theft and extortion for his sites ugotposted.com and changemyreputation.com, the former where users could post naked photos of women without their consent, and the latter where the former’s victims were made to pay at least $300 to have their photos removed.
Bollaert’s was the first case against a revenge porn site operator; hot on its heels was the trial of Hunter Moore, the so-called “Revenge Porn King,” founder of IsAnyoneUp.com, where he posted stolen photos of naked women. Moore was indicted last year on 15 counts, including cospiracy and aggravated identity theft, and pled guilty to felony hacking charges.
Both Google and Reddit are making a well-publicized effort to crack down on revenge porn when it permeates their sites and search results.
As for 50 Cent, deliberation will continue this week as the jury determines whether or not to call for more punitive damages. Declaring bankruptcy is not a Get Out Of Paying The Award In The Lawsuit Free Card, either, so the broke multimillionaire will likely still have to come up with the $5 million for Leviston. The rapper has a new studio album, Street King Immortal, reportedly due out in September.