Was it prudent of Jennifer Lawrence to take pictures of herself nude in the first place? Y/N?

[briankoontz]

No, these releases have violated the privacy of people who's only crime was trying to have a private life, this is not comparable to the Snowden leaks because he was exposing crimes and you're justifying sexual abuse.

I agree that the Snowden leaks are many orders of magnitude more valuable, but they are similar in general effect (hurting the powers that be and benefiting the people).

It's creepy and makes no sense that you call this sexual abuse. So Paris Hilton was sexually abusing herself by releasing her sex tape? What if someone else had released Paris Hilton's sex tape... that makes it sexual abuse?

Our disagreement is partly based on differing ideas of the meaning of a naked body. All a naked body is is a body without clothes or other covering - it's not sexual in particular. Would you be as upset if personal photos of them FULLY CLOTHED were released instead? - it's fair to say that at least you wouldn't claim "sexual abuse" as a factor - but this is just your own puritanical bias rather than something rational. Think about one's sexual desire for one's wife or girlfriend - one's desire for her when she has clothes on is the same as one's desire when she's naked, because it's HER one desires, not a naked version of her. If that were not the case, there would be no reason for her to take her clothes off in the first place.

The best way to show a non-glamoured human is to show them naked, because clothes themselves are part of glamour, and the market value (value to the glamour industry and otherwise) of these women is due in substantial part to their bodies. So it's particularly valuable to show them naked.

more women have their privacy violated and their sex lives dragged kicking and screaming into the public eye against their will

Noone is having sex in these photos. Even if they were, the "entertainment" industry already tells us what the sex lives are of these celebrities, so this would not be new information. Your anger should be against TMZ and the like instead - they are actually doing the things that you decry.

You just don't understand how wanting to oggle naked or semi-naked women works do you?

You're the one who thinks that naked women = sexual, you choose to believe that. I guess you believe that clothes magically transform them from sexual beings into non-sexual beings.

There are quite a few reasons people want to see naked celebrities, too many to go into in this post. It's not nearly as simple and perverse as you're implying.

I agree in principle that even celebrities should have some control over their personal lives, despite that virtually all of their wealth and privilege is based on their public lives. But the cost to these women of having personal images of themselves made public is very low - most of these women already displayed heavily glamoured versions of what these photos depict. And the cost is more than offset by the benefit to the people of seeing these women deglamoured.

Yeah that's why everyone's blaming them and referring to this as "the fappening" so much respect.

What people say and the reality of it is often two different things. It makes no sense to not be able to masturbate to these women previously and suddenly be able to as a result of these images, especially since they are unglamoured and therefore "less attractive" to people who are trained to prefer glamoured versions of women.

If someone chooses to masturbate to one of these images instead of one that the women themselves have consented to then that completely goes against your own position that magazines like Sports Illustrated and Maxim won't continue to be successful.

I'd love to believe that people are turning against glamour and can't masturbate to Hollywood images of these women, and finally are able to masturbate to them now that they are unglamoured. But I see no reason for such optimism.

That's not true, if it were Kim Kardashian wouldn't even have a career anymore. Nobody who's had nudes or sex tapes leaked would still be getting work in that industry. Because that's not how it works.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that individuals and leakers can TAKE CONTROL of the images of women's bodies - what do you think the movement that Paris Hilton started is all about? Did a corporation post the Paris Hilton sextape? Did TMZ expose it? Was Sports Illustrated, Hollywood, or Maxim involved? No, PARIS HILTON did it.

This is what these leaks can lead to. What if the world starts *preferring* unglamoured women's bodies? What if women can just take photos of themselves, leak them to the internet, and get famous? Maxim - dead. Sports Illustrated - badly injured. Hollywood - injured.

These photos show that the MIDDLEMAN and all the nonsense that surrounds it - paparazzi, TMZ, the whole industry, can die.

Wouldn't that be a far better world to live in?

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm baffled that she did, but she had every right and people had no right to do it. Beyond that, I can't say much. She's human and entitled to do things whether they are "prudent" or not.

It does amaze me that people take these photos and then store them online, but that's not a judgment against her or anyone else who does.

Oh, and the problem isn't just with the title. The body of the message is still at issue. "If she hadn't taken the pictures" is voctim blaming.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Probably wasn't a particularly good idea for her to do so, but that doesn't excuse the assholes who stole them.

 

[shrekfan246]

Since so many people are saying "she should have expected something like this", I'd just like to ask for a little bit of evidence that suggests she didn't expect something like this to happen.

People often do things which are considered "high risk" purely for the thrill, and while I wouldn't presume to speak for anyone else sexual thrills can often be the most alluring ones. And make no mistake, to certain people it most certainly can be a thrill to share themselves in compromising positions with their partners.

 

[Battenberg]

That's like blaming me for being hit by a drunk driver. I mean, I KNEW it was POSSIBLE that someone drunk could be driving out there...maybe it wasn't prudent to leave my home in a car ever!

Not really. Are you a public figure/ celebrity? Is pretty much guaranteed that there are people out there who specifically want to drive into you and would go to great lengths to do so? Do people in your line of work/ with a similar lifestyle regularly get hit by cars AND have it go global basically every time it happens?

I've seen a lot of posts about this where people take a potentially valid point and twist it into a straw man argument so they can ride in their moral high horse and tell others off for having the audacity to suggest a person has any degree of responsibility for their own actions.

In this case I think the OP worded their argument rather poorly and, whether intentionally or not, placed a huge chunk of blame on JL over all this. The situation as I see it is that the blame essentially rests with those who stole and shared this content without permission and those who allowed it to happen (I.e. the companies/ individuals tasked with protecting it and ensuring JL's privacy).

That said being a celebrity these days has certain risks attached to it, this goes double for popular, young, female, actors (as best I can tell male celebrities don't get this level of 'attention' as commonly). This is part of the job. You could argue that it contributes to the high pay levels these people get, similar to so called danger pay. In the same way signing up to be a soldier increases the chances of injury and/ or death being a celebrity increases the chance of people becoming obsessed with you and the variety of responses that can entail. We are all responsible for our own choices and career choice is a big one. With a career like this you should be fully aware of exactly what you are signing up for.

Anyone who pleads ignorance when these risks are actualised is, in essence, placing blame at their own feet. They are essentially saying they didn't research and/or weigh up the risks and rewards of their chosen career properly.

Of course your responsibility doesn't end at deciding whether the risk:reward ratio is worth it for you. There is also an ongoing responsibility to keep these risks from becoming a reality. If a soldier walked into the field without any protective gear for no good reason it is fair to assume they are either careless or suicidal. Taking the analogy further if they're going into a warzone where they face one kind of threat more than usual, for example bombs, you'd expect them to wear specialised explosive protection. In the same way when it comes to taking compromising photos of yourself you have a responsibility to ensure they stay private. Posting or saving them to ANY online location adds a risk that they may be found. If it's not worth that risk don't do it.

It isn't JL's fault that these images have been used inappropriately however there is no denying that she bears some degree of responsibility for them. She willingly created them and willingly shared them with others and /or increased the risk of their discovery (depending on whether these photos were stolen from her or someone she CHOSE to share them with). It was possible and relatively simple for her to do more to protect against this situation but she didn't.

Now you can argue all day about the scale of her responsibility. For example she would be more responsible had she sent these to someone with a known reputation for leaking this sort of thing. Maybe she could be considered even more responsible if she'd shared them herself on Tumble or something. All I'm saying is that she does bear at least SOME responsibility here and that systematically bashing anyone for suggesting this under some false pretence that responsibility and blame are the exact same thing is just ridiculous.

Tl;dr - There's several things JL could have done to prevent this (not to mention one obvious thing she could have NOT done). It could just be naivety that influenced these choices, regardless SHE was the one who made them. That said she is the one paying the price for others' greed and incompetence here, those are the people to assign blame to. Just don't pretend she's not been involved in any stage of the chain of events leading here.

Side note- if you're going to post replies/ counter arguments read the whole thing, not just the tl;dr.

 

[TallanKhan]

While I have a great deal of sympathy for the victims here, and publishing someone else's private pictures is absolutely wrong, at the very least it was unwise for any celebrity to take naked pictures of them self with a mobile phone.

After all, considering the media will hound an A-list celebrity around the world while on holiday and magazines will pay thousands for a blurry shot of them sunbathing topless, it is fairly obvious that there are people who would go to huge lengths to obtain this kind of picture.

Considering whole whole phone-hacking thing (which was at least a big thing here in the UK, not sure about elsewhere) has only just settled down, I find it hard to understand why anyone would risk taking such a sensitive picture with a phone.

 

[Pyrian]

I'm curious if all these people crying "victim blaming" play the same card for Apple. Should we absolve Apple of their responsibility to our privacy on account of the fact that it's "entirely" the fault of the hacker? I don't.

It is Apples responsibility to keep our info secret, and we have a right to be angry when our info is taken from them.

Great. We agree on this. Now, do you see how this contradicts the principle that the hacker is solely to blame and placing any blame anywhere else somehow dilutes the blame on the hacker? If there were two hackers, are they only 50% responsible each? Of course not.

Victim blaming is not the same thing as perp absolving, and I wish people would stop arguing as if they were.

If someone came into your house and stole your tv then would it be your fault for having a tv?

If several of your neighbors had been burglarized, and you took no steps to secure your home and belongings, would you feel you maybe should've done something? Some people here are claiming that this is unusual, tantamount to stealing from a bank safety deposit box, but the reality is that it's been happening reasonably frequently for years.

 

[Cronenberg1]

No, these releases have violated the privacy of people who's only crime was trying to have a private life, this is not comparable to the Snowden leaks because he was exposing crimes and you're justifying sexual abuse.

I agree that the Snowden leaks are many orders of magnitude more valuable, but they are similar in general effect (hurting the powers that be and benefiting the people).

It's creepy and makes no sense that you call this sexual abuse. So Paris Hilton was sexually abusing herself by releasing her sex tape? What if someone else had released Paris Hilton's sex tape... that makes it sexual abuse?

Our disagreement is partly based on differing ideas of the meaning of a naked body. All a naked body is is a body without clothes or other covering - it's not sexual in particular. Would you be as upset if personal photos of them FULLY CLOTHED were released instead? - it's fair to say that at least you wouldn't claim "sexual abuse" as a factor - but this is just your own puritanical bias rather than something rational. Think about one's sexual desire for one's wife or girlfriend - one's desire for her when she has clothes on is the same as one's desire when she's naked, because it's HER one desires, not a naked version of her. If that were not the case, there would be no reason for her to take her clothes off in the first place.

The best way to show a non-glamoured human is to show them naked, because clothes themselves are part of glamour, and the market value (value to the glamour industry and otherwise) of these women is due in substantial part to their bodies. So it's particularly valuable to show them naked.

more women have their privacy violated and their sex lives dragged kicking and screaming into the public eye against their will

Noone is having sex in these photos. Even if they were, the "entertainment" industry already tells us what the sex lives are of these celebrities, so this would not be new information. Your anger should be against TMZ and the like instead - they are actually doing the things that you decry.

You just don't understand how wanting to oggle naked or semi-naked women works do you?

You're the one who thinks that naked women = sexual, you choose to believe that. I guess you believe that clothes magically transform them from sexual beings into non-sexual beings.

There are quite a few reasons people want to see naked celebrities, too many to go into in this post. It's not nearly as simple and perverse as you're implying.

I agree in principle that even celebrities should have some control over their personal lives, despite that virtually all of their wealth and privilege is based on their public lives. But the cost to these women of having personal images of themselves made public is very low - most of these women already displayed heavily glamoured versions of what these photos depict. And the cost is more than offset by the benefit to the people of seeing these women deglamoured.

Yeah that's why everyone's blaming them and referring to this as "the fappening" so much respect.

What people say and the reality of it is often two different things. It makes no sense to not be able to masturbate to these women previously and suddenly be able to as a result of these images, especially since they are unglamoured and therefore "less attractive" to people who are trained to prefer glamoured versions of women.

If someone chooses to masturbate to one of these images instead of one that the women themselves have consented to then that completely goes against your own position that magazines like Sports Illustrated and Maxim won't continue to be successful.

I'd love to believe that people are turning against glamour and can't masturbate to Hollywood images of these women, and finally are able to masturbate to them now that they are unglamoured. But I see no reason for such optimism.

That's not true, if it were Kim Kardashian wouldn't even have a career anymore. Nobody who's had nudes or sex tapes leaked would still be getting work in that industry. Because that's not how it works.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that individuals and leakers can TAKE CONTROL of the images of women's bodies - what do you think the movement that Paris Hilton started is all about? Did a corporation post the Paris Hilton sextape? Did TMZ expose it? Was Sports Illustrated, Hollywood, or Maxim involved? No, PARIS HILTON did it.

This is what these leaks can lead to. What if the world starts *preferring* unglamoured women's bodies? What if women can just take photos of themselves, leak them to the internet, and get famous? Maxim - dead. Sports Illustrated - badly injured. Hollywood - injured.

These photos show that the MIDDLEMAN and all the nonsense that surrounds it - paparazzi, TMZ, the whole industry, can die.

Wouldn't that be a far better world to live in?

What are you talking about? They don't want the photos out in public. Yes there is a difference between a clothed and a non clothed picture. If they don't want an unclothed picture of themselves out there then nobody has the right to leak one. If women want to leak nude photos of themselves then that's fine but these women don't seem to want that.

 

[otakon17]

I'm baffled that she did, but she had every right and people had no right to do it. Beyond that, I can't say much. She's human and entitled to do things whether they are "prudent" or not.

It does amaze me that people take these photos and then store them online, but that's not a judgment against her or anyone else who does.

Oh, and the problem isn't just with the title. The body of the message is still at issue. "If she hadn't taken the pictures" is voctim blaming.

How is the best way I can change the body of the message to get across the point of:

I think it was a bad decision on her part to take pictures of herself naked and store them on the network.

Because that is the point I'm trying to get across. I am not blaming her, I knew that the victim blaming would come out when I said that. But people are first and foremost responsible for themselves and posting sensitive stuff like that online in any way, shape or form is inherently risky in this day in age. She shouldn't and couldn't have expected it but no one does when it happens to them.

 

[Something Amyss]

How is the best way I can change the body of the message to get across the point of:

There probably isn't. There's a fundamental issue. You would be unlikely to say "if they hadn't owned a home, they wouldn't have been robbed," yet when this comes up, it's suddenly an issue in which we bring up the actions of the victim.

I don't think there's a way to square that circle.

 

[Netrigan]

I am not victim blaming here. She didn't invite this leak to happen by doing so, but I feel she did expose herself without thinking of the possible consequences. It is a simple thing not to take pictures of yourself and then send them over a network to a phone that could possibly be stolen. Especially considering she's a celebrity and in the United States there is an unhealthy obsession with them in my opinion generally. You can't do things like this as a public figure if only to avoid possibly incriminating yourself.

I'm going to give you the most valuable advice I had wished I had gotten when I was younger.

When you feel compelled to give women advice about how to prevent or react to these sorts of situations (sexual assaults, sexually harassment, creepy guys creeping them out, etc.), don't. You do not realize what an absolute pillock you sound like because everything you're going to say is either completely obvious to her or absolutely useless. We men are staggeringly ignorant about these issues. Seriously, I want to go back in time and slap myself for some of the inane helpful suggestions I gave to women on matters I know understand I know next to nothing about.

There isn't a person on the planet who didn't think these deep thoughts of yours.

A lot of people went "oh, shit" and checked to see if they had nudie pictures on the cloud, because guess what, phones have this awful habit of uploading things to the cloud without your permission... or rather the permission you gave that one time when you were setting up your phone and you were likely pressing "yes" for everything because you just want to use your phone. My Android phone which can't seem to go a week "ALWAYS" opening YouTube videos with the App (every week, I set it as the default) doesn't seem to bother asking me every so often "do you wish to continue automatically uploading pictures?"

At least one person caught up in this massive invasion of privacy had not intended to upload the pictures, erasing them from her phone after showing them to her husband.

Fingers should be pointed at Google and Apple for making these kinds of privacy breaches so easy as well as the assholes who stole and illegally distributed these files. And for anyone who posted them on Tumblr or Reddit, congratulations, you're one of those assholes.

 

[otakon17]

How is the best way I can change the body of the message to get across the point of:

There probably isn't. There's a fundamental issue. You would be unlikely to say "if they hadn't owned a home, they wouldn't have been robbed," yet when this comes up, it's suddenly an issue in which we bring up the actions of the victim.

I don't think there's a way to square that circle.

So have we come to an impasse? Is there no way to represent my opinion on this point without considering that it's not victim blaming but an observation on risky behavior on the victims part that did not invite this to happen but enabled it as a possibility at the very least?

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I find it amusing the way Western countries get so worked up about nudity. Big deal, maybe if everyone didn't have such a repressive attitude towards sex forced on them, you wouldn't have people foaming at the chance to see a famous woman naked.

However

I do think it's a bit hypocritical to spend your entire life perpetuating and profiting from the stereotype that a woman's self-worth can only be judged based on her looks, then act like it's some massive outrage when some creep decides to go above and beyond to "get a better view".

This I feel is unfair. Jennifer Lawrence is only 24 and is reasonably well known for telling other women not to let people judge them based on their adherence or non-adherence to physical ideals.

It's heroic to post these images. It shows human beings so far bedazzled by glamour into worshiping these women the truth about what these women actually look like.

These images are in no way an attack on the women - they are an attack on the *image machines* - the system of editors, makeup artists, movie studios, photoshoppers, and the like who control and idealize the IMAGES of the women that they so kindly ALLOW into the world.

This is an attack on Sports Illustrated, Hollywood, Maxim, and the like. It's a very big fuck you to them, and I love it.

Are you serious? If anyone wants to see a celeb without makeup or in a situation that makes them look human, they can just pick up one of those trashy gossip magazines where they've been snapped by the paparazzi walking their dog or going for a swim.

There's nothing heroic about a celebrity nude photo ring. It's a disturbing, twisted culture that fetishes violating a woman's right to privacy.

 

[ultratog1028]

I am not victim blaming here.

Except you're going to do just that:

I simply feel that if she should not have taken compromising pictures of herself in the first place.

You're sending a lot of mixed messages here, at one point you're condemning those people for saying the exact same thing you said at the end of your post:

And to all those that downloaded said pictures and use "Well she shouldn't have taken them in the first place.", fuck off that's not the point of the argument to justify your invasion of a woman's privacy.

What a person does on their phone is their own business, whether it's sending messages, sending nude photos to someone else, or something else not illegal or dangerous to the public, full stop. Breaching that privacy is wrong, regardless of whether the person is a public figure or not.

pretty much this. The breach is the issue. The nudity I don't think is (she's starred in movies naked)

 

[Atmos Duality]

It's her body; Ms Lawrence has the right to use it as she sees fit. (within confines of the law anyway)
Which includes photography.

There's no moral or ethical or even logical dilemma there.
It's her right. Period.

Now, how those photos ended up in the hands of intruders...

*sigh*
I'm not going to make any friends for this...

...But as someone whose career started in security (especially computer and networks)...frankly, what was she thinking posting those on an external storage system?

Did she have a pressing need to always have access to nude photos of herself from potentially any computer?

I'm not in showbiz, but I cannot think of any reason to EVER leave those on the cloud.
Perhaps on a USB stick or hard drive, etc, if they were somehow important enough to be available...anything that's NOT remotely accessible.

And then there's the Apple side of the issue.
In short, it's not perfectly secure. We should never assume it's perfectly secure.
Are they culpable? Possibly, but I'll let the investigators and courts decide.
I don't know all the facts, and I make no assumption of culpability until proof of such exists.

What I do know:

Sometimes, essential sensitive data must go through the tubes.
Banking is a prime example. Business absolutely CANNOT operate without digital transactions.
(which is why any bank worth their salt will keep them highly controlled and monitored, and why we have every right to lose our fudge when they neglect that)

But not all sensitive data must go through a network or be available.
Call me crazy, but I think nude photos, while sensitive, is "non-essential" there.

I don't blame Ms. Lawrence for being a victim because that's hideous and misguided as fuck.
Rather, the most I can blame her for, is enabling herself to -become- a victim.

No, those aren't the same thing.

Some risks we cannot help but take, but we are responsible for those that we CAN help.

Now, I always blame the criminal first and foremost, because without them there would be no crime.
But that does not stop me from examining the situation and seeing if there was any simple or feasible way to prevent it.
Because that's how we learn. Either directly or by example.

If Ms Lawrence (or anyone else) is going to take nude photos of herself, at the very least she could store them where random internet perverts and hackers have no chance to reach them.

That's not a moral or ethical judgment, just a simple logical one.
If that offends you, well, I don't know what to say.

 

[Syntax Error]

The eternal rule of the internet:

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD.

 

[Lilani]

So have we come to an impasse? Is there no way to represent my opinion on this point without considering that it's not victim blaming but an observation on risky behavior on the victims part that did not invite this to happen but enabled it as a possibility at the very least?

In all honesty, what you're trying to get across isn't very useful to anybody, because it really isn't a thing that needs to be said. I'm sure Jennifer Lawrence is perfectly aware that if she hadn't taken those pictures, they wouldn't be on the Internet right now. But just as somebody who buys an expensive TV accepts the risk of somebody trying to steal it, she accepted the risk of somebody exposing her pictures. People stealing expensive TVs is not a reason to argue that people should not own expensive TVs.

There's no point in drawing attention to the fact that she took the pictures, she isn't the one who did anything wrong. And by trying to draw attention to that, you are inevitably going to sound like you're trying to say it's her fault it happened. Frankly there's no other reason to bring up the risk BUT to point out how she could have prevented it, which is victim blaming. Owning desirable or embarrassing things comes with the risk of people stealing or exposing them. This isn't news to anybody, and beating the victims of such theft or exposure with the "YOU COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS" stick is not helpful at all.

 

[Something Amyss]

Did she have a pressing need to always have access to nude photos of herself from potentially any computer?

No, but isn't that the new tech push? Store EVERYTHING to the cloud? Especially iproduct users with limited storage? I mean, it may not have even occurred to her to process these differently. There was a time where you stored to a floppy as a matter of course. Now, people use "the cloooooooooooud."

I don't know, it baffles me, too, but I can certainly hazard a guess.

 

[Leemaster777]

*SNIP*

I think you have a perfectly valid point.

Frankly, this entire thing has only proven to me something I've always said:

"Unless you want people to see them, you should NEVER take naked pictures of yourself. For any reason."

And this opinion has only been strengthened as time goes on, with how easy it is to share and store images on the internet. And, conversely, how commonplace hacking and privacy invasion has become. It's simply IMPOSSIBLE to leave data on the internet in ANY form, and be completely certain that it is secure. Even deleted data can be restored (and seemingly WAS, in this case), so really, the best defense in this case is simply some foresight.

If I leave my keys in the ignition of my car, that's my right, certainly. And if it gets stolen, that's the criminal's fault, of course. But it was something that I could have prevented. This situation is much the same (and yes, I know I'm oversimplifying things a bit here. But the basic point I'm making stands).

Everyone who had their privacy invaded has every right to be angry, and are absolutely the victims in this. And whoever perpetrated this is certainly a scumbag of the highest order. But at the end of the day... they made a mistake. It's not an insult, it's a fact. And I can only hope that SOMEONE will learn from these mistakes, and make the choice NOT to post naked pictures of themselves on the internet.

I hope that, but I know that people are still going to do it.

 

[Lilani]

So have we come to an impasse? Is there no way to represent my opinion on this point without considering that it's not victim blaming but an observation on risky behavior on the victims part that did not invite this to happen but enabled it as a possibility at the very least?

One more thing I'd like to add. A couple of years ago, I got in a car accident that I COULD have prevented, but still wasn't my fault. I was on a four lane road without a turn-lane (two lanes going one way, two lanes going the other). Because there was no turn-lane, the people who want to turn left just had to stop in the middle of the road to wait for the traffic in the other two lanes to stop so they could go.

I was driving in the right lane, and looking ahead I was vaguely aware that a few cars had stopped in the left lane to turn. I was also vaguely aware of a big white pickup truck that was coming up to these cars way too fast. I kind of just assumed he would hit his brakes at some point, but this did not happen. He ended up having to choose between staying in that lane and hitting three cars in a row, or merging over into my lane and hitting just me. He chose me, and slammed my little car into the sidewalk where luckily no pedestrians were walking, knocking both of my axles out of alignment, taking out my driver side mirror, damaging my driver side door and front left panel, damaging the front driver side tire, and completely severing the passenger side tire which was forced onto the sidewalk.

If I had been paying more active attention to the other lane, I could have noticed what was going on and slowed down to let this guy get over, preventing all of that damage. HOWEVER, legally it was still his fault, as he was the one who wasn't paying attention to what was going on in his OWN lane. And it was his insurance that paid for the damages.

The fact that I could have prevented it does not make what he did any more excusable, and nor does it shift any of the responsibility to me. He was the one in the wrong from beginning to end. Any actions that I could have taken to prevent it are irrelevant, because in this case saying I could have prevented it by paying better attention is as useful as saying I could have prevented it by not driving at all.