Jennifer Lawrence at the 83rd Academy Awards Red CarpetMingle Media TV, Flickr

Picture the scene. You see an attractive girl on a train somewhere. Somehow, you find out her name, but then what to do? You will probably never see her again. So, you go home and spend days, maybe weeks, trying to break into her email account until finally, success! You find the naked pictures of her which you have always dreamed of. You settle back into you chair and share them, over and over, again and again. You reassure yourself. This is not creepy at all; she is desirable. Other people are appreciating your work. You are not a creep.

Sound like a likely story? Most of you will think not, but if you replace the protagonist in that story with an anonymous hacker and the girl with Jennifer Lawrence, you have the basics of the story which unfolded this week.

The Jennifer Lawrence story is one of those rare cases where we do not need to torture ourselves in deciding what is right and wrong. Stealing personal photos of someone is wrong. It is creepy, and it is illegal. But what has made this story even more disturbing is the motive.

The photos were not stolen for blackmail or for the publicity (the hackers, wary of an extended stay in a federal prison, have tried very hard to stay anonymous). Instead, the thefts seem to have been motivated by something much more, well, creepy. That is, the simple desire to have (in a technical sense) pornographic images of famous stars.

Of course, most of us would never dream of launching such a sophisticated invasion of another's privacy.  That said, thanks to the Internet’s trusty distribution network, we do not have to. A moment of searching on Google will bring you fresh nudes of Kate Upton or JLaw.

For the casual viewer, there are no ramifications. Any legal consequences there are will fall on those who procured and distributed the images, whilst the viewing public can enjoy themselves with impunity. (Notice that, however much they report the story, no news outlet will actually publish the photos or direct you to them. The world's best paid lawyers are hungry for blood and deep pockets, and everyone from the BBC to TMZ knows it).

But, seriously? Just because there are no realistic or material consequences for jerking off over stolen JLaw nudes, you might as well do it? For a lot of humanity – or at least for those represented by the Internet – this seems to be the case. To those people, congratulations! You have successfully become an Internet creep!

Let's be clear. Even looking at those images is creepy. There is no need to debate it. Looking at stolen naked pictures is creepy. It is creepy when they belong to someone you know, and it is creepy when they belong to a millionaire Oscar winner.

Granted, the means by which the ordinary viewer will view the JLaw nudes are less creepy than what they would have to do to source nudes personally, but the invasion of privacy, the voyeurism and the callousness remain the same. You may feel less dirty, but that should be a hollow comfort.

But people will still have looked at those images – maybe even some of you reading this article. And all but a handful of those people, I am sure, would never have dreamed of stealing nudes personally, even if they had the opportunity. As with our story of the girl on the train, they would have abhorred the sickening invasion of privacy. Fantasising about someone is one thing, but invading their privacy, ridiculing their consent and mocking their intimacy are things which normally appal people.

And yet, having said all that, it is still understandable why people want to look at the images, whether they are motivated by curiosity or sexual gratification. When there are rewards but no risks, we sometimes do things we simply cannot justify, things we cannot be proud of. In this vacuum of the Internet, we often do not recognise the humanity of our digital interlocutors, and as a consequence, we care less about abusing them.

Take Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and the other victims of this week's theft. For the majority of non-celebrities, these are people who do not really exist. In 2D photos and pre-rehearsed press events, we see only the aspects of celebrity cleared for publication. Like a fictional character, these celebrities can only exist in our minds as narrow media creations. And, yet, they are real people, even if we can never really know them.

Ultimately, the distortion surrounding celebrity and the risk-free environment of the Internet means that we can treat celebrities (and their bodies) like the media commodities for which we have little or no empathy. And that is perfectly acceptable when we are dealing with products intended for public consumption, but we cannot adopt that mindset when dealing with private moments. Success is no reason for denying somebody a basic level of empathy.

These are real people being harmed, and it is not okay. Our bodies are things we retain the rights over, whatever the context, and that includes fame, success and desirability. Somewhere, thousands of miles away, there is someone dealing with the personal fallout of these events, just as anyone you know would have to deal with them. And while we, the anonymous strangers, may look at these images with impunity, we do not have to, and we should not. It only takes a little effort not to look, but in doing so we improve the world just a little bit.