Google responds to the $100m lawsuit over celeb nude pics

As Google faces a $100 million lawsuit by a lawyer representing the Hollywood stars whose ‘nude’ photos were leaked online through a series of iCloud hack and publishing online, the search giant has responded responded by Sunday and said that Google has already deleted “tens of thousands” of those leaked images from the search engine

According to the lawyers, Google was ignoring or slow to take down requests for those leaked images hosted on one of its online properties, but Google’s representative claimed the company took every request for taking down seriously and took quicker action on them.

In a statement Google said, “We’ve removed tens of thousands of pictures within hours of the requests being made and we have closed hundreds of accounts. The internet is used for many good things. Stealing people’s private photos is not one of them.”

Hollywood lawyer Marty Singer represented those popular female personalities whose iCloud account was hacked and their personal and nude photos were published on 4Chan, which later spread everywhere on the web.

In the $100 million lawsuit, Singer claimed that Google hasn’t taken take down requests of leaked images in a timely manner and it ignores many such requests. The lawyer also claimed that despite sending continuous reminders to Google about the take down requests, Google’s online properties still shows those leaked nude pics to users on YouTube, Blogger and Google.

He said, “Yet Google has taken little or no action to stop these outrageous violations. Google is making millions and profiting from the victimisation of women.”

Last month, many nude pictures of Hollywood stars went viral on websites like Reddit and 4Chan, and these stars include popular names like Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian, Amber Heard, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez and Rihanna. This was the biggest celebrity scandal that ever happened in the history of Hollywood.

The hacker first posted the images on “image-based online bulletin board 4chan”. Apple as well as the FBI were constantly concentrating on the breach and focussing on finding the hacker and also where the breach has been occurred. Two years back, Christopher Chaney hacked 50 email accounts of famous people in the entertainment history, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

After the incident, 4Chan, the popular anonymous message sharing site has adopted a copyright policy after nude celebrity pictures were leaked on the site, especially those of the popular Hollywood actress Jennifer Lawrence. The image owners can now take down pictures through the Digital Millennium Copyright Policy (DMCA) after receiving a “bonafide infringement” notice. The new policy outlines that the website would not be held liable if the content is not removed after the notice.

Apple had also responded quickly to the incident and added security alerts to iCloud after the recent leak of nude celebrity photos though the company claims that its server was not hacked and only the targeted accounts were compromised. Apple would send an email and push notifications to users in case if anyone tries to reset a password, restore iCloud data or while logging into a new device.