Google may be sued by female celebrities whose nude and private pictures were hacked, with attorneys for the women alleging the tech company failed to remove the images and reaped “millions from the victimization of women,” reports the New York Post’s Page Six.
Stars including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande were among those whose photos were distributed in what is considered the biggest-ever celebrity hack, the story notes.
The article reports: “Now top Hollywood lawyer Marty Singer, who represents over a dozen of the women affected by the leak, has written a sternly worded letter to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as Eric Schmidt and Google lawyers accusing them of ‘blatantly unethical behavior’ — and comparing their alleged lack of action to the NFL leadership’s handling of the Ray Rice affair.”
The letter alleges that Google has failed “to act expeditiously and responsibly to remove the images,” and accuses the company of “knowingly accommodating, facilitating, and perpetuating the unlawful conduct. Google is making millions and profiting from the victimization of women.”
Many of the images remain on Google sites, such as BlogSpot and YouTube, the story says.
Wouldn’t you sue Apple for allowing them to hack you in the first place?
Google is not hosting the photos. They look at the web and find things posted on sites. They don’t take down websites, they only look at what is there and prove information on its actual location on the web.
This is like suing TV GUIDE because of a show that had nudity. TV GUIDE is informing you of what is there, but they are not responsible for the content.
If they want to sue aggregators, they would have to go after a million other aggregator sites, like BING, YAHOO, and DOGPILE. But what is that going to do? The websites that host the pictures are still there, and they can be reached without a GOOGLE or BING or any other aggregator site. The websites that host these pictures are the problem and this attack on Google solves nothing for the celebs harmed by this invasion of their privacy.
Should google be forced into now becoming the moral barometer of what is morally correct and what can and can not appear on the web and should we be concerned when a lawyer threatens the web that they can now also control what and what can not remain in the public domain, morals aside….?
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2014/10/hacked-celebs-lawyers-threaten-sue-google-100m-case/
Nick, the last sentence of the story states, “Many of the images remain on Google sites, such as BlogSpot and YouTube, the story says.” That means that Google IS hosting these images.
Nick – Google owns Blogger (i.e. blogspot.com) and Google owns YouTube. Hence the reason Google is being sued…
Thanks for making my point. Just because GOOGLE owns those sites means nothing to the case they are bringing against GOOGLE. They are saying that it is GOOGLE’s fault that the images are able to be viewed, but not one of the news stories I’ve seen about this had any mention of a BlogSpot or YouTube account that these pictures were being hosted on. It says that it is GOOGLE”s fault that the pictures have not been removed from the internet. GOOGLE has no more power to rid the internet of these pictures than anyone reading this. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of technology and how GOOGLE and the internet works that this lawsuit exists and it will bring no closure to those celebs it says it is trying to help.