Lawyers acting for big names including Rihanna and Jennifer Lawrence along other stars who had intimate photos leaked are threatening to sue Google for $100 million.
A number of stars had their iCloud accounts targeted by online criminals and had photos of themselves shared online through Reddit and 4Chan, but legal representatives for over 12 of the women have slammed Google for failing to remove the images and “making millions from the victimization of women.”
Marty Singer accuses Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as Google lawyers and Eric Schmidt of “blatantly unethical behaviour”.
The New York Post’s Page Six column says a document he wrote goes on to say Google has failed “to act expeditiously, and responsibly to remove the images, but in knowingly accommodating, facilitating, and perpetuating the unlawful conduct.”
The lawyer says his firm sent out a notice to remove such images four weeks ago, and several since then, but many are still on YouTube and BlogSpot - both owned by Google.
He added: “Google knows the images are hacked stolen property, private and confidential photos and videos unlawfully obtained and posted by pervert predators who are violating the victims’ privacy rights ... Yet Google has taken little or no action to stop these outrageous violations.
“Because the victims are celebrities with valuable publicity rights you do nothing -- nothing but collect millions of dollars in advertising revenue ... as you seek to capitalise on this scandal rather than quash it.”
Google have now responded to the threats and a spokesperson told the New York Post’s Page Six column:
“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.”
