Celebrity nude photo hacking victims threaten Google with a $100 million lawsuit

Apple has gone through of lot of bumps lately, starting with the massive celebrity nude pictures that were obtained after hackers got access to private iCloud accounts, a faulty iOS 8.0.1 update and iPhones bending away in people’s pockets. Today, we’re going to take a look at the latest Google news: it appears that Google is being threatened with a $100 million lawsuit over celebrity nude pictures.

Dozens of celebrities victimized by the still-uncaught Hollywood hacker have banded together for a potential lawsuit against Google.  Because photos of Jennifer Lawrence nude, Kate Upton nude and many others nude (such as Gabrielle Union, Meagan Good, Kim Kardashian, Jenny McCarthy, Vanessa Hudgens and Rihanna) still exist on the search engine, attorney Marty Singer has fired off a letter to the Internet behemoth.

It demands the company remove these illegally-obtained images ASAP… or pay a hefty price in court. In his letter, Singer slams Google for its “despicable, reprehensible conduct in not only failing to act expeditiously and responsibly to remove the Images, but in knowingly accommodating, facilitating and perpetuating the unlawful conduct.”

The letter says that Twitter has complied with demands to take down the photos of actresses including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Jenny McCarthy, and Kirsten Dunst, but “Google, one of the largest ISPs in the world, with vast resources and a huge support staff, generating multimillions of dollars in revenues on a daily basis, has recklessly allowed these blatant violations to continue in conscious disregard of our clients’ rights.”

Since the photos and videos first started appearing online during Labor Day weekend in late August, Singer’s firm Lavely & Singer has been sending notices to website operators and hosting services, including Google, asking for the images to be removed. But many of the images are still available on Google sites, according to Singer’s letter.

"If your wives, daughters or relatives were the victims of such blatant violations of basic human rights, surely you would take appropriate action," he says in the letter. "But because the victims are celebrities with valuable publicity rights, you do nothing — nothing but collect millions of dollars in advertising revenue from your co-conspirator advertising partners as you seek to capitalize on this scandal rather than quash it.

"Like the NFL, which turned a blind eye while its players assaulted and victimized women and children, Google has turned a blind eye while its sites repeatedly exploit and victimize these women."

“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,” Google said in response to the accusations.