Google Threatened With $100M Lawsuit Over Nude Celebrity Photos

Dave Knott writes A Los Angeles lawyer representing over a dozen female celebrities, is threatening to sue Google for $100 million US over nude photos leaked online from personal iCloud accounts. The law firm Lavely & Singer accuses the web giant of "accommodating, facilitating and perpetuating" the distribution of the photos when it failed to remove the images from its search results. The stars involved in the law firm's action were not named, but the law firm alleges many of their photos still exist on Google sites like BlogSpot and YouTube four weeks after the firm ordered them taken down.

Comments

Makes Sense

[l0ungeb0y]

These photos were leaked on the Internet, and Google is like King of the Internet and can control and censor every last thing that happens on it.

Re:Makes Sense

[Tablizer]

The flip side is the rights of say Blogger users. If I post photo X as a blogger user, it should be up to me to decide if I want to take it down or not, not Google (except maybe in extreme cases, of which this doesn't seem to fall into).

The Blogger user (poster) should be the legal entity responsible for a given blog's content, not Google. Sue the Blogger user if you don't like their content, not Google.

Re:Makes Sense

[SeaFox]

These photos were leaked on the Internet, and Google is like King of the Internet and can control and censor every last thing that happens on it.

This is more true than it should be. There's a whole generation of people using the Internet who literally don't know how to browse to a website directly. They don't know how an address bar works, and go to google to look up whatever they want. Even when they have the URL.. That's like going to a reverse phone book to look up a person by their number -- to find out how to call them..

The biggest problem (that is often ignored) is you're now putting control over your access to the Internet in Google's hands by doing this. If Google doesn't want you to visit a website for business reasons, or political reasons, all they have to do is remove the sites from their search index. Unless you know how to actually browse to the site or think of looking on a search engine other than your usual, you're effectively blocked from it.

For these people Google does, in practice, have the ability to censor the Internet.
And browser makers increasing trend to monkeying with the address bar's function only makes it worse.

Re:Makes Sense

[Fwipp]

Ah well, at least that older generation is dying off and being replaced by the web-savvy youngsters. :)

Re:Makes Sense

[Kjella]

While they might not know how to use an address bar they do know how to follow links, so to send a site down a black hole Google would also have to blacklist all the sites linking to it. Besides, I doubt Google would like to be so blatant as the Great Firewall of China, if you search for a particular site you'll find it. If you're only vaguely close though it might end up on page 10 instead of page 2. Google needs to appear neutral, they're just an action house selling off adwords to the highest bidder while displaying whatever search results their robots have found. If they start messing with that image though obviously taking sides they'll lose far more business than they gain. Google is now to online marketing what lawyers are to lawsuits, no matter what side wins they always get paid. They'd have to be really, really dense to mess with that.

Re:Makes Sense

[budgenator]

These photos were leaked on the Internet, and Google is like King of the Internet and can control and censor every last thing that happens on it.

These "Celebrities" should be very careful what they ask for, imagine if the URL to every photo, and every article written about them just fell into the great bitbucket; if you don't nuke'em from orbit, you'll never be sure.

Re:Makes Sense

[ArmoredDragon]

This is more true than it should be. There's a whole generation of people using the Internet who literally don't know how to browse to a website directly. They don't know how an address bar works, and go to google to look up whatever they want. Even when they have the URL.

Maybe but Google is no more at fault for that than the phone companies are for texting while driving. The internet has been around for a lot longer than Google, and will probably be around a lot longer.

Besides that, when all things are considered, Google never at any point did anything to pressure users into using their search engine instead of hitting the pages directly. They didn't make themselves cheaper and they didn't use any existing muscle to force users over (they HAVE used their search dominance to expose themselves to other markets, but that isn't relevant to this discussion.) Not only that but they weren't even close to being the first search engine. People just liked them and they became popular; that's all there is to it. Bing can't even make that claim as Bing even offers money incentives to use their search engine in addition to making it the default search engine of their currently market dominating web browser, yet Bing still only manages to have a tiny (and money losing) search share compared to Google.

Re:Makes Sense

[sir1real]

They're suing Google because that's where the money is. Random bloggers don't have 100 million dollars.

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this. Google should give them the right to be forgotten.. permanently. Just wipe every single article, blog post, image or video linking to any of them regardless of where it is hosted and lets see the fireworks.

Re:Makes Sense

[AbRASiON]

The way google has behaved in the past 24 months that post doesn't seem to be untrue to me, they certainly seem to think they are king of the internet.

Re:Makes Sense

[AgNO3]

Umm you have no rights as a user of Googles stuff. Its their stuff. If they don't like your stuff they can delete your account and send you hate mail and there is jack all you could do about it. You don't own your blogs server space GOOGLE DOES and they can do what they like with it. Don't like that HOST IT YOURSELF.

Re:Makes Sense

[AgNO3]

I think what they are saying is that the content exist on Google's services not just in the search results. Its still on youtube and blogspot. Both owned and operated by Google. Since they do have control over their property they are required to remove illegal things like stolen data.

Re:Makes Sense

[nitehawk214]

But if I do something illegal, you don't go and sue the nearest bank just because they have money. You sue the person responsible.

Claiming Google is responsible for all of the content posted on the entire internet is stupid.

Re:Makes Sense

[julesh]

The flip side is the rights of say Blogger users. If I post photo X as a blogger user, it should be up to me to decide if I want to take it down or not, not Google (except maybe in extreme cases, of which this doesn't seem to fall into).

The Blogger user (poster) should be the legal entity responsible for a given blog's content, not Google. Sue the Blogger user if you don't like their content, not Google.

Unfortunately, the DMCA only extends immunity from such actions to Google if they take the content down on receipt of a properly formatted request. That is, legally speaking, an ISP is only considered a common carrier as long as nobody has asked for it not to be. The Internet needs stronger protections of hosting providers, but unfortunately the IP industry has too much lobbying power to let that happen.

Re:Makes Sense

[golodh]

You're probably speaking in jest, but unfortunately it's true.

If Google focuses on filtering content rather than providing it then it can certainly comply quicker and more completely with all such take-down orders.

The question of whether Google can " control and censor every last thing" is totally irrelevant, as the suit is addressed to Google on basis of what you can find using Google ... as opposed to what you can find "on the Internet".

It's simply a matter of where you put your priorities. Which in term depends on how reasonable you think the demands to censor search results are.

As noted in earlier posts, techies don't appreciate the extent to which society can suppress behaviour it doesn't want.

Lawsuits like this may well lead to a shift in Google's priorities and a substantial increase in the extent to which it filters search results.

Re:Makes Sense

[thej1nx]

So Apple fails to provide sufficient security of photos uploaded to its iCloud service, and Google is the one that gets sued. Lawyers at work!

Re:Makes Sense

[Guybrush_T]

It actually makes a lot of sense to use google for everything. At the beginning there were IP addresses ; hard to remember. Then DNS came up and URLs got much easier to remember.

But, hey, what is the real information when you want to go to http://www.bookstore.com/ ? Answer : bookstore. And that's precisely what google does.

Moreover, if you type "bokstore" instead of "bookstore", google will give you what you actually had in mind.

So yes, Google has a lot of power, which is used in the majority of cases to help people -- this is why people use it. But with that much power, it seems to me that it should be now heavily regulated by law. Search algorithms should be regulated by laws and openly discussed in parliaments. You cannot remove / favor someone just because you want. You may have some space for business to slightly favor (to some extent) those who pay for it. This kind of things.

Re:Makes Sense

[TheRaven64]

The problem with suing people who have lots of money is that they can afford good lawyers - and it shouldn't take a very good lawyer to get something this stupid thrown out of court. Typically when people do this, they want to have an out-of-court settlement, where Google agrees to pay $1 (cheaper than a few minutes of lawyer time) and neither side is allowed to disclose the terms of the settlement. They can then go to the next company and say 'Google didn't feel able to fight this in court and agreed to a settlement where they paid us compensation, you have less money to spend on lawyers than them, so you should pay us compensation too'.

A big part of IBM's legal policy of millions for defence, not one dollar for tribute, is that they used to be the company that everyone went to for this kind of (not legally binding, but useful for marketing) precedent. Once you get a reputation for fighting every case and countersuing if you win, then fewer trolls bother you...

Re:Makes Sense

[SeaFox]

It actually makes a lot of sense to use google for everything. At the beginning there were IP addresses ; hard to remember. Then DNS came up and URLs got much easier to remember.

No, that would only be true if Google were able to deliver the result you're looking for 100% of the time, and in a listing a person can easily recognize as the correct one. This requires a user to be able to differentiate between the real site and another site that claims to be the site and isn't purely by the listing text.. this is exactly how phishing works. Making people think they're where they want to be and they aren't. And in this case it's just a SEO trip away. You shouldn't trust PageRank to keep you out of danger.

I do Internet support. One of the companies I support (which shall remain nameless, but it's pretty big in rural areas) did not, until recently, have their webmail site listed on Google. I don't know how that happened, as I assume Chrome is spying enough to have told the mothership about the existance of the site, but no, it was not possible to find this web portal by searching for it by URL on Google. To make matters worse, there is another arm of the same ISP that maintains a separate webmail site that looks very similar to the first one, but is not the same site. That site is what Google gave for search results when you looked up the first one, even though they are slightly different URLs and completely separate sites. Customers would repeatedly go to the wrong site and be unable to log into their email because they were not on the right website.

Now ignoring how stupid this whole situation was for the customers (and the tech support people like me who had to deal with it), note that in this case they simply got sent to a site by the same company, that failed to give them their email.

What if it hadn't been the same company? What if it was a phishing site? All these people who thought they had reached the right destination because they did a Google search for the site, instead of just typing the URL in their address bar have been typing their email credentials into someplace they shouldn't, giving them to who knows who.

Re:Makes Sense

[SeaFox]

I doubt Google would like to be so blatant as the Great Firewall of China, if you search for a particular site you'll find it. If you're only vaguely close though it might end up on page 10 instead of page 2.

This is all they have to do really. I know I said Google could remove the listings from their index, but they could also bump them way down the list just as easily. Of the people who depend on Google to find everything for them, how many do you think are patient enough to look through more than the first couple pages of results? There might as well not be more than three pages of results displayed. Same result -- but plausible deniability ("We didn't remove the site. It's still there, see? Right on page eighteen! The algorithm is what decides how things are displayed, we don't influence it.")

Google needs to appear neutral, they're just an action house selling off adwords to the highest bidder while displaying whatever search results their robots have found. If they start messing with that image though obviously taking sides they'll lose far more business than they gain. Google is now to online marketing what lawyers are to lawsuits, no matter what side wins they always get paid. They'd have to be really, really dense to mess with that.

It doesn't have to be Google themselves. That's what Googlebombing and SEO is all about -- making sure it's not the most relevant results that are displayed, but the ones the purchaser of the service wants to have come up, when certain keywords are typed in.

If you type the actual address in the address bar and it is parsed as a URL by the bar -- you're going to get what you want, unless there's DNS poisoning going on. There's little room for someone to influence what you get for their personal gain.

Re:Makes Sense

[Guybrush_T]

You shouldn't trust PageRank to keep you out of danger.

You shouldn't, I agree. But I can't blame people because they use it : it is the most efficient tool I know of (95% of the time, the site I'm looking for is in the first 3 results).

Re:Makes Sense

[martin-boundary]

The flip side is the rights of say Blogger users. If I post photo X as a blogger user, it should be up to me to decide if I want to take it down or not, not Google (except maybe in extreme cases, of which this doesn't seem to fall into).

Uhm, no. That's not how it works, and this isn't a new problem either. Every author in the history of mankind has faced a choice on how to publish their work.

Blogger is the publisher of the blog posts, and can decide to publish them or not. This includes removing the posts from their servers at any time. The correct response is to tell the blog author to not be a cheapskate, and if he wants to have complete control over his blog he should publish it himself, on his own server. Then Blogger can't do anything about it, and the legal takedowns have to go to him. None of this is rocket science, and moreover there's plenty of Free Software to help people set up their own blogs.

This is the flipside of putting stuff in the Cloud, you're no longer the owner of your own stuff. Nothing to see here, guy makes a bargain with the devil, then regrets it later.

Re:Makes Sense

[gtall]

These are lawyers; of course they go where the money is. Yachts are not cheap, and the glory of screwing Google would do wonders for their law firms.

Re:Makes Sense

[gnasher719]

So Apple fails to provide sufficient security of photos uploaded to its iCloud service, and Google is the one that gets sued. Lawyers at work!

Any evidence for the first part? Any evidence that any photos were taken from iCloud by a person who didn't have the credentials that the account holder required?

Re:Makes Sense

[Xest]

The problem Google has it's that it's not just acting as someone's bank, it's profiting from the content via ads, and that opens up a fair argument of complicity.

I'm not about to judge as to whether that means it deserves to bear all responsibility for content- certainly I think it's unrealistic that it should have to scour all it's servers and make a judgement on whether every bit of content is or isn't there legally, but I don't think it's unreasonable that if someone points it to a specific bit of infringing content, that given that it both hosts the content, and profits from the content, that it should have to take it down, else I don't really see how Google can argue against the suggestion that it's knowingly profiting from illegal content at that point - if it's hosting the content, providing access to the content, and the content is known to be illegal, and it continues to host and provide access to it, then surely it's pretty clear cut that it's intentionally profiting from illegally provided content?

But I think that's the key thing here, it has to be knowingly doing so. That puts the onus on the alleged victim to put the effort it and make it clear to Google that the content is not being legally distributed - and even there Google should have recourse to get the courts to rule if it's not certain and should be protected until the courts have decided, but it most definitely should not put the onus on Google to try and figure out what content is illegal.

Your analogy would be better phrased as someone having stolen money from you, stored it in a bank and the bank is profiting off that cash by investing it, and continues to do so and refuses to hand it over even when it's been made clear to the bank that that money has been obtained illegally. In that case yes, I think the bank absolutely can no longer pay the innocent party - once it's been informed of alleged or proven illegality then it has a responsibility to investigate and act.

As for the demands of $100m? well, that's a different issue - that's just the US' stupid sue everyone for everything culture.

So as for this particular case, if they've given Google specific URLs and Google hasn't acted then apart from their stupid financial demands then I don't think they're really much in the wrong. If they've just blanket told Google to scour every inch of their server and make arbitrary judgements on legality then these folks should be told to go screw themselves or to come back when they have something more concrete.

So all in all, I think this sounds like it's probably a stupid case, but that doesn't mean Google should necessarily be given a get out of jail free card from knowingly profiting from illegally hosted content- there has to be at least some degree of responsibility held by them to act if genuinely and reasonably informed.

Re:Makes Sense

[Xest]

"This is more true than it should be. There's a whole generation of people using the Internet who literally don't know how to browse to a website directly. They don't know how an address bar works, and go to google to look up whatever they want."

To be fair, that's actually in part Google's fault. On my Android phone now Chrome has completely merged the Google search box with the URL bar, they are now one and the same, there is no longer an explicit distinction there between entering a URL and searching on Google.

Re:Makes Sense

[IamTheRealMike]

There's a whole generation of people using the Internet who literally don't know how to browse to a website directly ..... And browser makers increasing trend to monkeying with the address bar's function only makes it worse.

Wait, which is it? Do you want browser makers to try and fix the address bar so more people know how to use it, or do you want to preserve the status quo?

I'd prefer browser makers to radically step up the level of monkeying with the address bar. The address bar is stupid. It's easily the worst part of the web's entire design and has given us a generation of phishing sites and other crap that exploit the fact that web browsers/apps basically dump a part of their internal memory state onto the user interface. No other app does this ..... because it's stupid.

Re:Makes Sense

[Bogtha]

If I post photo X as a blogger user, it should be up to me to decide if I want to take it down or not, not Google

Not if you aren't the copyright holder, don't have a license to publish copies from the copyright holder, and Google receives a valid DMCA request.

Sue the Blogger user if you don't like their content, not Google.

Google are only protected from copyright infringement liability if they take action when they receive DMCA requests. If they don't, then they aren't protected by the safe harbour provisions of the DMCA.

Re:Makes Sense

[T.E.D.]

The problem with suing people who have lots of money is that they can afford good lawyers - and it shouldn't take a very good lawyer to get something this stupid thrown out of court.

You I might think so. However, Google has been losing cases very much like this one in Europe. Over there they now have to, on demand, remove search results involving any person who asks them to do so.

One thing we have to realize is that while your typical non-tech "muggle" might have a laughably wrong view of how the Internet works, in the real world they are the ones who decide what the laws are.

Re:Makes Sense

[pem]

Maybe but Google is no more at fault for that than the phone companies are for texting while driving.

This is damning with faint praise.

Phone texting is the direct descendant of phone conversations.

Do you realize how much hard technical work went into making cell-tower handoff work seamlessly at highway speeds? Do you think the phone companies did that merely to capture revenue from the conversations the passengers were having?

Re:Makes Sense

[pem]

What if it hadn't been the same company? What if it was a phishing site?

Google's actually pretty darn good about warning about phishing. Which means that the usual warning you get from them is extremely helpful, especially in comparison to the complete lack of warning you would ever get from typing raw URLs into the browser.

All these people who thought they had reached the right destination

Why should google cater to companies that are so technically backward that they can't figure out how to unify their email portals?

If I were one of your company's customers, I would rightfully be blaming you, not google, for your inability to make google understand how I should get to my email.

Re:Makes Sense

[nedlohs]

DNS predate URLs. So no DNS did not "then" come up.

Re:Makes Sense

[Stan92057]

They don't know how an address bar works

I disagree, reason, misspelling. its a huge pain in the ass and people are being taken advantage of by making mistakes in the address bar. I use links for every thing I search nothing in the address bar I type nothing in the address bar and guess what? I don't get hijacked. The only safe way to search is by using Google or Duckduckgo which is my default search provider btw. You may say learn to spell better I say don't take advantage of peoples mistakes to make money.

Re:Makes Sense

[GuB-42]

in Europe

Google is a US company, so I guess they were at a disadvantage compared to L.A.

Re:Makes Sense

[SeaFox]

If I were one of your company's customers, I would rightfully be blaming you, not google, for your inability to make google understand how I should get to my email.

Jesus Christ, did you read what you just wrote? Google Search exists to help people find what they're looking for, and you're saying it's our job to tell Google how to help people find our site? No. It's Google's job to do that. Their whole search premise is based on this idea they have spiders crawling the Net, building a comprehensive index of everything on it. This a public website, we aren't hiding it or anything. If Google can''t locate it when they have applications on users phones and computers that are literally watching where they go online, it's their fault.

If people want to find our web mail portal they can come to the website we print on their damn bill, or they can call and ask us how to get to it. They might miss us, though. We're only open 24 hours a day. Hey, we'll even tell them how to set up their email in a client so they don't even have to worry about finding a website or remembering their login -- their email will magically appear from clicking an icon.

Re:Makes Sense

[omnichad]

Google is now mostly an Irish company with its headquarters in the US. Thanks to their tax haven, they have a substantial EU presence.

Re:Makes Sense

[david_thornley]

DMCA compliance means that the hosting site has no liability for copyright violations. If the pictures are illegal for other reasons, I'm not nearly as sure about safe harbor provisions.

Re:Makes Sense

[SeaFox]

Wait, which is it? Do you want browser makers to try and fix the address bar so more people know how to use it, or do you want to preserve the status quo?

I want them to fix the address bar so more people know how to use it, but that's not what they're doing. They're trying to make it into a combination address bar and history/web search box, and they're making it harder and harder to actually use it as the former for business reasons.

I have talked to people who are unable to reach the gateway of their DSL router to make changes to it, because every time they type the gateway IP into the address bar, even if they jut hit [enter], it runs the string through Bing (or one of dozen other sites), instead of trying to go there. They can only get pages of search results that contain the IP address (usually help pages from router makers), and the results page, nor the browser interface offer an easy to find way of telling the browser to go right to the IP. I have to have these people pull up a Run box on Windows in order to go right there.

Re:Makes Sense

[SeaFox]

I know, and that's part of the problem. Internet Explorer used to have a separate "Search" and "Go" button on the right side of the menu bar so you could choose which action was performed. Not anymore. And I'm seeing more and more cases where simply hitting the enter key after entering a URL actually does search, leaving it a mystery if it's even possible to go right to the site anymore.

Re:Makes Sense

[uninformedLuddite]

Ah well, at least that older generation is dying off and being replaced by the web-savvy youngsters. :)

The vast majority aren't web savvy they are mostly slack jawed morons who think that facebook and twitter IS the Internet.

Re:Makes Sense

[cfsops]

While I agree in principle that someone should be responsible for what they post, I agree much more strongly with the notion that, if you don't want nude pictures of yourself distributed across the net, then don't fucking take nude pictures of yourself. And certainly don't act the butt-hurt "victim" when they get loose.

Re:Makes Sense

[NewYork]

But they sued Napster.

Re:Makes Sense

[pem]

Jesus Christ, did you read what you just wrote?

Why, yes, yes, I did.

Google Search exists to help people find what they're looking for,

There's your problem, right there. Google exists to make money. They do this by doing a good enough job to make most people use them first for search. If you think that google exists to make your job as a website administrator easier, then you've got a huge sense of misplaced entitlement.

and you're saying it's our job to tell Google how to help people find our site?

There seems to be a bit of projection going on here -- you're getting on my case for not reading what I wrote, then turning around and claiming I wrote things that I didn't.

But even though I never wrote that, if it's your job to help your customers find your site, and a lot of your customers are miffed (and complaining, and defecting and/or wasting your time) because they can't find you through google, then (assuming 2+2 still equals 4) yes, of course, it behooves you to spend a bit of time to understand google's crawler well enough to make sure that google dumps your customers on the page you'd like to see them on.

For example, if it were my site, the very first thing I would do is check to make sure that I didn't have a misconfigured robots.txt anywhere in the search path. Then I would figure out what, if anything, google is actually serving from that site (using the site: option in the search), and then I would google (yes, the devil!) for SEO techniques for my exact situation. Finally, if I figured out that google really did have difficulty reconciling two different email web pages for the same domain, then I would probably chalk it up to competence, rather than incompetence -- on a web host, figuring out the primary webmail portal and always directing to that could probably cut down on a lot of phishing attacks -- and then either unify the webmail portals, or put a link from one to the other, or separate the domains, or anything else that was required to prove to google that my second webportal wasn't just a phishing site.

But since you're entitled to google doing all your shit for you even though you're not paying them to babysit your customers, you probably can't be bothered to do any of that stuff.

If people want to find our web mail portal they can come to the website we print on their damn bill, or they can call and ask us how to get to it.

That's a perfectly lovely attitude, and I wish you and your company all the success in life you both deserve.

Re:Makes Sense

[ArmoredDragon]

Do you realize how much hard technical work went into making cell-tower handoff work seamlessly at highway speeds?

For texting? Not much.

Talking on the phone while driving however doesn't require taking your eyes off of the road any more than say changing radio stations. I have an android phone that I frequently answer without even looking at it (while driving and while not driving.) It's also no more dangerous than talking to other people in the car.

Do you think the phone companies did that merely to capture revenue from the conversations the passengers were having?

Regardless, I'm not sure how having that feature and even making that feature be a premium is somehow a bad thing. If anything it tells you how far the phone company is willing to bend over backwards to keep you as a customer.

Re:Makes Sense

[abhisri]

I think the evidence was posted ALL over the internet, if you were paying attention.

Girls

[Anonymous Coward]

You're nudie pics ain't even worth a million. Seriously, your bodies aren't that hot. Get over yourselves.

Re:Girls

[umafuckit]

Dude, they're not suing for sales lost on their cum shot photos.

Re:Girls

[arth1]

You're nudie

No, I'm not. Wearing PJs, but what's it to you?

Re:Girls

[rtb61]

'Erm' yeah right that'll be the day. As long as those egoistic douche nozels can afford lawyers they'll be spending up big on them to feed their own egos. Crap like their own name is unique and special and all those others thousands who share it should be denied internet access to it and should be forced to change it. Those professional liars need to wake up to themselves, that great egoistic ride of pseudo celebrity marketing is coming to a welcomed end as the old mass media channels are being diluted on the internet to 'well' put it bluntly "pissing in a river".

Possible?

[man_ls]

I remember reading somewhere that most pornography can't be copyrighted, because "obscene materials" aren't eligible for copyright protection. Is that still true?

Re:Possible?

[aitikin]

Pretty sure you're in the wrong there bub. About the only things that come to mind are choreography and fashion designs. Otherwise, most things are copyrightable.

Re: Possible?

[AvitarX]

I thought obscene materials were illegal ?

Re: Possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought obscene materials were illegal ?

In the middle east you mean?

Re:Possible?

[lgw]

You can't copyright scents, or colors. You can't copyright instructions, such as game rules or recipes (though you can copyright some specific presentations of them). You can't copyright anything made without human creative input - no machine writing, no photographs where there's not even the slimmest claim of artistic composition or whatever.

Also, of recent note: monkey selfies have no copyright protection, nor presumably would any other picture taken by monkeys no matter how interesting.

But porn is certainly covered. There was a huge wave of porn-related copyright trolls recently.

Re: Possible?

[mythosaz]

It's circular, of course.

This is why we had 16 year old strippers in some states. You see, topless dancing isn't obscene and sexual, since those things are illegal. Since they're neither obscene or sexual, there's no reason that any person of legal working age couldn't do them.

Obscenity is illegal.
Pornography is legal, unless it becomes obscene.
If you want to know the difference, ask Max Hardcore's lawyers.

Re:Possible?

[Rennt]

Depends on where you live. California circuit law holds that obscene works do not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, so cannot be protected by copyright as defined in the constitution.

Re: Possible?

[Curunir_wolf]

I thought obscene materials were illegal ?

Not necessarily, but they could be unlawful. Yes, there is a difference. So be careful what you ask for. If last-mile ISPs get categorized as "common carriers" (like the current wave of "'net neutrality" activists are asking for), then only "lawful content" as well as "lawful network traffic" will be allowed. You will be quite surprised what the FCC decides out of that regulation is going to be completely banned.

Be very careful.

Re: Possible?

[freeze128]

Have you seen some of the camera work in porn? I think they already do.

Re:Possible?

[AgNO3]

Well lucky or unluckily then the supremacy clause takes president and its covered by US copyright. Unless the US copyright office rejected their copyright which they most likely didn't do.

Re:Possible?

[julesh]

It doesn't matter because "nude" is not porn. Porn is sometimes defined inexactly by that "you know it when you see it" trope, but usually it entails being created for prurient interest - and nude selfies don't count as porn.

Really? Do you have any kind of reference to back that assertion up, or are you just making this shit up as you go along? Why is a "selfie" classified any differently to, say, a photo taken to be included in an adult magazine, e.g. Playboy, which I think most people would classify as "soft porn"?

I'll completely agree that nude and porn are not equivalent, but there's a significant overlap, and at least some photos of the type we're talking about is included in that.

Re:Possible?

[tehcyder]

On that basis, 99% of movies, books, music and games wouldn't be covered by copyright either, as they certainly don't promote the progress of science, and are neither useful nor art.

Re:Possible?

[tehcyder]

It doesn't matter because "nude" is not porn. Porn is sometimes defined inexactly by that "you know it when you see it" trope, but usually it entails being created for prurient interest - and nude selfies don't count as porn.

So you live in a world where people take nude selfies purely as a mode of artistic expression?

Re:Possible?

[MobyDisk]

no machine writing, no photographs where there's not even the slimmest claim of artistic composition or whatever.

This is not true in the US or the UK. As an example, Wolfram Alpha copyrights all its output.
http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/...

Re:Possible?

[rwise2112]

Depends on where you live. California circuit law holds that obscene works do not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, so cannot be protected by copyright as defined in the constitution.

Who decides what's obscene? According to millions of Americans, Janet Jackson was obscene when she had her Superbowl "wardrobe malfunction". Most of the rest of the world didn't really care.

Re: Possible?

[Curunir_wolf]

If that was remotely true then sites like RedTube wouldn't be campaigning for Net Neutrality, but I'm sure some dumbass on Slashdot understands this better than their lawyers.

If "all lawful content" must be treated equally, wouldn't that mean the FCC would ban co-location of devices like the NetFlix boxes and Google caching servers? They put those things into ISP data centers for free, now, so they can serve up content faster without using expensive CDNs and WAN links. Why would that be allowed under a common carrier rule? After all, the smaller guys (like, say, RedTube), can't afford that kind of roll-out of caching servers, so why wouldn't they be banned?

Re:Possible?

[HornWumpus]

Esquire was once 'porn', no more.

Playboy was once 'porn', no more.

Hustler is still porn. Based on Larry Flint's net worth vs. Old what's his name there is more money in porn.

Not named?

[ClaraBow]

Can you sue without naming whose bare ass is online?

Re:Not named?

[ComputersKai]

Good point. It's like the lawyer is just randomly suing Google for hosting inappropriate pictures.

Re:Not named?

[ComputersKai]

Good point. It's like the lawyer is just randomly suing Google for hosting inappropriate pictures.

Correction. Not necessarily hosting, but providing a method to obtain access to those images.

Re:Not named?

[fibonacci8]

Good point. It's like the lawyer is just randomly suing Google for hosting inappropriate pictures.

Correction. Not necessarily hosting, but providing a method to obtain access to those images.

Time to sue the electricity providers then?

In other news

[ihtoit]

Ford sued by families of hit-n-run victims, Colt sued by families of suicide-by-cops, and McDonald's sued for making kids obese.

Re:In other news

[easyTree]

Error: Could not parse car analogy.

Re:In other news

[jandersen]

Ford sued by families of hit-n-run victims, Colt sued by families of suicide-by-cops, and McDonald's sued for making kids obese.

In a country where you can find warnings like this (from http://www.dumbwarnings.com/

This product not intended for use as a dental drill.
Dremel Electric Rotary Tool

In this context, it is unrealistic to expect Ford or Colt to be sued for the incompetence or malice of their customers?

Re:In other news

[SeaFox]

Ford sued by families of hit-n-run victims, Colt sued by families of suicide-by-cops, and McDonald's sued for making kids obese.

Um...
http://articles.latimes.com/20...

Re:In other news

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Politics is religion in all the important, and evil, power-grabbing, meme-spreading ways.

This is why I'm libertarian -- the atheism of politics. You don't get to lord over others regardless of cool-sounding patter about gods or men, and leave others alone over it.

Oop, feel that rage in you as you read that? On their identicality, I rest my case, Zeus-worshipper.

Re:In other news

[turp182]

Thanks for the Dumb Warnings website, nice laugh on a Friday morning.

I may have to make a submission to them, I noticed that fireplace logs always say "Warning: Flammable".

Re:In other news

[Kielistic]

This is why I'm libertarian -- the atheism of politics.

In no way shape or form is that true. Libertarianism requires all kinds of beliefs and assertions. The atheism of politics is "apolitical".

Stupid move, celebrity

[jdastrup]

Considering celebrities are often all about their image, this isn't going to make them look good. First of all, it's stupid. It's almost biting the hand that feeds them. They gain popularity through Google, and now they want to sue Google? And it's obviously not Google's fault, so they look stupid. Also makes them look like they are out just for the money. Really stupid move.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[MitchDev]

Google's not hosting the pics, only finding who does have them.

If anything, these stupid, worthless, fucking primadonnas should be praising Google for helping find the people actually hosting the pics....

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[Stan92057]

"Google sites like BlogSpot and YouTube four weeks after the firm ordered them taken down."

Um Google owns the Blogger site so ya they are hosting the images. So they are making money from the images because they draw more people and that means more ads placed, more ads clicked, more ads sold. Bit of a women hater hu?

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[SeaFox]

Um Google owns the Blogger site so ya they are hosting the images. So they are making money from the images because they draw more people and that means more ads placed, more ads clicked, more ads sold. Bit of a women hater hu?

Were DMCA requests filed against the specific web pages hosting those pics? Or did they file a request for the images to be taken down from one person's blog, and assume that request runs to perpetuity for all future occurrences of the same image? Some people think Google actively monitors all the content on their services and will see the files automatically.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it simply keeps their names in the news. And whenever there is a "development" in the lawsuit, their names will be mentioned again. You know the old adage about PR.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[easyTree]

Is this a deliberate attempt to invoke the Streisand Effect?

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[ThatsMyNick]

Some (many?) of them did not want to famous. They just wanted to be actors and be good at it.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[Stan92057]

no its not part of being famous. Why the hate man?

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[Stan92057]

My answer is, i don't have a clue. that doesn't change what i said at all.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[Tom]

This is the strange part of everything.

Why would you even want to have private nude pictures of your favorite celebrity? If you have more than three working brain cells, you know that in real life they look nothing like what you expect from movies, magazine covers and photoshops^H^H^Hshoots.

Maybe the real reason they're upset is not that they're naked, but a combination of "there's pictures of me that I didn't get paid for" and "people need to keep their false image of me, not understand that half of them look just as good as me when I'm without make-up, stylist and professional photographer".

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[MitchDev]

Moron, part of being an actor is being famous. ESPECIALLY if you are a Hollywood actor and not just some small town stage actor...

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[MitchDev]

Yes it is. You people top know who you are and be interested in you, you are a fame-whore.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[MitchDev]

Ugh, wrong button, These actors and actresses want people to know who they are and be interested in them. Bunch of stupid fame-whores.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[swb]

Maybe the real reason they're upset is not that they're naked, but a combination of "there's pictures of me that I didn't get paid for" and "people need to keep their false image of me, not understand that half of them look just as good as me when I'm without make-up, stylist and professional photographer".

This!

I really believe that a lot of this has nothing to do with the celebrities being "ashamed" as much as it has to do with a desire to control their image, whether for professional advantage, sheer narcissism or some combination of both.

Jennifer Lawrence has been in dozens of revealing outfits, photoshoots, etc. It's not like she's some kind of prim and demure church lady who showers in the dark -- she's well aware of her physique and the professional value of the allure of showing skin and how much she shows.

That she hasn't done an explicitly nude scene seems less a question of her morals or her values than a question of how much she can wring out of merely appearing partially nude or establishes her "artistic" credentials before she does appear nude and re-invigorates her brand. It's not like only hack untalented actresses appear nude in films -- more than a few Oscar-winning and critically acclaimed actresses have done extensive nudity.

I don't think the nudity is the problem, it's that it spoils the long-term "reveal". The only actual embarrassment is the revelation of the depth of their self-absorption and narcissism they demonstrate in these photos.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[Stan92057]

You sound just like my brother. I don't need another hater, relax man those actors don't give a flying pigs ass about you so don't waste your time hating.

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[Tom]

I don't think the nudity is the problem, it's that it spoils the long-term "reveal".

This is another part I don't get. Unless you're doing kid movies, everyone in your audience has seen enough human being naked to know exactly what to expect. What's so special about nude scenes in movies, nude picture and all this skin fixation? Is it another american prude thing that us europeans will never understand?

Re:Stupid move, celebrity

[swb]

I think it boils down to career longevity.

Hollywood largely treats women as disposable, and translating being today's 'it' girl into a career that doesn't slide into B movies and made-for-TV tearjerkers by the time you're in your thirties is a challenge.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's career advice that says to save doing nudity until either you've firmly established your artistic credentials or you need that publicity-boosting exposure from doing full-frontal in an "artistic" film.

Showing up naked in a bunch of internet photos upends this strategy.

Google confronts their accusers

[turkeydance]

maybe there is justice, after all.

Yes google is the badguy

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like apple is the only one really worth going after since they failed at brute force protection.
but hey lets just shotgun sue and see if we can get way the fuck richer.

fuck you hollywood whores

Re:Yes google is the badguy

[MitchDev]

A-fucking-men!

Re:Yes google is the badguy

[Dins]

+1 ...

Re:Yes google is the badguy

[david_thornley]

It's not clear that this was Apple's failure. The pictures may have been obtained by exploiting obvious passwords and/or security questions.

Suspicious law firm?

[pkinetics]

Claim to be filling on behalf of "celebs" in hopes of actually drawing celebs to actually sign up. Throw a number so large out there the celebs will think "Hey, I can benefit from this."

Law firm may not have even a single client yet. Threatening to sue is not the same as actually filling.

Re:Suspicious law firm?

[rahvin112]

Real Celebrities don't do anything. They call their agent (actually they have their assistant call their agent). The agent or their staff generally has a few brain cells to rub together and does something sensible then tells the celebrity they did something about it and the issue goes away because the celebrity has the attention span of a hyperactive 2 year old who just ate a pound of candy.

Occasionally the celebrity is a primadonna or insists on doing things themselves or forces their agent to do something the agent advised against. Those cases usually end up being like when Streisand tried to have pictures of her home removed from the internet and coined an entire phrase for what happens when you try to use a court to censor the internet (namely the Streisand effect). Usually after doing something like this a couple times the celebrity learns to trust that their agent is smarter than them and starts listening to them and then they become like the rest of the celebrities.

As you said, lawyers who run around tossing around 100 million dollar figures and talk about suing Google (who has the money to drag the case out for a decade, just for spite) don't actually represent real celebrities, though they may represent some hack. Lawyers that represent real celebrities are hired by the agent and are totally professional. They'll send nice nonthreatening letters and ask to meet with the Google executives. Being the smooth talking devils they are they will likely convince Google's execs to do something even if it's nothing that will affect it. They will then bill the celebrity about $100K and say they did all that's legally possible and if the celebrity wants to do more they need a million dollar retainer and a contract and that they'll probably lose the case and cause a ton of bad publicity (which the Agent will tell them is totally stupid).

Obviously

[rossdee]

Google is supposed to reject all search strings that include the word 'nude'

Re:Obviously

[arth1]

Google is supposed to reject all search strings that include the word 'nude'

And that's the bare and naked truth.

Honestly, it would be better if they filtered out everything with the word "celebrity", including this post.

Re:Obviously

[budgenator]

Well I just googled "Nude celebrities" and got lots of hits, clicking the images button isn't exactly "Work Place Safe" either, maybe you have "safe search" turned on.

Re:Obviously

[Artifakt]

Google's chief way of restricting adult search terms is to deactivate autocomplete, so their engine will suddenly stop suggesting anything as the user types in certain cases. You can see this by slowly typing in "Linda Lovelace" - at some point the engine will be suggesting terms like "Luna Lovegood" that assume you may have misspelled something, but simply won't take the logical guess as you get closer to the end. This is not a system that is constantly updated with every new name in porn or every adult website, by any means, and Google relies a lot on websites self identifying. Hard core sites usually do, merely nude sites often don't bother to make it easier for the Google spiders.

Re:Obviously

[kylemonger]

Why not? Siri does. As an exercise, try to get Siri to find pictures of "nude women on the internet", something a monkey typing at random into a web browser could find. Siri draws a blank.

Re:Obviously

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The past few months, even searching for a porn star name yields no nude photos, even with safe turned off.

Google is becoming less usefilul.

why not apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

so why aren't they suing apple as the responsible party for the reason they got onto the internet in the first place? no let's sue google .... makes perfect cents to me.

Re:why not apple?

[master_kaos]

wwell maybe they scared that apple would ban their apple id rendering their iphone useless!

Re:why not apple?

[Anubis IV]

Agreed. Or, at the very least, sue Google for something that actually makes sense, such as allowing Google Drive accounts to be accessed by hackers as part of this attack. Dropbox, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others were all compromised during these attacks. Sue them for that reason, not for actually responding to takedown notices in a timely manner but being incapable of keeping up with people posting fresh copies.

Re:Why not Apple?

[John Bokma]

You mean Apple should sue the celebs? Hmmm....

Re:Why not Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well in part, because Apple devices were only the source of some of the images, around 40% (and iCloud would be a subset of those devices). The images have been aggregated over a period of at least 5-6 years from a wide variety of sources by multiple parties.

Also, in part, because from Apple's perspective, correct credentials were presented, and there's no evidence of a problem Apple's side other than it was only using a single authentication factor to access that data. (and that is defiantly a serious issue, and since this came out Apple has enabled it on more iCloud services than they had done previously. There's the second issue that Apple's two factor is opt in, with very likely a low take up rate. Its not clear if ANY of the people whose photos were leaked had 2 factor enabled on iCloud)

The speculation that brute forcing against Apple occurred is unconfirmed speculation, that Apple has denied. Given the laws in the US around disclosure, it would likely be illegal for them to deny if it was actually the case. (the fact that the vulnerability existed does not mean it was actually used in these cases)

Google's role here is more akin to being a fence, directing people to known stolen goods, after being specifically requested to cease such activities.

Re:Why not Apple?

[nytes]

People keep saying this, but I have yet to find anyone that can definitively say that all of that stuff came from iCloud, and not Dropbox, Google Drive, or Facebook..

Re:Why not Apple?

[swillden]

It didn't all come from Apple. The latest leaked photos include pictures of Kim Kardashian and she uses a blackberry and doesn't have an iCloud account.

So... what you're saying is that Apple hacked her blackberry in order to leak her photos? Dastardly indeed!

(Honestly, given the Kardashians' history, my first guess is that she leaked them herself in order not to be left out when all the other celebrity photos were retrieved from their hacked iCloud accounts.)

Re:Why not Apple?

[arth1]

It didn't all come from Apple. The latest leaked photos include pictures of Kim Kardashian and she uses a blackberry and doesn't have an iCloud account.

And that precludes one of her lovers from having or having had an iphone just how, exactly?

We don't know how the photos leaked (or didn't leak) yet. All that's certain is that they're targeting Google because Google has money. Even if they're not at fault, there's a good chance they'll settle.

Re:Why not Apple?

[Tom]

If you had actually read that EULA that you signify agreement with, you would have noticed that it says they are not liable for errors, bugs or basically anything else. Just like any EULA ever written.

Re:why not apple?

[julesh]

Or, at the very least, sue Google for something that actually makes sense, such as allowing Google Drive accounts to be accessed by hackers as part of this attack. Dropbox, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others were all compromised during these attacks.

Unfortunately for somebody contemplating such an action, AIUI these attacks were based either on guessing weak passwords, or using passwords that were leaked in hacks on other sites and were used on multiple sites. As all of these companies have a requirement to keep your password secure as part of their TOS, they can't be held responsible as the clients are in breach of contract.

Re:Why not Apple?

[dkman]

For storing porn on their cloud.
For making their cloud a hacker target
For using weak passwords
For the bad press their cloud got when hackers guessed the weak passwords and released the photos

not that any of it would stick

Re:Why not Apple?

[david_thornley]

If they're after Google because Google has money, why not sue Apple as well? Apple has more money, after all.

Why not Apple?

[hilather]

I'm pretty sure there is more of a case to be made in pointing the finger at the company that had the weak security controls which allowed this breach to happen. Just sayin...

Very suspicious...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea what clients they do or do not have, though I did find it odd that none were mentioned specifically. The writer of the article might be at fault for that, though.

I believe that they're making lots of noise to get Google to settle quietly. Google did respond to their DMCA requests, according to the statement I saw from this lawyer, but they claim this wasn't "fast enough" and other nonsense. Expecting them to police the internet is also nonsense, but they clearly are sharks looking for a payout or they'd go after the people *actually hosting* the images. Those people don't have money, though, so this guy doesn't care. He's trying to make an example and get a payout from what I can see.

In other news:

[nospam007]

Google prepared to throw away 10 billion dollar to crash said lawsuit.

Good luck threatening a company with $54B in cash

[JoeyRox]

Google has what amounts to unlimited resources, which they would assuredly use to defend this case because settling or losing would set a precedent that would cost them a lot more money in the long run.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Are those actual news items or made up? ...

I can't tell any more.

We understand

[Charliemopps]

The response from Google:

"We understand your concern and want to help! Unfortunately due to the technical limitations of... well... reality, we cannot eliminate these photos from existence. But still, we refuse to take part in this invations of your privacy and after much diligence we think we've found a solution to this problem. Hereafter searching for the names of any person found in this lawsuit will result in nothing. The term "Jennifer Lawrence" will be ignored in all searches hereafter as well as every other actress named in this suit. Thank you and happy Googling!"

 

Re:We understand

[mccoma]

To get the true impact correct, I think you need to change the last couple of lines to: "All pages containing the name of every actress / actor named in this suit will not be indexed and we will not pay Google Ad revenues on those pages so we don't financially benefit from any possible images. Thank you and happy Googling!"

I do sympathize with each and every actress and this must be a nightmare, but with all the security breaches on the internet (cards, SSN, etc.), how can you think your pictures would be safe? Worse, they are in an industry that treats its own techs (FX workers) with about the same respect that programmers get even if the movies that make them famous are not possible without them (see everything about "Life of Pi"). Why would data be safe?

Re:We understand

[TsuruchiBrian]

I do sympathize with each and every actress and this must be a nightmare

It probably is a nightmare for them. But really the problem is our own society. For some reason we decide to attach shame to the human body. In some countries a woman might be punished (often by her own family) for the shame of displaying her face in public. I'm sure many of those women actually do feel the shame they were intended to feel by their societies. Should they?

It is absolutely wrong to invade people's privacy. The level of shame you decide to feel after some of your body parts are seen *can* be up to you. This is not meant to exonerate the perpetrators or blame the victim. I feel like this attitude could be empowering to the victim.

Re:We understand

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, here is Google's actual response:

"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."

Re:We understand

[Kohlrabi82]

It probably is a nightmare for them. But really the problem is our own society.

It is a problem of society, but not in the way you describe it. It's a problem that people don't act like grown-ups and take responsibility for their decisions.

If I use a service by a company and trust them to upload my private photos to the internet and secure them, and said company is failing to do that and is breaking my trust, I should stop dealing with that company, or take the fight to them. It was my decision to trust that company, now I have to deal with it.

Further, if I decide to upload my private pictures to the internet I should know that something like that can always happen. If something is private I should just save the pictures at home or put them in a physical photo album. It was my decision to use cloud services, now I have to deal with it.

Re:We understand

[drinkypoo]

It is a problem of society, but not in the way you describe it. It's a problem that people don't act like grown-ups

Yes, we discussed that already. The people who shame the human body are not acting like grown-ups.

Re:We understand

[orgelspieler]

While I agree with you on the whole shame thing, I think people should absolutely have control over what parts of their body they want the rest of the planet to see. This cuts both ways: if a lady wants to walk around topless, that should be OK too. *crosses fingers*

This sort of reminds me of that case a couple of years ago when that guy bought his son a used Xbox or something for Christmas and it had porno on it. The kid was probably waaaaay more mortified and traumatized by his dad's disproportional response than by the actual event. It just seems that by sensationalizing everything, we're giving more power to the rabblerousers. Somebody cuts off somebody's head? I know! Let's make machetes illegal!

There are always ways to deflect something like this, to respond to it without giving power or credence to little shits. Jennifer Lawrence could have just said "Man, nice photoshopping job. It's sad you have such little social life that you have time to photoshop all these actresses."

Re:We understand

[TsuruchiBrian]

If you make physical pictures, they can always be stolen. Everything you own, physical or digital can be stolen.

The minutia of how much safer your physical house is, or how safe a physical safe is, compared to how safe the cloud is, is ultimately irrelevant. The internet could become safer with new technologies. Human beings will still be the weakest link in any security chain.

I must insist that the real societal problem is indeed the one I raised, and not the one you raised.

Re:We understand

[strikethree]

I am a bad person. I ran across a bundle of these pics the other day and decided to look at them.

Honestly, there was nothing terribly exciting or shameful about the pics. They were pictures of people doing what people do. A couple of the pics almost rose to the level of porn as did a couple of the .mov files... but meh. Again, why would anyone be shocked that beautiful people have sex and exhibit sexual desires? None of this is scandalous and I see none of the people any differently than I saw them before. I actually forgot most of their names already. I seem to recall... Kirsten Dunst being in about 4 pictures but I think they were just breast shots. Not a huge deal. We have already seen most of her breasts already, just the nipple being missing. Hell, she probably had a topless scene in one of her movies already anyways.

It is shameful that anyone would see the pictures as scandalous. Everyone who considers the pictures to be scandalous are either terrible terrible people or people who are boring victims of society. No, the only scandal here is that someone is breaking in to other peoples' accounts and grabbing personal information. I really should not have viewed the pictures myself. I just wanted to see what all the yelling and screaming was about. The yelling and screaming is about the wrong thing, the pictures, rather than the right thing, the invasion of privacy.

Who would google these one at a time?

[Snotnose]

Better to get them all via TPB or isohunt or some other torrent site.

Google, Google, Google, ...

[CaptainDork]

... why is it always Google? Momma always did like Google, best.

Where's all the OTHER search engines?

Re:Google, Google, Google, ...

[mjwx]

... why is it always Google? Momma always did like Google, best.

Where's all the OTHER search engines?

The same reason they dont sue 4chan or Reddit. They dont have money.

Google are an easy target in their eyes.

Re:Google, Google, Google, ...

[freeze128]

Then they should sue Internet Explorer.

Streissand Effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody?

Re:Good luck threatening a company with $54B in ca

[zr]

why would a lawyer ever threaten a company with no cash? talk about unprecedented..

the "celebs" published the pictures, not Google

[dltaylor]

IMO, as soon as those photos are on ANY Inernet-facing device ('phone, WiFi-equipped camera, "cloud", ...) they are already published. You want to keep some private "momentos", take them on a non-WiFi camera, or better yet, film, and store the data in a lockbox, sharing it only to also not-Internet-connected devices.

If it is accessable from the 'net, as all smart cameras, in-home on-line cameras, and the cloud are known to be, then you have already published them to the world.

Re:the "celebs" published the pictures, not Google

[TsuruchiBrian]

I wouldn't say this is technically true, but it is probably a good idea to act is if it were, like treating every gun as if it were loaded.

Hardly

[s.petry]

Google removed the pictures every time they received a take down notice, and continues to do so when people create new accounts and upload new copies. What is not being removed are news stories (including blogger reports) that _show_ some of these images in redacted form.

This claim is to make money and promote people, not about any real harm. A secondary effect is to get back to promoting internet censorship. I'm guessing that the same scum involved in framing 4chan to promote internet censorship is involved here somewhere. If this case ever makes it to court the prosecution should be laughed away and have to pay Google's legal expenses.

Those lawyers make it sound so simple

[nichogenius]

So, stupid celebrities use poor judgment on their password habits. Some idiot manages to gain access to their accounts on Apple's servers... and now GOOGLE GETS THE BLAME?!!! Imagine this. You are a programmer or system administrator working at Google... you are tasked with removing all instances of leaked nude photos of these X celebrities from ALL Google hosted servers. Well, that's not too hard right? Let's just view every last youtube video one by one and make sure that none of them contain offending images... Not exactly easy. Okay, what about just the movies uploaded after the leak... still not easy or feasible. Okay, let's tell the computers how to do it with a fancy nude detecting face matching algorithm... that isn't exactly a weekend project. Now consider all of the photos that Google hosts. You have to filter them too. Oh, while you are at it, figure out how to program Google's web crawler bots to detect images of these certain naked celebrities on all of the sites on the internet and blacklist each site it finds... REALLY?!! This is an insane amount of responsibility to throw at someone who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE INITIAL LEAK!!! Go blame Apple for not cross checking for same email address and password across multiple sites as it was APPLE who was hosting the offending material. Also, at the end of the day, this is the celebrities' fault for not being smart about their passwords.

Re:Those lawyers make it sound so simple

[budgenator]

Just use tineye a reverse image search engine, just upload an image and it matches it to any that they've found while crawling the web.

Re:Good luck threatening a company with $54B in ca

[JoeyRox]

Less cash means the company has more to lose if it fights and thus would be more amenable to greenmail. Plus there are insurance policies.

proof this is real?

[rubycodez]

link to the pics or it didn't happen

No Way Possible

[JimSadler]

Once items are on the net they are next to impossible to eliminate. So google has people who upload photos faster than they can be found and taken down. Google should sue in retalliation as any suit that requires an impossible action is obviously a defective claim.

How much -

[no-body]

100 Millions for pictures of human bodies?
Don't they get free publicity, something those people crave for desperately.

Maybe it's the augmentation - shaved on various places,, silicon-filled, painted over and perhaps photohopped.

Strange...

Too Bad

[morgauxo]

Big deal, they will be on Freenet forever.

Too bad they really weren't very attractive pictures!

Re:Too Bad

[WorBlux]

Freenet will eventually lose data. However it can be re-published if they are lost.

There's no going back...

[jmcarman]

It seems these people need to learn that once something's on the internet, there's no taking it back. You can take down site after site, someone will have a copy sitting on a server in a forgotten corner of the world 10 years from now.

I need a link

[Curunir_wolf]

Pictures or it didn't happen!

"after the firm ordered them taken down"

[ayesnymous]

Since when does the law firm have sovereignty over Google? And why not sue Bing too?

What's the argument?

[BrennanPratt]

Is this some right to publicity bullshit or are they claiming copyright? Because unless all those pictures were selfies, the celebrity doesn't actually own the copyright. Hope they secured all the rights from every third party before threatening to exercise those rights :/

Re:Streissand Effect

[z0idberg]

I am sure the 3 people on the planet who haven't heard about this so far will now know after reading about a potential court case.

Google dot yeah!

[chasm22]

Hey I admit to what everyone else here has done already. And just to see how effective and responsive Google has been I just googled Kaley Christine Cuoco(again). All that I can say is Google is really, really afraid of the lawsuit potential or they have decided to re-engage in their do no evil philosophy. Either way, I didn't find anything in the images that could be called nude. Unlike several weeks ago when I really understood what the big bang theory is.

Who has opt-out 2-factor auth?

[rsborg]

There's the second issue that Apple's two factor is opt in, with very likely a low take up rate

For basic accounts, please name a major cloud provider that has 2-factor auth as default. Google definitely doesn't, and neither do Facebook, Microsoft, or Amazon.

2-factor auth is simply a pain in the ass - especially for the non-digerati out there.

Re:Who has opt-out 2-factor auth?

[gnasher719]

For basic accounts, please name a major cloud provider that has 2-factor auth as default. Google definitely doesn't, and neither do Facebook, Microsoft, or Amazon.

The problem with 2 factor auth, or any scheme trying to make it harder for hackers to get in, is that it is harder for the legitimate user to get in, and in some cases impossible. And since there was a case a year ago where someone got access to someone else's account by socially engineering Apple staff, that is made impossible. Problem is that if it is made impossible for Apple to give access to your account to a stranger who very convincingly pretends to be you, then it is also impossible for Apple to give access to your account to you, if you manage to lose it.

Wrong target?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if I got it correctly. The photos were stored on Apple's iCloud service and stolen from there, but they sue Google for allowing you to find these leaked images just like any other search engine could... Am I missing something or why isn't Apple the focus here? The lawsuit would make more sense like that, though would still most likely fail...

Re:Wrong target?

[beefoot]

Don't you know bullies pick their victim? Would they pick someone who is bigger and badder than them?

Re:To quote my favorite movie...

[julesh]

"The only way to stop it, is to shut down the internet. Basically cut power to every networked hard drive on Earth." - _Transcendence_

And even then you'll fail. Ever heard of offline backups? :)

Makes Sense

[aaaaaaargh!]

You've been modded funny but unfortunately what you've said is true. :-(

Re:Indeed. Let's also sue the white pages...

[miknix]

Indeed. Let's also sue the white pages because they list the phone numbers of people that do prostitution and sell drugs.

Am I missing something here?

[Phoenix]

iCloud is Apple's version of cloud storage.

Google Drive is Google's

How in the name of Satan's sweaty jock strap is Google responsible for some problem with Apple's cloud? What am I missing here?

Re:Am I missing something here?

[SuiteSisterMary]

People stole pictures from iCloud. They then uploaded them to Google-run sites. Those pictures are still available on said Google-run sites, despite Google having been told to take them down. Hence, bad Google for being in ongoing non-compliance with a court order.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Sorry, not a court order, an order from a private law firm. "take them down, or we'll sue.' They're still there.

Too Fucking Bad

[oh_my_080980980]

That's like suing the highway for a traffic accident

Yeah that'll help

[J'raxis]

And they exist on search engines like The Pirate Bay, with thousands of people seeding the actual torrents. So yeah, I'm sure this lawsuit will be effective in taking down all those photos.