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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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".

Not named?

[ClaraBow]

Can you sue without naming whose bare ass is online?

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.

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

[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

[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.

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

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).

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.

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

[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

[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: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: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.

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.

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: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.)

I need a link

[Curunir_wolf]

Pictures or it didn't happen!

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.

Re: Possible?

[freeze128]

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

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.

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: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.