Good for them. Looks like several celebrity victims involved in the iCloud photo scandal have banned together.
Marty Singer, reportedly representing over a dozen celebrities, is excoriating Google in a letter that threatens a $100 million lawsuit. (Although Singer was silent about exactly whom he was representing, records of takedown requests indicate he’s challenging Google’s conduct on behalf of Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst and Kate Upton.)
The letter calls out “Google’s despicable, reprehensible conduct in not only failing to act expeditiously and responsibly to remove the Images, but in knowingly accommodating, facilitating and perpetuating the unlawful conduct.”
According to Singer, Google hasn’t been expeditiously removing owned work from its platforms pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The letter says that other ISPs including Twitter have accommodated takedown demands, but that “Google, one of the largest ISPs in the world, with vast resources and a huge support staff, generating multimillions of dollars in revenues on a daily basis, has recklessly allowed these blatant violations to continue in conscious disregard of our clients’ rights.”
If your wives, daughters or relatives were the victims of such blatant violations of basic human rights, surely you would take appropriate action,” states the letter. “But because the victims are celebrities with valuable publicity rights, you do nothing – – nothing but collect millions of dollars in advertising revenue from your co-conspirator advertising partners as you seek to capitalize on this scandal rather than quash it. Like the NFL, which turned a blind eye while its players assaulted and victimized women and children, Google has turned a blind eye while its sites repeatedly exploit and victimize these women.
A Google spokesperson has provided an official 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.”
Google says that it is removing photos because they represent violations of its community guidelines with respect to nudity and privacy violations. The web giant says its turnaround is generally hours, not weeks.
My two-cents: Did I not say these women would eventually come together? The internet represents a playground where solid laws have yet to be created. Perhaps when giants like Google start to feel the pain, shit will roll down hill and these sites with laxed posting rules, will straighten up and respect privacy.
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