Google threatened with $100-mn lawsuit over leaked nude photos of celebrities

A law firm representing a number of celebritieswhose nude photos were leaked after the hack at Apple's iCloud has threatened Google with a $100-million lawsuit, Daily Digest News reported.

The lawsuit was being brought reportedly over Google's role in circulating the photos, and the law firm involved represented ''over a dozen female celebrities.''

In a letter to Google, Martin Singer, a lawyer from Hollywood said the company was unfairly making money from unfair treatment of women.

''Google knows that the images are hacked stolen property, private and confidential photos and videos unlawfully obtained and posted by pervert predators who are violating the victims' privacy rights and basic human decency by stealing and displaying confidential private photos and videos,'' said the letter.

In the letter, Google has been accused of disrespecting its duties by making money off  advertising, and that the company owed $100 million for refusing to remove the pictures and links related to the hack.

While the letter made no mention of names of celebrities that it represented, it reportedly referred to the likes of Kate Upton, Jennifer Lawrence, Arianna Grande, Rhianna, and others.

According to commentators, while the letter rather dramatically accused Google, it was likely that the case would not stand due to the fact that Google was not liable for the actions of its users or the content that was brought up when someone searched for something on the search engine.

Meanwhile, the company responded quickly today saying that it had already deleted ''tens of thousands'' of those leaked images from the search engine, The Next Digit reported.

According to the lawyers, Google was ignoring or was slow to take down requests for those leaked images hosted on one of its online properties, but Google's representative claimed the company took every request for taking down seriously and took quicker action on them.

In a statement Google said, ''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.''

In the lawsuit, Singer claimed that Google had not taken down requests of leaked images in a timely manner and it ignored many such requests.

The lawyer further claimed that despite sending continuous reminders to Google about the take-down requests, the internet search company's online properties still showed those leaked nude pics to users on YouTube, Blogger and Google.