Lawyer For Victims Of Nude Celebrity Hacks Threatens Google With $100 Million Lawsuit

from the on-what-basis dept

So, by now you've heard about the various hacked and leaked photos of various celebrities, often in varying states of undress. You knew that legal action was going to follow, but... did anyone actually expect Google would be the initial target? Lawyer to the stars Marty Singer has sent a very angry, but legally shaky letter to Google, claiming the company is facing a $100 million (or more) lawsuit in failing to remove the photos. There are some oddities here. First, Singer fails to name anyone he's actually representing, just generally referring to representing "over a dozen" of the victims. From there, Singer sort of implies copyright violations, but doesn't fully go there, perhaps because it's likely that the women in question don't hold the copyright on many of the photos. In at least one case -- involving photos of Kate Upton -- it's been widely reported that Google only removed about half of the links sent in a DMCA notice from Upton's boyfriend, baseball star Justin Verlander, leading to quite reasonable speculation that Google is properly complying with the DMCA in only taking down photos where it's clear there's a legitimate copyright claim.

Singer's threat letter is all over the place, partially arguing copyright infringement, partially arguing failure to follow the DMCA safe harbors and partially arguing straight up morality concerning blocking links to the images or videos containing the images. Let's be clear: it's quite reasonable for those who were victims here to be upset and seek to do something about it, but it's bizarre to pin the blame on Google, which is merely the search engine that is helping to index what other people have done. Furthermore, while it may seem appealing to ask Google to make a pure moral judgment on whether or not it's "right" for these photos to be accessible, it has no legal obligation to do so, outside of the copyright question -- and Google has a pretty good history of showing that its copyright lawyers are very quick at taking down content that they truly deem infringing.

Frankly, this threat seems like a lot more bluster than legal certainty. It wouldn't surprise me to see a lawsuit eventually result -- Singer likes being in the limelight -- but it's difficult to see on what legitimate legal basis a lawsuit would be filed. It's possible that Google may have missed a legitimate copyright-covered image from a takedown, but given its rather sophisticated handling of DMCA takedown notices, it seems unlikely that Google made many mistakes on this one. This just seems like a "Steve Dallas lawsuit" in which you go through all the options of who you can sue, and then just go after the big company because it's the one that has the money.

Filed Under: copyright, hacking, marty singer, nude celebrities
Companies: google

Kardashians Allegedly Arguing Copyright Gives Them Rights To Get Their Father's Diary

from the general-ownership-of-anything-statute dept

We've seen copyright law abused and misused so many times that it's rarely a surprise anymore to hear of some wacky story. But this one's new. Kenichi Tanaka points us to an article about how the Kardashian kids -- Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob Kardashian -- are apparently suing their stepmother over their father's personal belongings.

The family's power attorney Marty Singer released a statement regarding the situation, telling omg! Yahoo, "The Kardashians and Kris Jenner have filed a suit against Ellen Pearson for taking personal property belonging to them by virtue of Robert Kardashian’s will and by virtue of copyright protection. Today's filing should serve as notice that they will vigorously defend their rights when forced to do so."

Apparently, in his will, he left "his personal tangible and intangible property" to his children. Yet, they claim, Pearson (whom father Kardashian married just two months before his death) has held onto some of his things, including (most importantly) his diary. Why is that so important? It appears that Pearson has been revealing things from the diary which is somewhat embarrassing to the Kardashian clan.

Pearson has been in the news lately, recently claiming that Khloe is not Robert's biological daughter and that Kris Jenner is an abusive mother. Pearson shared excerpts from Robert's diaries with In Touch Weekly, telling the magazine, "I am simply stating the facts and the truth -- their father’s truth. I simply delivered hand-written diaries from their father. They are my property at the disposal of whatever I so choose. Robert would have no problem with that.”

This is interesting on a variety of levels, and I imagine might make for an interesting law school exam question. By my read (and I'll let the decent number of law school professors who read this site correct my errors), the copyright claim here is highly questionable on a variety of fronts. First off, the lawsuit has been filed in California state court, but copyright is a federal issue. So while I have not seen the actual lawsuit, the claim by their lawyers that this is a copyright issue seems suspect off the bat. As was pointed out, contrary to the original article that said otherwise, this was filed in federal court... so this doesn't directly apply.

Even if there was a copyright issue (and, yes, there likely is a copyright over the diary thanks to our silly automatic copyright on everything policy), it seems like they're confusing the copyright in the content with the physical work itself, which are two different things. Owning the physical book is different from owning the copyright. So, even if they do have some rights to the copyright in the book, the copyright claim alone would not be enough to get the physical copy from Pearson. Nor would it likely be enough to silence her from revealing statements from the diary, which likely qualify under fair use (though, certainly, arguments to the contrary could be made).

It is, of course, entirely possible that there is some legitimate claim over the tangible property based on the will, but my knowledge of estate law is pretty limited. I just find it bizarre that they're even bringing copyright into this at all. It just seems like yet another case where people think copyright is something it's not -- and they're looking to use it to try to make an additional claim of ownership where it really doesn't fit or make sense. To some extent, this is yet another example of the problem of what's become of copyright law today. It's so widely abused that so many people seem to think that it's a tool to get whatever they want. Copyright is not a "general ownership of anything I want" statute, but many seem to treat it that way.

Filed Under: kardashian, marty singer