What is Google's Responsibility?
The victims of the iCloud celebrity leaks are threatening to sue Google for failing to remove their photos in a timely fashion for $100 million. Google has taken numerous images and accounts down as a result of the situation, but it doesn't seem to be good enough. The privacy of these celebrities is extremely important, but that's just not how the Internet works. And the Internet will never be that way; the freedom is what made the Internet so useful. It is definitely not solely Google's responsible to monitor the Internet. While Google handles much of the traffic on the Internet, any individual can create a website that anyone else can visit (without going to Google). Are the other search engines and social networks not responsible as well? (Though, the letter does state that other services, like Twitter, have been more responsive)
We must remember that Google is providing a service. Imagine if they chose to filter out all the searches for a particular celebrity to avoid lawsuits... They would never do it (for many reasons, including business) but it would cause a massive uproar. You can't expect Google to constantly filter out a certain photo from their search results because the digital markings can be changed; and Google's algorithm to index the Internet has benefited tremendously and would be dangerous to stop. Google shouldn't solely responsible for deleting the unwanted search results; parties should provide specific URLs or specific photos (with the same exactly bits) that they would like to take down. While this would not remove all the unwanted content, this will provide Google method of moving forward without taking on outrageous/impossible liability.
Those people who stole the photos should be responsible for the privacy breach. Those who repost the stolen images should also be held responsible for spreading it as well. Apple should take responsibility for their vulnerability in their iCloud service. At least they eliminated the ability to brute-force the correct password for accounts shortly after the leaks (they shouldn't have allowed that in the first place).
Google must of had countless requests to take down URLs in this situation and even more requests unrelated to these leaks. What would you define as "timely" if the number of requests are so great? What is Google's responsibility?