'You will have victims' blood all over your hands': Sexual harassment lawyer accuses Google of killing revenge porn laws

Brian Ach/Getty Images for The New Yorker

Attorney Carrie A Goldberg at the 2017 New Yorker TechFest.

• Sexual harassment lawyer Carrie Goldberg accused Google of making a late intervention to kill new revenge porn laws in the US state of New York.
• The bill has been in the works for five years and lawmakers were due to vote on it on Wednesday, but were reportedly delayed by Google and trade body, the Internet Association.
• Goldberg was outraged at the delay, and said Google has "victims' blood all over your hands."
• Google and the Internet Association are yet to reply to requests for comment.

Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer who fights online sexual harassment, has accused Google of making an eleventh-hour intervention to kill new revenge porn laws in the US state of New York.

The bill has been in the works in Albany, New York, for five years. It would have made the nonconsensual dissemination of sexually explicit images a misdemeanour punishable by up to a year in jail. It would also have allowed victims to sue web hosts to remove the offending images.

Lawmakers were due to vote on the bill on Wednesday, but were delayed by Google and tech trade body Internet Association, who wanted to make changes to the language, according to The New York Post. The Senate adjourned before a vote, meaning the legislation is effectively dead until next year.

Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who has been lobbying for the laws, live-tweeted about Google and the Internet Association's last-minute intervention. She was outraged at the delay.

After hearing about the delay, she said:

She criticised the Internet Association for assisting Google:

After the bill was killed, she said New Yorkers would be deprived of "critical" sexual privacy law:

Business Insider has contacted Google, the Internet Association and Goldberg's law firm for comment.

Goldberg told The New York Post: "It's deeply disturbing that Google and tech lobbyists were quiet as a church mouse for the five years this bill has been percolating in Albany and then literally the morning it's up for vote, they bulldoze in with coercive demands on our lawmakers to change the language.

"Big Tech, especially Google, created the revenge porn problem. And now, just as we were about to enable victims to demand removal of their most intimate material from the internet via this law, Google renews its abuse."

New York is in the minority of US states not to have revenge porn laws. A map on Goldberg's website details which states have legislation.

Get the latest Google stock price here.