Ricky Gervais has defended "free speech" after he was accused of blaming the celebrity victims of a nude photo hack for the online theft.

"Celebrities, make it harder for people to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on your computer," Gervais wrote in a tweet which he then quickly deleted.

Many social media users took the British comic to task for "victim blaming" celebrities such as actor Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton, who were among 100 stars to have photographs stolen and shared on the internet.

Hackers, don't hack into people's private lives. Gervais, stop victim blaming. It was NOT JLaw's fault. pic.twitter.com/xqAzQUAa3t — marnie⁸⁹ (@ppreponlovato) September 1, 2014

A lawyer for Upton has announced she will join Lawrence in taking legal action against those sharing the images, which began circulating on the internet forum 4chan.

"We intend to pursue anyone disseminating or duplicating these illegally obtained images to the fullest extent possible," lawyer Lawrence Shire said on behalf of Upton.

Some suggested Gervais was not in a position to criticise. 

If you don't want your nude pictures passed around on the internet, look like Ricky Gervais. — David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 1, 2014

Gervais defended himself, writing: "of course the hackers are 100% to blame but you can still makes jokes about it. Jokes don't portray your true serious feelings on a subject".

@JFPerseveranda no I don't. You're confusing a joke with a serious opinion. — Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 1, 2014

Gervais then took aim at his detractors, arguing : "It's more important to spend your energy trying to stop actual bad things than to run around trying to stop jokes about bad things."

He defended offence as "the collateral damage of free speech" and mused on the difficulties of defending freedom of expression. 

Whenever I defend freedom of speech someone always says "so you'd let Hitler off?" Haha. It wasn't his words so much as all that genocide. — Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 1, 2014

The comedian also retweeted a sarcastic post about the ready availability of pornography. 

thank heavens someone hacked those actors' accounts, I had heard the internet was about to run out of photos of naked women. — Robin Ince (@robinince) September 1, 2014

In other news, Gervais has made it extremely easy to share a suggestive image of himself, taking a picture in his bath and tweeting it to his 5.9 million followers.

Anyone who retweets this leaked erotic photo of me should be ashamed of themselves. pic.twitter.com/p2KBa6serK — Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) August 31, 2014