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David Dinsmore said the pictures "are now in the public domain in every country in the world".
The Sun has become the first British newspaper to publish the images.
The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) said it had received 60 complaints about the images' use from the public, but none from St James's Palace.
The newspaper's owner News International said it was making the move despite warnings from the Royal Family's lawyers that it would be an invasion of his privacy.
The Sun said its readers had a right to see them and the freedom of the press was being tested.
The Sun's decision to publish the Prince Harry photos has divided opinion among lawyers, politicians and editors - perfectly illustrating why it is so hard to regulate the press in the age of the internet.
Media lawyer Mark Stephens says publication is clearly against the law and Mark Lewis - who represents phone-hacking victims - says it's about money, not press freedom.
But privacy lawyer Chris Hutchins says the "public interest" argument would be taken into account by a court and the PCC, and so would the claim that the pictures are in the "public domain", because so many have seen them on the internet.
The Tory MP Louise Mensch says there's a "clear and demonstrable" public interest in the story, the former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott tweets that there's not, "it's Murdoch's self-interest".
Sympathise with Lord Justice Leveson as he ponders how best to reform press regulation.
Conservative MP Louise Mensch said she was concerned that the Press Complaints Commission had "tried to tread on this story" - but the PCC said it was merely "passing on concerns of the people at the heart of the story" to newspaper editors and not pressuring them into withholding publication.
Mr Dinsmore said the paper had thought "long and hard" about publication of the images.
He added: "Hundreds of millions of people have seen these pictures over the internet and it seems perverse that they shouldn't be shown in the pages of our newspaper.
"There is a public interest defence and part of that public interest defence is that if this thing has got so much publicity elsewhere that it would be perverse not to do it then that is acceptable and there is PCC case law on that basis."
The pictures emerged from a private weekend the prince spent with friends. The two photos of the prince and a naked woman in a hotel room are believed to have been taken on a camera phone last Friday.
They first appeared on US website TMZ earlier this week, which reported that he had been in a group playing "strip billiards".
In Friday's Sun, under the headline "Heir it is", the paper says: "Pic of naked Harry you've already seen on the internet."
St James's Palace had contacted the PCC on Wednesday because it said it had concerns about the 27-year-old prince's privacy being intruded upon, in breach of the editors' code of practice.
In reaction to the Sun's decision, a palace spokesman said: "We have made our views on Prince Harry's privacy known. Newspapers regulate themselves, so the publication of the photographs is ultimately a decision for editors to make."
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Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said none of the prince's police protection officers were facing disciplinary action after criticism in some press reports over their lack of intervention at the hotel room, adding that "as you would expect, senior officers have been briefed about the situation".
The PCC's Jonathan Collett said that, in a privacy case, the complaint should "really come from the person concerned".
The 60 complaints from members of the public would be considered, but not automatically investigated, he added.
The decision by British newspapers not to publish the pictures despite their publication elsewhere had prompted a debate about the impact the Leveson Inquiry was having on press behaviour.
The inquiry was set up to investigate the practices and ethics of the press following the phone-hacking scandal.
Mrs Mensch, who is also a member of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said: "The Press Complaints Commission totally overstepped their bounds by going to the UK press en bloc and telling them not to publish these photographs.
"More to the point we cannot have a situation where our press as a bloc is so scared of the Leveson Inquiry that they refuse to print things that are in the public interest."
Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee chairman John Whittingdale said of the Sun's decision to publish the pictures: "The fact that [the photos] happened is well known. How the public interest is served by doing this is not clear."
Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said the Sun had shown "absolute utter contempt" for the law and the Leveson Inquiry.
London Mayor Boris Johnson said he had a "deafening indifference" to the publication of the naked photos.
"The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way," he told the BBC.
The Daily Mirror and the Independent said they had not published the photos because they considered that they breached the prince's privacy.
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