bassethound
16-01-12, 13:44
Rupert Murdoch has hit out at Google over online piracy, accusing the search engine giant of being a "leader" in profiting from pirated movies on the internet.
In a string of combative messages on his Twitter page, the News Corporation chief executive also criticised the Obama administration over its move to water down proposed anti-piracy legislation.
He said that the US government was pandering to the desires of its "Silicon Valley paymasters" over the announcement that the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) act would not be supported in its current form.
Reacting to the announcement, Murdoch tweeted: "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery."
The 80-year-old billionaire reserved his harshest words for Google, saying the firm was profiting from advertising around links to pirated material in its search results.
"Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying," he wrote on his Twitter page.
Murdoch said that he had searched for the latest Mission Impossible movie on Google and found several websites offering free links. "I rest my case," he added.
The media mogul later softened his stance, describing Google as a "great company doing many exciting things". He also accepted that the company "blocks many other undesirable things".
Google was among a group of US technology firms to campaign against SOPA, which aimed to 'throttle' sites suspected of copyright infringement by denying them prominence on search engines, or access to online payment services.
The search firm argued that the legislation was a new and potentially dangerous form of online censorship, as it would effectively involve someone deciding which sites were given prominence on the internet, threatening the core principle of 'net neutrality'.
Yesterday, the Obama administration confirmed that it would not support SOPA in its current form, adding: "Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small."
Despite the US government climbdown, Google remains under pressure both in America and Europe to take action against sites that are found to be offering pirated material.
As News Corp owns movie studio Fox, Murdoch has been especially critical of what he views as a lack of action on Google's part to tackle the cost of online piracy.
But this is also not the first time that he has clashed with Google, as his online newspapers previously pulled their links out of the Google News search results in a dispute over 'free' access to journalism. Murdoch instead agreed a deal with Microsoft's Bing engine.
Responding to Murdoch's latest criticism last night, Google said: "This is just nonsense. Last year we took down five million infringing web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads.
"Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking US companies to censor the internet."
Murdoch has been surprisingly candid since joining Twitter on New Year's Day, including a tweet last week admitting that News Corp had "screwed up" social network MySpace in "every way possible".
In a string of combative messages on his Twitter page, the News Corporation chief executive also criticised the Obama administration over its move to water down proposed anti-piracy legislation.
He said that the US government was pandering to the desires of its "Silicon Valley paymasters" over the announcement that the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) act would not be supported in its current form.
Reacting to the announcement, Murdoch tweeted: "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery."
The 80-year-old billionaire reserved his harshest words for Google, saying the firm was profiting from advertising around links to pirated material in its search results.
"Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying," he wrote on his Twitter page.
Murdoch said that he had searched for the latest Mission Impossible movie on Google and found several websites offering free links. "I rest my case," he added.
The media mogul later softened his stance, describing Google as a "great company doing many exciting things". He also accepted that the company "blocks many other undesirable things".
Google was among a group of US technology firms to campaign against SOPA, which aimed to 'throttle' sites suspected of copyright infringement by denying them prominence on search engines, or access to online payment services.
The search firm argued that the legislation was a new and potentially dangerous form of online censorship, as it would effectively involve someone deciding which sites were given prominence on the internet, threatening the core principle of 'net neutrality'.
Yesterday, the Obama administration confirmed that it would not support SOPA in its current form, adding: "Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small."
Despite the US government climbdown, Google remains under pressure both in America and Europe to take action against sites that are found to be offering pirated material.
As News Corp owns movie studio Fox, Murdoch has been especially critical of what he views as a lack of action on Google's part to tackle the cost of online piracy.
But this is also not the first time that he has clashed with Google, as his online newspapers previously pulled their links out of the Google News search results in a dispute over 'free' access to journalism. Murdoch instead agreed a deal with Microsoft's Bing engine.
Responding to Murdoch's latest criticism last night, Google said: "This is just nonsense. Last year we took down five million infringing web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads.
"Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking US companies to censor the internet."
Murdoch has been surprisingly candid since joining Twitter on New Year's Day, including a tweet last week admitting that News Corp had "screwed up" social network MySpace in "every way possible".