(Reuters) – Media baron Rupert Murdoch used his new Twitter account this weekend to attack the Obama Administration’s opposition to parts of proposed legislation designed to combat Internet piracy.
“So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery,” News Corp’s chairman and chief executive officer posted on his personal Twitter account Saturday.
Murdoch, whose media empire includes Fox TV, The Wall Street Journal, Fox Studios and the Sun newspaper in Britain, continued with several tweets, attacking Google as the “Piracy leader” for streaming movies free. In later tweets he called Google a “great company.”
Google said it did not appreciate Murdoch’s comment even after he back-peddled with a compliment.
“This is just nonsense,” Samantha Smith, a Google spokesperson, said in an emailed statement.
“Last year we took down 5 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 U.S. companies to censor the Internet.”
At issue are the concerns White House officials raised on Saturday about elements in the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) pending in Congress. Google and Facebook already have decried them as heavy-handed and Hollywood studios and music labels say the legislation is needed to save U.S. jobs.
In a blog posting, three advisers to President Barack Obama said they believed the act and similar bills could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.
“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,” said the officials, including White House cyber-security czar Howard Schmidt.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/15/us-murdoch-piracy-idUSTRE80E0JA20120115
