Rupert Murdoch, an American-Australian media mogul tweeted directly about Google by saying that the search engine giant is an agent of piracy who sells ads around links to pirated IP. Soon he realized and again pointed out by acknowledging Google’s value as a company.
The News Corporation CEO further tweeted, “So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery,” and “piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advertisements around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying,” on January 14th, then followed up with justification stating that “film making is risky as hell” and targeting “hurting writers and actors.”
He also points out that when searching for the latest Mission Impossible film on Google, he was able to find a number of sites offering “free links” to the film. Murdoch was widely criticized for the second tweet, even being accused of not understanding how piracy works or what the SOPA actually does. In a later tweet, Murdoch admitted that while he doesn’t “understand many things,” he does recognize “plain stealing” when he sees it.
The White House over the weekend released its official statement concerning online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Protect IP Act and the Online Protection and Digital Enforcement Act (OPEN).
