Murdoch v Obama, Google v Murdoch

Further updates on the ongoing debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), after the Obama administration responded on Saturday to the "VETO the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information" petition and made it clear that, though online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, it will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet (full response was reported by this Blog here).

Right away, on Saturday night, Media mogul Rupert Murdoch embraced the arms of his Twitter account to blast President Obama for throwing "his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery." 

He also used a couple of tweets to attack Google: "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying." and added "Film making [is as] risky as hell. This has to lead to less, hurting writers, actors, all concerned."  

As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, considering Murdoch was airing his complaints on the Internet, he didn't exactly find a sympathetic audience.

Captain Hook reading latest SOPA updates 

In an e-mail sent to CNET on Sunday afternoon, Google responded to Murdoch's statements.

"This is just nonsense," wrote a Google spokeswoman. "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 ... We fight pirates and counterfeiters every day."

Google said it thinks there are better methods to fighting piracy than those sought by copyright owners: "We believe, like many other tech companies, that the best way to stop [pirates] is through targeted legislation that would require ad networks and payment processors--like ours--to cut off sites dedicated to piracy or counterfeiting."

Paranoid Android?

Two stories in the Times this Saturday neatly illustrate the sharp divide between the approach of ‘old media’ and ‘new media’ to copyright and content. First up we have the Times’ owner itself, News Corporation, and Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that he wants ‘fair compensation’ for content produced by his media companies – and that in addition to looking to monetise his newspapers in the online arena, he would be seeking re-transmission fees from US cable and satellite operators that carry his Fox Television network. Murdoch has said that he will ask cable companies and other distribution partners to pay over a small proportion of the profits they make by reselling the channels. On the other side of the fence are Google, who Murdoch refers to as ‘content kleptomaniacs’. Google have announced that their Android search engine for mobile telephones will take the group into a new profitable area – advertising around mobile searches. To facilitate this, Google has made the operating code for Android open source and all handset manufacturers and operators from Nokia to T-Mobile to HTC can use it for free in their mobile phones – which is a distinct advantage for handset manufactures in quickly bringing product to market, and a distinct advantage for Google allowing it early domination of the mobile search market – and associated advertising revenue In it’s 2009 fiscal year News Corps operating income was $3.44 billion and net income for Google in the third quarter of 2009 was $1.64 billion.