Murdoch tweets target Google, White House and Silicon Valley
Rupert Murdoch has had his hands full of late. He has been exploring his 'human side' with a Twitter account. No coincidence of course that he has taken to a Twitter facelift in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal involving News International.
Employees in the Murdoch trenches have been accused of hacking phones to get an edge on stories. They have also been called out for police bribery and exercising improper influence in pursuit of stories. One way to off-set dark talk of the media monster variety is to tweet like a regular human which Murdoch has been doing a lot of lately.
On the heels of the White House rejection of the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills, the News Corp boss accused the White House of selling out to "Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery..." Not true. The White House has come out against deeply flawed piracy legislation, but isn't turning a blind eye to piracy.
A White House statement said in part:
"Let us be clear – online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle-class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs..."
It also said that it wouldn't support legislation that "reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risks or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet."
While he was tweeting his objections, Murdoch found time to accuse Google of being a "piracy leader." For Murdoch to accuse anyone of being a "piracy leader" is more than a little rich.
Google's Samantha Smith responded to the criticisms:
“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.”
Opposition to the bills doesn't mean detractors are by definition soft on piracy. There are good reasons for concern. Google's Erik Schmidt characterized the piracy legislation as "draconian." More of Schmidt's views of the legislation here.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the bills "give the U.S. government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial)." Brin said he was "shocked" that US lawmakers would consider legislation that "...would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.” More on Brin's comments from cnet.
The argument is about the best way to go about tackling the piracy problem. Murdoch always seems mad keen on heavy handed measures, but there are smarter ways forward than resorting to the piracy bill approach.
It's much smarter to tackle piracy through a targeted approach, something the White House seems to get:
"Any provision covering internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing..."
The piracy bill may have been sidelined but it's far from over. No doubt there will be further attempts down the line. Which is why it is critically important for those who care about internet freedom to stay informed and if necessary petition their local reps when they believe those freedoms are under threat.
Video beneath talks about some of the challenges:
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