Rupert Murdoch only recently opened up his Twitter account, but he’s quickly accrued some 140,000 followers, and made some controversial tweets.
He’s had a pop at Google and Obama, no less, and stirred up a considerable storm in the media.
He tweeted accusing Google of being a leading force when it came to facilitating net piracy, saying: “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.”
He also said that Obama had “thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery”.
Murdoch also noted that he’d done a search on Google for the film Mission Impossible, and said: “Wow, several sites offering free links. I rest my case.”
Fighting talk indeed, the millions in lobbying referred to being the action Google, along with many other prominent tech firms, has taken in opposition of SOPA over in the States.
SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is legislation supported by Murdoch – and other media companies, who some might call Obama’s movie industry paymasters – as an effort to curtail pirates internationally.
However, the act proposes dangerous levels of power to interfere with the web, potentially harming free speech on the net and the operation of many sites as they stand.
And it’s unlikely to achieve its goals either, as the war against piracy is another conflict which isn’t realistically ever going to be winnable in any true sense of the word.
Obama has recently spoken out against some of the more overreaching powers of SOPA, which is why he’s in Murdoch’s firing line along with Google.
Unsurprisingly, Google took strong issue with Murdoch’s comments. The company told C-net, via an email: “This is just nonsense. 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.”
Murdoch also tweeted about the extortionate prices of cinema tickets, popcorn and soda. Just to prove that he’s still in touch with the common man, naturally.
