Rupert Murdoch isn't mincing words on his new Twitter feed. The News Corp. chairman and CEO spent the weekend criticizing Google and the White House for their anti-piracy efforts and opposition to intellectual property legislation like SOPA, PIPA, and the OPEN Act.
The White House on Saturday jumped into the SOPA debate by urging Congress to craft online piracy legislation that does not undermine freedom of expression on the Web. Among other things, the administration pushed for a bill that does not include DNS blocking, something that SOPA sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith recently stripped from his bill.
That apparently did not please Murdoch. "So Obama has thrown in his lot withSilicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," he tweeted on Saturday afternoon.
In its statement, the White House said "online piracy by foreign Web sites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, [but] we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
Murdoch, however, went on to criticize Google, which has also expressed concern with SOPA and PIPA.
"Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying," Murdoch wrote.
Murdoch said he searched Google for Mission Impossible clips and found "several sites offering free links."
He went on to say that "Google [is a] great company doing many exciting things. Only one complaint, and it's important."
Google has, in fact, faced backlash over its handling of copyrighted material in search results. In December 2010, it unveiled an updated copyright plan, pledging to respond to takedown requests in a more timely manner and focus more intensely on expelling infringing content from its products. By September 2011, the search giant said it had made "considerable progress" on those goals.
In response to Murdoch's tweets, Google today reiterated that progress.
"Google respects copyright—and we've worked hard to help rights holders deal with piracy. 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," a Google spokeswoman said in a Monday statement. "Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue Web sites without asking U.S. companies to censor the Internet."
The Senate is scheduled to take up PIPA later this month; there is no set schedule for when SOPA will be considered. In the wake of Smith stripping DNS blocking from his bill, meanwhile, OPEN Act author Darrell Issa said he would postpone a Jan. 18 hearing on the topic.
Murdoch joined Twitter earlier this month. His wife Wendi apparently joined shortly after him, but that account was later found to be a fake, despite its "verified" status. Recently, Murdoch took to Twitter to admit that News Corp. "screwed up" when it came to MySpace.