MURDOCH CALLS GOOGLE “PIRACY LEADER”

Rupert Murdoch went on a Twitter attack against Google over the weekend. In a series of tweets blasting the White House’s apparent opposition to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Murdoch referred to Google as the “piracy leader” and charged that it “streams movies free, sells [advertisements] around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying [against SOPA].” Later: “Just been to google [sic] search for mission impossible. [sic] Wow, several sites offering free links. I rest my case.” Contacted by the BBC, a Google spokeswoman said, “Google respects copyright — and we’ve worked hard to help rights holders deal with piracy. Last year we took down five million infringing web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads.”