Google Sues Mississippi Attorney General For Conspiring With Movie Industry

ideonexus writes: Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has called for a "time out" in his perpetual fight with Google in response to the company filing a lawsuit against him for conspiring with the movie industry to persecute the search giant. Leaked Sony Pictures Entertainment emails and documents obtained under FOIA requests this week have exposed how the Motion Picture Association of America was colluding with and lobbying state prosecutors to go after Google, even going so far as to "assigned a team of lawyers to prepare draft subpoenas and legal briefs for the attorneys general" to make it easier for them to persecute the company. Here's the full complaint (PDF).

Comments

haha

[Charliemopps]

I'm sorry, but as much as North Korea sucks, this hack just gets better and better...

Google’s effort to position itself as a defender of free speech is shameful. Freedom of speech should never be used as a shield for unlawful activities and the Internet is not a license to steal,” said Kate Bedingfield, an M.P.A.A. spokeswoman, in an emailed statement.

That statements so unbelievably ironic... Sony and the MPAA are trying to squash these very document releases with the same tactics they use to try and stop file sharing... but this time it's to hide their own collusion, racketeering, bribery and likely other violations of federal law. I wonder if the other inmates will appreciate her opinion that piracy is stealing when she's in the state pen...

Re:haha

[bwcbwc]

Google is lobbying the AG's themselves, but they seem to be on the defensive. From Ars: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Several weeks later, a meeting took place between Google executives and Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen. The same morning the meeting took place, MPAA's Perrelli was informed about it by two attorneys at the AG's office, who offered to send Google's presentation to Perrelli. Jepsen reached out to the MPAA, seeking demands that he could press against Google.

The article makes clear that many AG offices seem to be favoring the MPAA side, even after hearing from Google. I'd be really interested to see a survey of who's funding election campaigns for all state AGs in the country. Follow the money and see what shows up.

Dear Mississippi

[Snufu]

How does it feel to know your tax dollars and elected representatives are being used to do the bidding of private motion picture conglomerates at the expense of regular citizens using the internet?

Google play

[OzPeter]

The best comment I saw on Ars, was that as a response to these AG tactics by the MPAA and RIAA, Google should remove all references to the MPAA and RIAA from its search results. There doesn't seem any reason that google *has* to index your site.

Re:You'd cheer were it Exxon instead of Google

[Dorianny]

Of course we would be cheering if they went after oil companies such as Exxon because their business is implicated not only in local environmental destruction but planetary scale pollution as well.

Re:Isn't this how prosecution is supposed to work?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its not a waste of money. Every time I get your company indicted, regardless of merit, it hurts your brand, your business development opportunities, etc, etc. It's a standard smear campaign tactic and smear campaigns work. Regardless of the outcome of a meritless case.

They don't need to win, and they probably don't care if they do. They just need to interfere with Google's operations and cost them money to the point where they have increased leverage in any dealings with Google.

Really, its pretty standard scumbag tactics.