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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).
This comment has so little context, it's asinine. Are you implying that the public favors lawsuits against oil companies over those confronting online piracy? If so, are you suggesting that the collateral damage caused by oil companies (such as damaging the environment) is greater than that caused by search companies (incidentally providing results that lead to downloads that violate copyright)?
Crimey
.
Looks like the state Attorneys General are the newest benefactor of policital contributions in the ongoing purchasing of our government by special interests.
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...
Does anybody even want to live in Mississippi? I'm pretty sure it's the worst state in the Union for a reason.
The rest of the country should just build a wall around it, and put all the politicians and lawyers there.
And between Exxon and Google, guess which one has a private jumbo jet for its executives...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Exxon has at least 4 $50M Global Express and 4 $20M Challenger 500 jets.
The difference, of course, is that Google doesn't own their jets, they are owned by a separate LLC started by the founders that use the jets.
If it were Exxon vs. the attorney general of Alabama, I'd be hoping for a way they could both lose...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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?
The MPAA is led by disgraced former Senator Chris Dodd, famous for being on the take from Countrywide Mortgage as a "Friends of Angelo" Mozilo member in good standing. Wonder if this little project with the studios meets anti-trust law violation thresholds....
Personally, I think if law enforcement, the civil courts and the MPAA don't have a right to force Google to do their jobs for them. I also think that due process for individuals still exists and the MPAA shouldn't have a right to tell Google to pull content without a court order or valid evidence.
So yeah, this guy kinda needs to be sued. Google has done nothing but try to balance the rights of these greedy bastards and the rights of individuals. Google has spent a ton of money to implement functionality just to help placate these morons while pissing off its user base.
And if people don't get their pirated content with a Google search, there's MANY other trivially easy ways to find it.
Have you been to Wyoming?
lucm, indeed.
Yes he's a Democrat. Does it matter? I don't know - why does every he-done-bad story involving someone remotely associated with the Republican party lead with "Republican so-and-so...".
I do think this is a kind of shitty deal though. If there was some wrong I'd want righted, and I thought that the arm of government responsible for looking into the matter was low on resources, I'd want to be able to "help out". If this case has merit and results in favor of Google and friends, what kind of precedent does that establish?
Mr. Moore, in an interview, said he was working pro bono to advise Mr. Hood on how to combat the illegal sale of drugs online. He was then hired, for a fee he would not disclose, by the Digital Citizens Alliance in a similar post. Mr. Moore then became a critical source for the movie industry, according to one email, telling them how Mr. Hood’s inquiry was progressing and even alerting industry executives that Google had been sent a subpoena — before it said it had been told Peggy Lautenschlager, who served as attorney general in Wisconsin, said that the role that the movie industry had played in pushing Mr. Hood, through Mr. Moore and others, was inappropriate. “A private interest is influencing some attorneys general’s offices,” she said. “Tragically, that is how the world operates nowadays.”
Mr. Hood and Mr. Moore said their actions were motivated by wrongdoing by Google, not by any pressure from the movie industry or Microsoft. The Digital Citizens Alliance said it had been public about pushing Google to clean up its search results. Microsoft, which among other efforts has supported FairSearch, a group pushing attorneys general, declined to comment.
“I don’t think there is any secret that there is a group of interested industry people who have a problem and they are concerned about how Google is doing their business,” Mr. Moore said in an interview. “But frankly, Attorney General Hood, and seven or eight others, are concerned about drugs, about child pornography and illegal steroids.”
The groups have also done more than write letters to attorneys general. Executives from the M.P.A.A., for example, urged the group’s members to donate $1,000 each to Mr. Bruning’s campaign for governor in Nebraska.
The plea coincided with a fund-raising event for Mr. Bruning in March at Microsoft’s offices in Washington. Campaign finance records show that donations came in from Paramount Pictures, Sony, 21st Century Fox, as well as other movie industry players, each for exactly $1,000.
Mr. Bruning said that he did not solicit the donations, and that they did not influence him.
Mr. Hood’s office did not respond to specific questions about his use of a letter apparently prepared by a movie industry executive as a draft for a warning he sent to Google, or about the role Mr. Moore had played in lobbying his office. But Mr. Hood said in a statement that his office accepted help from outside companies as it investigated wrongdoing.
“If they have expertise to help us catch the bad guys, we gladly accept their help,” his office said. “Google has put their profits ahead of the safety of children and families and this office will continue to fight them with all the expertise at our disposal in an effort to protect the people of Mississippi.”
uh, two words for ya: George Bush.
Need any more?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Wyoming is just one of those imaginary states like Idaho and East Prussia.
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
I'm not saying I agree that Google was breaking the law here, but in general, when a party feels they have been injured by another party acting unlawfully, isn't it standard practice for the injured party to work with prosecutors? Certainly victims of violent crime like rape, etc. will often meet with someone in the D.A.'s office to help prepare the case. This may have gone a bit further, with lobbyists and contributions, etc., but that's all part of politics. So I still don't really see how Google has a case here.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The AG is a Democrat, and he is attempting to repeat the extraordinarily profitable strategy used by one of his predecessors to enrich friends and allies at the expense of a large business - in that case, the tobacco industry, here Google. He was funded by plaintiff's attorneys eager for a cut of a large settlement check, and elected by people who like to sue those with more money than themselves.
There are places in Mississippi that functioned as tort mills for a long time, although most of them are not populated with people who look like him.
The AG is a Democrat.
What am I cheering for Exxon ?
If they were suing an Attorney general for being in the pocket of greenpeace sure I would cheer.
I'd also cheer if they were suing federal officials for promoting the insane gasahol program or cellolosic ethanol programs that have been nothing less than completely counterproductive.
I'd also cheer if they were suing over the sandbagging of the building of new refineries.
You probably can't find a better place to have a farm.
Sure, if you don't mind mosquitos the size of horses.
Wyoming is great if you value your privacy. I mean the air gaps are huge.
Mississippi is just a swamp.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The politically privledged class of the lawyer, of which all rules are bent to revolve around him. There is not "rule of law", rather "law is only meant to protect the lawyers", to include those in office. Everyone elses political status stems from how usefully we are to this lawyer aristocracy.
You can persecute with a prosecution.
If you own any shares in a mutual fund you most likely an Exxon stockholder.
On the rare occasions they do, it's to one of those white-collar resort joints.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I guess it would depend on how Google powers its data centers.
what is this, Romper Room? everybody on the MPAA side was gung ho until these emails came out. "time out" my aunt tillie. put up or shut up, Mr. AG.
At least they have the decency to go dormant when the temperature drops below 70 or so. Cf. Minnesota or Wisconsin.
Google didn't spill 12,000 barrels of oil in 2013.
Nor do Google's data centers have a habit of exploding.
The rest of the country should just build a wall around it, and put all the politicians and lawyers there.
Finally! I've been waiting for the reboot for a while.
Who the fuck cares if he's a Democrat or a Republican or a fucking treehugging hippy? His actions dictate his place in history, not his commercial affiliations.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
His voters didn't vote for George Bush.
So you can actually shoot them and hit? Sounds like a win-win!
In this case, the MPAA and the state attorneys have been persecuting Google.
What's that up there? Looks like a stapler ... only it's red!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."