While many entities, including Google and the White House, have vocally opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), media mogul Rupert Murdoch has taken to Twitter to attack those who are in opposition. While both sides of the debate have equally appealing arguments, Rupert Murdoch believes that the act needs to be passed in order to save the film and music industries. In addition, he believes that if the act is not passed, that jobs will be lost. On Saturday, Murdoch posted on his personal Twitter account, “So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery.”
The problem with the bill is that people believe that it could make business on the internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activities. Even the White House cyber-security czar said, “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.”
In addition to attacking the White House for their formal statements against SOPA, Rupert Murdoch has also begun to attack Google as well. In response to the argument about the bills harming the internet, Murdoch stated, “Nonsense argument about danger to Internet. How about Google, others blocking porn, hate speech, etc? Internet hurt?” Search engines like Google are already blocking items on the internet like porn and hate speech, but they refuse to block websites that stream free movies, and he does not see the difference between these items.
The media giant definitely has reason to push for the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, since he owns countless television stations and movie companies. If people are illegally streaming them online free, he is losing money, and that is never a good thing for business. While Murdoch is new to Twitter, he has already gained fame for his tweets, and it is clear that his attacks on the White House and Google will not be the last controversial thing that he posts online.
While Rupert Murdoch is not the only person that was hoping that SOPA would be passed, they clearly did not have as much support as those who were against the bill. In the wake of online “black-out” last Wednesday, that included websites like Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit, Congress is reconsidering. Over 13 million people signed an online petition, which made it clear that Congress could no longer ignore that Americans wanted to keep the internet free from censorship.
