Murdoch slams White House over SOPA in Twitter row

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/15/murdoch_twitter_rant_sopa/

by drumdance • 15 years ago

35 17 15 years ago

theregister.co.uk

mcantelon2• 15 years ago

A guy that establishes an entire news channel, that fights in court for the right to lie to viewers, to get political favor accuses Google of undue influence? Huh.

Natsu4• 15 years ago

I thought they fought in court to be able to force their employees to lie (or be fired)? Or are you thinking of another case?

I can't quite keep up with all the things they've done lately, especially all the hacking scandals. Actually, that raises another point: if someone were, hypothetically, to register a copyright on those hacked voicemails, couldn't they get shut down for having used them? I guess those might have been UK emails, and I'm less sure how they do things.

MaysonL• 15 years ago

Canada bans Fox News, because up there it's illegal to lie in news broadcasts.

Natsu4• 15 years ago

I meant voicemails, not emails, and it's too late to edit. Oops.

mcantelon2• 15 years ago

No, I'm probably thinking of the same case. I think the crux of it is the FCC has some rule against broadcasting lies and the court appeal case decided that this was more of a guideline than a hard-and-fast regulation.

http://www.ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_fi...

Natsu4• 15 years ago

I wonder if this will backfire among Democrats? There are more than a few who are likely to hate anything he's for just because.

brown9-2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure if you can really characterize this as a "slam". His twitter feed is mostly incomprehensible.

adrianwaj• 15 years ago

Really, I was just about to say "Awesome tweets, the human headline!" ?

saturn7• 15 years ago

The funny thing is most of his on-line sites would get shut down with SOPA, seeing that his journalist plagiarise a good percentage of the articles they publish.

I know this first hand, my friend and I have a football blog where we posted an exclusive video where he managed to interview a footballer, the next day The Sun took the video and splashed it on the front page of their sports sections with out permission or attributing it to our site.

So with SOPA would I get to shut down thesun.co.uk?

dangrossman• 15 years ago

No, because if you made a good faith claim that thesun.co.uk exists primarily to infringe copyrights, the judge would lock YOU up for perjury. What you can do, right now, is sue them for copyright infringement. That's already illegal, of course.

Natsu4• 15 years ago

Does SOPA actually require that you state that claim under penalty of perjury? I didn't think it did, but I might be wrong or I might not have seen the latest version or whatever.

I've also never heard of a case where the analogous DMCA perjury provision was actually enforced, so I wonder sometimes.

Xlythe• 15 years ago

Murdoch's right, the lobbyists are running Washington. His mistake was pointing out the wrong group. The tech industry's only spent 1/5th of what the entertainment industry is spending.

http://maplight.org/content/72896

izak30• 15 years ago

Fox is the entertainment industry. He's just playing more games.

ajays• 15 years ago

How is this guy NOT in jail over the phone-hacking scandal? Why do people like him get away with crimes?

A kid in UK links to torrents and is being extradited to the US[1]; and this jerk commits felonies over years and gets to roam free?

[1] http://boingboing.net/2012/01/13/british-man-who-hosted-site...

martythemaniak• 15 years ago

The rich and powerful have their own set of laws, whose leniency is proportional to your net worth.

dsplittgerber• 15 years ago

You obviously aren't power-crazed, or else you would know exactly how to do it.

Reading the recent Vanity Fair (character assassination) piece on Rebekah Brooks[1], you come to realize that she and Kissinger share a great many traits, being power-crazed the least amongst them. So, to answer your question, just look at what Brooks did and you will know how Murdoch does it, as she is him, exemplified. The essence is 'plausible deniability' and getting others to do stuff for you without you explicitly knowing the details. This leads to the non-existence of a "smoking gun", which any prosecutor would need considering you have some very select 'friends' in very high places (Prime Minister level etc).

Some select quotes:

"It was not that Brooks ever lied. She simply “allowed myths to grow and never challenged them,” says Roy Greenslade, the media commentator, who has known her for..."

"I ran the same department that she did, and every week we’d see the bills from the private investigators: £2,000, £4,000.” However, he can’t be sure she always knew what they were doing."

"“She’d get you to do things,” says another former News of the World reporter. “She had this charisma, this magnetic attraction,” he says. “She would praise to high heaven, make you feel like you were on top of the world. It was only afterwards that you realized you were manipulated.”

"Even out drinking after work, “she did not get pissed, ever. She never let her guard down,” and never spoke about her past."

"“Rebekah Wade used to have dinner with Blair and Brown and play them off against each other.” It was artful, he says, the way she made each man think that she was on his side."

[1] http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/02/rebekah-brooks-20...

mkr-hn• 15 years ago

The White House responding to the petition against SOPA fit HN well since SOPA would impact all of us. But Rupert Murdoch responding to the White House responding to the petition is dipping a bit too far into politics.

I'm starting to agree with the people talking about seeing more Reddit-safe comments. Things like this make HN more inviting to the people who make the comments that make big subreddits annoying.

I'm already seeing a lot of short, substance-free comments. I don't want to be that guy who says "HN is turning into Reddit," especially since I use Reddit, but I've been seeing it more and more lately.

Murdoch slams White House over SOPA in Twitter row

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