Külföldi torrent oldalak New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan To Smear Google

Over the years, Google and Hollywood have fought bitterly over the Stop Online Piracy Act, an anti-piracy bill that would have granted the US government and private corporations extraordinary power to battle copyright infringement on the web.

It failed to pass in 2012. But it lives on. The Motion Picture Association of America is still seeking to revive it, and with Google still very much opposed to the idea, the MPAA is apparently doing its best to make life difficult for the internet giant.

Back in December, the search giant complained in a blog post of efforts by the MPAA to push an investigation of Google through the office of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. Now, in a new court filing, the company submitted additional evidence that appears to show just how deep the relationship between the attorney general and the Hollywood studios goes.

An email sent between AG Hood’s staffers and Brian Cohen, a director of external state government affairs for the MPAA, describes a coordinated plan to hurt Google, including a recommendation that “NewsCorp… develop and place an editorial in the WSJ emphasizing that Google’s stock will lose value in the face of a sustained attack by AGs”; the suggestion that NBC’s government relations department could help place an anti-Google segment on the today show; and that AG Hood’s office look into hiring a PR firm “to create an attack on Google (and other players who are resisting AG efforts to address online piracy).”

Online piracy is a complicated situation. Movie industry lobbyists would say the passing of SOPA would help scrub pirated movies and other illegal content from the Internet. But internet companies have pointed out that taken too far, the bill could legalize online censorship. In 2012, over 115,000 websites—including WIRED, Wikipedia, WordPress, and Reddit—altered their websites in some way to protest the SOPA bill, and many of them voluntarily going dark. Millions of Americans also vocally protested the bill, and some 7 million signatures were given to an anti-SOPA online petition.

Apparently, Hollywood isn’t quite ready to give up the good fight. In December, Google filled suit against Hood and revealed a 79-page subpoena from Hood’s office, which asked Google to deliver 141 documents, 62 interviews, and anything that might be construed as “dangerous content” on Google’s network.

“In order to respond to the subpoena in full, Google would have to produce millions of documents at great expense and disruption to its business,” Google’s suit read at the time. According to Google, the MPAA’s lawyers ghost-wrote the subpoena that Hood sent to Google (Hood added an opening and his signature at the bottom of the document.)

Google argues that Hood was clearly abusing the authority of his office to attack the company. And now, it’s up to the courts to decide if Hood and the MPAA have taken the battle too far.