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Rupert Murdoch: Google streams pirated movies, MySpace a screw up
News Corp. CEO and founder, Rupert Murdoch, let the tweets fly this weekend humbly claiming he screwed up "in every way possible" with MySpace. Additionally, he accused Google of streaming illegally obtained movies and chastised President Obama for recently stating his opposition to SOPA, accusing the president of being in cahoots with Silicon Valley executives.
The media mogul is well-known for being opinionated, vocal and also an ardent opponent of piracy. Murdoch's longstanding issues with Google have also been well publicized, such as criticizing Google News for being "thieves" and even threatening to block the aggregator from News Corp. sites entirely. Naturally, it should be no surprise that Murdoch took a little bit of time over the past couple weeks to rail on those who would pilfer copyrighted works, like Google.
In 2005, Murdoch spearheaded a deal in which News Corp. acquired MySpace for $580 million. The iconic social network plummeted in popularity as Facebook opened its doors to the masses the following year, but not before Murdoch struck a $900 million advertising deal with Google.
Even if you can navigate past the argument that Google illegally streams movies as part of its business model, it is hard to deny the hypocrisy of such a statement. GigaOm's Om Malik called out Rupert Murdoch on his ironic accusation:
Thanks to their advertising partnership with Google, News Corp. did manage to make their money back on MySpace. Despite this, the once popular social networking site has been in disarray ever since its purchase. Murdoch sold the company in 2011 to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for $58 million, just 10 percent of its original value. The new owners hope to revitalize MySpace as an artist-focused destination.
User Comments (28)
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Guest
on January 16, 2012 5:05 PM |
You will never stop piracy, so learn to tolerate it. |
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Guest
on January 16, 2012 5:09 PM |
so, he called obama a thief? DATS RACIST |
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Guest
on January 16, 2012 5:22 PM |
In case this didn't get published in America, one of his biggest newspapers was closed down after reporters illegally hacked into mobiles and landlines of people, which was used for many nefarious purposes to boost newspaper sales, including faking that a missing girl was still receiving text messages from her parents so their news story would last longer in the papers. Despicable, and how he can then blame google for illegal acts is hypocrisy of the highest degree |
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Vrmithrax
on January 16, 2012 5:41 PM |
Since when has Google been a streaming service? Maybe I missed something, but every Google search I've ever done that might have a result of streaming or downloading a file has been a link to another site, never directly from Google... This guy's ramblings remind me of a bad cocktail recipe: Take 1 part paranoia, 1 part dementia, 2 parts ego, mix well, serve with a dash of hypocrisy and a small corporate umbrella. |
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lipe123
on January 16, 2012 6:38 PM |
Wait a sec, this guy was in charge of the newspapers that hacked into the voicemails of victims of 911 and various others. Why does anyone care about anything he has to say? |
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killeriii
on January 16, 2012 6:55 PM |
Vrmithrax said:
Since when has Google been a streaming service? Maybe I missed something, but every Google search I've ever done that might have a result of streaming or downloading a file has been a link to another site, never directly from Google... "YouTube" owned and run by Google. I don't agree with the severity of copyright laws myself. I personally like the service that YouTube provides and wouldn't want to see it diminished in any way. |
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TomSEA
on January 16, 2012 8:14 PM |
"You will never stop piracy, so learn to tolerate it." Oh, that's brilliant. Well I hope you remember that when someone breaks into your car or house and steals your stuff. Just tolerate it, mm-kay? |
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Guest
on January 16, 2012 8:22 PM |
but. but that's what they teach me in school..to tolerate everything then I will be a better person..blah!!! |
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Rick
on January 16, 2012 8:53 PM |
TomSEA said: "You will never stop piracy, so learn to tolerate it." Oh, that's brilliant. Well I hope you remember that when someone breaks into your car or house and steals your stuff. Just tolerate it, mm-kay? Actually, there is a certain amount of tolerance required, but in a broad, philosophical mumbo-jumbo sense. If society didn't tolerate murder, for example, we would do everything possible to prevent it and to punish those who did. If murder was not tolerated, laws of privacy, freedom, rulings "beyond a doubt" and budget concerns would be out the window. Education, therapy, rehabilitation etc.. would be endlessly funded to prevent such things. Punishment would be frightening and judicious, setting an example for other would-be murderers and so on... The truth is though, as a society, we allow people to be murdered here and there... There is an acceptable trade-off between so many people dying, the resources we use (ie. money, labor, technology) and the liberties we are willing to forfeit. That, in a sense, is tolerance. This piracy stuff works the same way. We may never solve the problem, just like we haven't solved people robbing homes and stealing cars, but that's only because we have not spent enough resources, changed enough laws and modified the infrastructure to finally nail it down for good. |
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Guest
on January 16, 2012 8:58 PM |
"You will never stop piracy, so learn to tolerate it." or we just send all you ***** pirates to jail, that also works very well. |
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Guest
on January 16, 2012 9:00 PM |
Bravo Nick. I couldn't have said it better. Very balanced and thoughtful. |
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treetops
on January 16, 2012 9:38 PM |
I wonder how much he paid myspace to start saying myfox. edit oh looks like he bought the whole damn thing p.s. lol his newscorp bought myspace then it started failing, i guess he didn't realize everyone thinks hes the devil, no offense to the devil p.s.s. yeah i remember when his people hacked into that murdered little girls voicemail and deleted messages, thats insane, then the guy who blew the whistle on it mysteriously died the next day. his laptop and some other belongings were found in a parking garage a few miles away. but no national attention went to that. all they talked about was that rupert got a pie(literally) in the face the next day, somehow that over shadowed it all. Fox even reported it as a attack on rupert... |
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lawfer
on January 16, 2012 9:42 PM |
Guest said: "You will never stop piracy, so learn to tolerate it." or we just send all you ***** pirates to jail, that also works very well. Good luck with that. |
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jacobz6
on January 16, 2012 11:13 PM |
lipe123 said: Wait a sec, this guy was in charge of the newspapers that hacked into the voicemails of victims of 911 and various others. Why does anyone care about anything he has to say? +1 |
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Ranger1st
on January 16, 2012 11:37 PM |
guys a Crim. Who cares what he has to say.. if he was poor he'd be loopy guy on the corner spouting nonsense.. he's got money so he's 'outspoken and opinionated'. I think he's got mild dementia that's getting worse. |
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Guest
on January 17, 2012 12:25 AM |
"Oh, that's brilliant. Well I hope you remember that when someone breaks into your car or house and steals your stuff. Just tolerate it, mm-kay?" Don't be silly. While software/music/movie piracy and physical theft are both certainly wrong, they don't compare like that. Fact is, the respective industries still rake in copious amounts of money. And for example if the record labels actually cared about the musicians, they'd spend less time ripping off said musicians themselves and then blaming the pirates for everything. As far as Murdoch goes, how such a retard ever managed to launch such a big company is beyond me. |
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ghasmanjr
on January 17, 2012 12:39 AM |
I think we're all overlooking something: why did Justin Timberlake buy MySpace? That's confusing in itself... |
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Guest
on January 17, 2012 2:47 AM |
He's got some nerve, over here in the UK his son has lied to a comittee of MP's investigating phone hacking, he's had a newspaper close down due to it's antics, and been critisised for being too powerful and meddling in British politics!! Watching his antics is like watching a bond movie! |
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Emexrulsier
on January 17, 2012 3:43 AM |
People always say piracy costs the industry millions/billions but I am almost 90% certain if I didn't watch certain dodgy copies of films now and then I wouldn't even consider buying them either. They base all this lost profits on those that pirate would buy it instead this is not the case. |
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stewi0001
on January 17, 2012 6:24 AM |
I personally don't agree with piracy, but I know it is hard to prevent. As for the media cry babies (aka Hollywood and Big music whoevers) what they need to do is change their business model. If people love your music, movies, or videos; People will buy your stuff to support you. |
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Guest
on January 17, 2012 6:34 AM |
its like dude, you tapped into peoples cell phones and created falsified stories about people and events... seriously why are you not in jail... oh yeah 99% |
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Tomorrow_Rains
on January 17, 2012 8:08 AM |
Why piracy is linked to murder, breaking and entering , assault and rape is beyond me. So by downloading an MP3 by lil wayne i have just raped and assaulted an innocent person. Taking that in context, Anti-piracy laws so far have been successful in obtaining losses by obtaining IP addresses and sending the "pay or else" scheme. i need to check my facts but i'm pretty sure i heard that Hurt locker made double what the movie costs in just suing people. and once they made enough money they backed out of the claim. But remember, An IP address is not a person |
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Lurker101
on January 17, 2012 9:27 AM |
If an IP address was a person, I'm sure most Techspot regs would be sectioned for severe multiple personality disorders. |
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Guest
on January 17, 2012 3:06 PM |
Thankfully we take little notice of the poison pygmy here, what a tool! |
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princeton
on January 17, 2012 7:58 PM |
TomSEA said: "You will never stop piracy, so learn to tolerate it." Oh, that's brilliant. Well I hope you remember that when someone breaks into your car or house and steals your stuff. Just tolerate it, mm-kay? It's nice to know that after 1,529 posts, you're still using an argument that was debunked years ago. A company does not have money taken away from them when a product is pirated. They lose "potential revenue" which is a meaningless figure because somebody who pirates software wouldn't have spent money on it anyway, or they would have done so. You actually lose your physical property when somebody steals your personal belongings. Perhaps you should invest some of your money into some debate courses where they will show how to avoid fallacies and build strong arguments. EDIT: After examining your posting history I believe these articles may assist you. I would read them fast though(within ~4 hours of now), because Wikipedia is blacking out due to uninformed people making legislation about piracy when they don't understand it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_analogy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization |
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