Rupert Murdoch spars with Google, White House over internet piracy

Rupert Murdoch is using Twitter to lock horns with both Google and the White House over internet piracy, tweeting on Saturday night that Google was a "piracy leader." 

The News Corp chairman, who has only been a Twitter user since the beginning of January, was apparently responding to the White House's opposition to some aspects of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as well as the Protect IP Act, which are both backed by numerous media companies, including News Corp, CBS News reported. 

More from GlobalPost: Rupert Murdoch joins Twitter 

The White House issued a statement Saturday explaining its decision to oppose the new legislation regarding intellectual property rights online, indicating that it would not move forward with proposals that would grant states the power to interfere with the architecture of the web, the Telegraph reported. 

As the statement reads: 

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet." 

More from GlobalPost: White House addresses SOPA concerns 

Murdoch also called out the White House over piracy, tweeting, "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery." 

In an e-mail to the press, Google responded to Murdoch's accusations, calling them "nonsense" and saying: 

"Last year we took down 5 million infringing Web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads…We fight pirates and counterfeiters every day."

Murdoch admitted Sunday that Google has made efforts to block pirated content, tweeting: "Sure misunderstand many things, but not plain stealing. Incidentally Google blocks many other undesirable things." 

Google has faced backlash in the past over how it deals with copyrighted material in its search results. In December 2010, the search engine updated their copyright plan, pledging to respond to takedown requests sooner and focus on blocking infringing content. By September 2011, Google announced that it had made "considerable progress" on those goals, according to PC Magazine.