Hollywood's copyright lobby says that Google "facilitates, and profits from" the distribution of illegal content. The group that represent all of Hollywood's biggest studios, and its made these remarks in a legal response to Google's request for the MPAA's internal communications.
All of this stems from information revealed from the Sony hack, which revealed the MPAA's role in helping Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood build a case against the search engine. Google is currently suing the Attorney General, and as part of its case, it has requested internal documents that Google says will help reveal Hood's intent.
Google is now also suing the MPAA for not reponding to subpoenas and providing the requested documents, but the MPAA says that Google is overreaching with its demand. Instead, the MPAA asserts that Google's actions are a part of the search engine's PR campaign against Hollywood.
"Google portrays itself as the innocent victim of malicious efforts to abridge its First Amendment rights. In reality, Google is far from innocent," the MPAA writes in its brief.
"Google facilitates, and profits from, the distribution of third-party content that even Google concedes is 'objectionable.' 'Objectionable' is Google’s euphemism for 'illegal'."
The MPAA says many of the documents that Google is requesting is not relevant to their lawsuit, or is protected under attorney-client privilege, and that Google is furthering their PR campaign by using these documents to reveal the Hollywood's anti-piracy strategy.
"The purpose of these Subpoenas is to gather information — beyond the information that was already stolen via the Sony hack on which it relies — on the MPAA’s strategies to protect its members’ copyrighted material and address violations of law on the Internet affecting its members’ copyrights and the rights of others," the MPAA writes.
"Moreover, Google openly admits that it opposes any order to keep these discovery materials in confidence, revealing its goal to disseminate these documents publicly as part of its ongoing public relations war."
The MPAA believes that Google are using these Subpoenas as a scare tactic against anyone that criticizes the search engine's anti-piracy policies.
"But the most fundamental purpose of these Subpoenas is to send a message to anyone who dares to seek government redress for Google’s facilitation of unlawful conduct: If you and your attorneys exercise their First Amendment right to seek redress from a government official, Google will come after you," the MPAA writes in their brief.
A judge will now examine both Google's petition and the MPAA's response and decide how the court case will proceed.
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