Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is calling for a "time out" as he receives news that Google has filed a lawsuit against him allegedly for conspiring with Hollywood to derail Google in order to push for the shelved Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
In a statement, Hood said Google is "feeding the media a salacious Hollywood tale" after Google slammed him for allowing the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to do the "legal legwork" for him in filing a 79-page subpoena against Google, suggesting that the attorney general was in cahoots with the trade association in a million-dollar campaign to bring it down.
"Feeling emboldened with its billions of dollars, media prowess and political power, some of its more excitable people have sued trying to stop the State of Mississippi for daring to ask some questions," Hood said.
Even as Hood said he "expects more" from Google, he also said he will "reach out" to Google's legal counsel and board of directors and "negotiate for a peaceful resolution."
Hood's statement comes after Google filed against him before the District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi a lawsuit accusing the attorney general of being influenced by massive lobbying by the MPAA to issue an "enormously burdensome" subpoena against Google for a wide range of accusations "over which he lacks jurisdiction."
In its lawsuit, Google is requesting that the court issue a temporary restraining order against Hood, a known SOPA supporter, from enforcing the subpoena and filing new charges against Google because it violated Google's First and Fourth Amendment rights. Google is also questioning Hood's sweeping request for all "dangerous content" being linked to from Google's search engine, saying that it will have to produce "millions" of documents "at great expense and disruption to its business."
"The Attorney General has made clear that he disagrees with how Google exercises editorial judgment in the composition of its search results and YouTube content, and wishes to force Google to adopt editorial judgments that he would prefer," the lawsuit said (pdf). "For content he disfavors, he asks that Google censor from search results links to websites that are readily available and on the Internet, regardless of whether any court has found them unlawful, and has even gone so far as to demand that certain search terms be themselves banned."
Google is also accusing Hood of being essentially a puppet of the MPAA and says the attorney general "took these actions following a sustained lobbying effort from the Motion Picture Association of America."
The allegation stems from documents unearthed by The Verge unveiling Hollywood's Project Goliath, a concerted effort to lobby state attorney generals to investigate Google and possibly file lawsuits against the company. The information was gathered from the massive data dump leaked by hackers who infiltrated Sony Pictures' internal computer network.
In email exchanges between Sony Pictures counsel Leah Weil and MPAA counsel Steve Fabrizio, the parties discussed how they could help Hood in an upcoming meeting between him and Google. In one email, Fabrizio specifically said that the attorney general had asked him to "provide fresh examples for his planned live 'search' demonstration of illegal site activity." In another, he discussed how one MPAA lawyer personally spoke to Hood and "got him focused on the key issues and the asks."
"The Attorney General has also demanded links to disfavored content be demoted in search rankings and marked with a warning to users," Google said. "Conversely, he asked Google to promote favored content (e.g. Hollywood-approved websites) by raising its standing in search results and indicating its favored status with an icon."
"Such demands by a government official to displace a private party's editorial judgment in order to favor a certain speech or speakers over others strike at the heart of the First Amendment," Google added.
Google also emphasized its actions in fighting online piracy, the most prominent of which are the algorithm updates rolled out in October to demote websites linked to piracy in the search rankings and YouTube's Content ID, a reporting tool decried by some because it deemed reported videos guilty of copyright infringement before proven innocent.
"To date, over half a year later, the Attorney General has used this tool to report only seven videos," said Google. "Nor, to the best of Google's knowledge, has the Attorney General filed any legal action against any of the actual creators of the specific underlying content to which he has objected."
Google has also issued a document preservation notice to law firm Jenner & Block, the MPAA's long-standing law firm whose attorneys appeared to have drafted the subpoena Hood issued to Google. It also hinted at possible litigation in the future.
The lawsuit follows a statement released by Google counsel Kent Walker saying how the company is "deeply concerned" that the MPAA, an association founded to "promote and defend the First Amendment and artists' right to free expression," would move to censor the Internet.
However, the MPAA has responded by saying that Google's statement was a move to deflect the "legitimate and ongoing investigations" in what the group calls Google's role in facilitating illegal online activities, including illicit drug trade, human trafficking and intellectual property infringement.
"Google's effort to position itself as a defender of free speech is shameful," said MPAA spokesperson Kate Bedingfield. "Freedom of speech should never be used as a shield for unlawful activities and the Internet is not a license to steal."
