Reps. Seek Google Info On Piracy

Four Republicans and a Democrat have asked new Google CEO Larry Page for information on how the company is combating online piracy.

Citing the company's pledge last December to boost online copyright protection they asked in an April 5 letter what changes Google has made to their search engine, or contacts they made in the industry about the underlying problem, particularly keeping piracy-related search terms out of the company's auto-complete function.

They want to know if Google can manually override the "organized search" function to address the problem of searches for Web sites distributing pirated content.

Signing on to the letter were Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chair of the House Communications Subcommittee; Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.); Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.); Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.); and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.