East Bay Ray calls out Google’s effort to close the door on an investigation into its bad business practices
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has been looking behind the Silicon Curtain that surrounds Google in an effort to shine a spotlight on the company’s suspect business practices. Not surprisingly, his investigation has raised the hackles of the internet behemoth and its bevy of Astroturf allies. I wrote about those legal machinations a bit last week, but today, East Bay Ray (guitarist, co-founder and one of two main songwriters for the band Dead Kennedys) has written a piece published today in The Hill that’s a must read. As he notes:
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has asked a lot of questions about Google. He’s one of several State Attorneys General that sent Google eight letters over the last two years. In one of those letters, attorneys general from 23 other states joined him in wanting the company to tell them how much money it made from YouTube videos pushing the above mentioned items, as well as stolen movies, music, and other creative content. They requested meetings. They’ve waited. They’ve been stonewalled repeatedly. Google has fought AG Hood and his colleagues at every turn….
…In response, Google has shown what can only be described as an ultimate display of chutzpah. The company has sued Hood, calling his actions “enormously burdensome” – or, in other words, a pain in the a–. Google’s actual suit claims that there is a federal law that trumps Hood’s legitimate questions about Google’s impact on the health and well-being of his state’s citizens.
Google has no problem sharing every scrap that can be found on me, my friends, my family, or anyone else who has even had their name appear in a document. So the company that has made a fortune on searches doesn’t want to be searched.
Google may have the support of those organizations it helps fund like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy & Technology, but Attorney General Hood has the support of artists like East Bay Ray–and many others–who have seen their livelihoods leached away as the Google profit-machine churns online content and advertisements of dubious–often illegal–origin to fill its coffers.
Take a moment to read East Bay Ray’s entire piece. It will be worth your time: Searching for answers from Google about Google