The slap fight between Google and the state of Mississippi has reached what could be its conclusion. It seems that Google will win its battle against a wide-ranging subpoena filed by a state employee, which it thinks exceeds the jurisdiction of the filing party.
The MPAA did not get the Stop Online Piracy Act through Congress. Public outcry scuppered the bill. According to various reporting sources, the MPAA turned to the States in the hopes they would press Google to do more to combat piracy.
The MPAA pooled resources with a number of studios and hired a legal firm to help move things along. That firm, in Google’s own language, “pitched” Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to take the search giant on. The MPAA provided the necessary ammunition in the form of research.
Hood later fired off a letter that was essentially spoon-fed to him by the legal counsel financed at least in part by the MPAA, and then tried to subpoena Google with a 79-page document.
Google went public about the saga, and then filed legal action against Hood. You can read that suit here. I am not a lawyer, but it seems that Google took the equivalent of a sandblaster to a soup cracker.
Hood then attempted to take his ball and go home.
In a letter shared online by the New York Times, Hood tried to sound aggrieved, painting Google as the injurious party, and himself merely the spurned Truth Seeker that he most certainly is. Here’s the key passage:
Billions of dollars! Salacious Hollywood tale! Political power! Excitable people! Media prowess! Daring! We expect more from one of the wealthiest corporations in the world! Satire is dead.
Anyway, Hood goes on to call for “cooler heads,” which is something akin to a one-sided détente, or, you know, surrender.
Google declined to comment further than its legal brief. Hood’s office has yet to reply to a request for context for one of his comments and whether he has been in touch with Google since the suit was filed.