Google: The Price is Not Right

After clearly stating that it is counter to their philosophy to block pirate sites last year and getting blasted by the IFPI in January this year, Google have now gone on record to say that online piracy is mainly a result of an “availability and pricing problem”.

This was revealed in letter sent to the Australian Government in response to a request to several companies for thoughts on a reduction in regulation. Of course, the letter was subsequently leaked by Torrentfreak (who seem to get more scoops than The Sun these days) and states the company will be “Disappointed” if the Government decides to seriously crack down on piracy.

The letter reportedly states: “We believe there is significant, credible evidence emerging that online piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem. We would encourage the Government to promote new business models and a free marketplace for legal purchasing of content”.

It continues: “We would be disappointed if the Government decided to go down the route of overly harsh regulation to combat piracy without considering the evidence from around the world that this would likely be costly for businesses to implement and with little effect”.

Rumours that the production of the letter was a malfunction connected to one of the many robotics companies that Google has been buying up left, right and centre recently could not be confirmed. On that subject, The Gen suggests that you Google ‘Boston Dynamics Big Dog’ to see an example of these companies and then get a bit scared.