Murdoch Faces New Hacking Claims on Lawmaker Piracy Probe

Source: Bloomberg News

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (NWSA) (NWSA), already engulfed in a U.K. phone-hacking scandal, faces fresh investigations in Australia and Britain as lawmakers said police should probe an alleged piracy scheme to topple pay-TV rivals.

NDS, a pay-TV software maker co-owned by News Corp., set up a unit in the mid-1990s to hack smartcard codes and leak them online, giving viewers free access to competitors’ programs, the Australian Financial Review newspaper said yesterday. The report, which cites internal documents and e-mails, echoes allegations made by the BBC’s Panorama program this week. News Corp. denied the claims.

“If these allegations are true they mark a sinister new low in the hacking scandal,” said U.K. lawmaker Tom Watson, who’s on a parliamentary committee preparing a report about News Corp.’s handling of the phone-hacking probe. Britain’s media watchdog Ofcom “has a duty to investigate,” he said.

The claims increases pressure on James Murdoch, the deputy chief operating officer of News Corp. and chairman of U.K. pay- TV company British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY), as he seeks to move on from the phone-hacking scandal at News Corp.’s British tabloid unit. Murdoch, 39, was a non-executive director of NDS when the alleged smartcard hacking took place.

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-28/news-corp-dot-piracy-claims-are-serious-australia-says