Talk about an inconvenient fact. A survey into US attitudes to internet piracy shows strong public support for blocking access to websites guilty of serial copyright infringement. No fewer than 58 per cent support the idea of ISPs blocking the pirate sites, and 36 per cent disagree with this. Of the respondents, 61 per cent want sites like Facebook to take more action to screen for infringing material.

This may not be what the corporate sponsor Google, which benefits from internet piracy and fights enforcement proposals, had in mind when it funded the research. Google is currently leading the opposition to the new SOPA legislation in the US, which obliges service providers to take greater responsibility

Which brings us to what wasn't asked in the survey. There are some serious omissions.

In the UK, a mere 11 per cent disagreed with the statement that: "It is important to protect the creative industries from piracy." But remember this new study is Google-funded research; they don't want vital context like that spoiling the numbers.

In a New York Times op-ed this week, Rebecca MacKinnon of the New America Foundation argued against two pieces of legislation that, she said, could result in Chinese-style censorship for U.S. citizens. It was a shot fired in a high-stakes commercial feud between, roughly, the Chamber of Commerce and film industry on the one hand; and tech companies like Google on the other.

The Times identified MacKinnon as a fellow at New America, but didn't disclose something that would be obvious only to close watchers of the D.C. think tank scene: That New America draws its money from Silicon Valley. Indeed, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is the Chair of the New America Foundation’s Board of Directors, and he and the company together have given New America more than $1.7 million in the past three years, according to the foundation.