Murdoch Takes a Swipe At Google

[kidder]

At a conference of World Media Executives at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Rupert Murdoch has taken aim at search engines like Google as internet parasites.

According to the News Corporation Chairman, the so-called "aggregators" on the internet steal content from traditional media organisations and, he says, the time has come for them to pay for it.

[abc.net.au...]

I wonder if Murdoch is playing around with Google shares this week... Does anyone think this argument has any legs?

[edited by: tedster at 2:14 am (utc) on Oct. 10, 2009]
[edit reason] add attribution for the quote [/edit]

[kidder]

The real solution to this discussion is quite simple, the government has our answer and it will be resloved in much the same way as so many other so called problems. "a new tax" is clearly in order here... :)

[kidder]

Yet another voice ....

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday criticized the efforts of Google Inc to build a massive digital library, saying the Internet should not be exempt from copyright laws.

In her weekly video podcast, before Tuesday's opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Merkel appealed for more international cooperation on copyright protection and said her government opposed Google's drive to scan libraries full of books.

"The German government has a clear position: copyrights have to be protected in the Internet," Merkel said, adding there are "considerable dangers" for copyright protection in the Internet."
www.reuters.com/article/artsNews/idUSTRE5991K520091010

[tedster]

For those who are interested, here's a discussion focused on the Google Books issue [webmasterworld.com]. No criticism implied to kidder, the Book Search topic is both timely and well worth mentioning here. But since we do have that other thread, I'd prefer it if we keep this thread focused on Murdoch's comment and the News issue.

[FranticFish]

Murdoch is a hypocrite. His two biggest UK newspapers are aggregators.

Some papers pay (investigative) journalists per story, have staff reporters, or at least buy their stories from agencies. Others (and Murdoch has two sh*trags that typify the approach) do little but steal stories from various sources - including other papers and the internet.

Think of all the intrusive paparazzi shots and celebrity news. The paper pays for the photos or the story, but the content was obtained without permission.

The current affairs coverage could be written just by picking up a late edition of a paper like the London Evening Standard and re-writing a few stories, or by watching 24-hour news channels. Same for most of the Sport coverage. What isn't general knowledge comes from 'sources' who are keen to push their version of events.

Then there is the content recycled from lads' magazines or lifestyle mags - word for word reproduction of an article as an advertorial.

Then there are the funny pictures / amazing photos / bizarre websites from the internet.

The celebrities featured in the tabloids have often been paid to be featured there, but most of the other people providing the sex, trivia and condemnation that the tabloids thrive on have not been paid for their stories.

Apart from the constant plugs for other Murdoch owned companies like Sky and Fox, what's left? The columnists and the showbiz gossip. The first isn't of interest to aggregator sites and the second comes via press release to hundreds of other sources too.

Someone is recycling your recycled content? Boo hoo.

[Reno]

Fascinating story this week at ars techica that throws an historical light on the fears of people like Rupert Murdoch:

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100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words

For the last hundred years, rightsholders have fretted about everything from the player piano to the VCR to digital TV to Napster. Here are those objections, in Big Content's own words...

Read the... Full Story [arstechnica.com]

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