Comments on: Murdoch on how we're all thieves now

By: zoot

zoot — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:56:40 +0000

What percentage of their news stories does News Corpse actually break? I was under the impression that most “journalists” today are engaged in copying and pasting press releases or wire service stories, and I’ve seen little to convince me otherwise.
Mind you, I haven’t read a paper in years. My news all comes from online or electronic media.

By: Darin

Darin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:15:26 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’m a geek, but not an “information wants to be free” geek. I just can’t see a rupertolicious outcome.

Rupert does the robots thing – No google referrals to any rupertsite
Rupert claims Google infringing in court – Google drops listed rupersites
Rupert claims that google is discriminating against RupertNews by refusing to return results that Rupert claims are a copyright infringement – Judge says WTF?
Rupert claims that headlines can be googled, but not if they give the story away – different judges in different countries disagree

I don’t believe that people will pay for news. They might pay for more detailed news in areas that they are concerned about. Crikey is probably a good example here, but I’d love to see their subscriber numbers in an election versus non-election year

In an alternate universe:

Google results do not mention rupertnews so people go to rupert sites and pay to see information.

Having said that, I’ve reservations about the veracity of on-line news anyway. If it’s not Rupertnews, or ABCNews, where does the stamp of reliability come from for a consumer?

I wish I had shares in the Onion.

By: Hal9000

Hal9000 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:19:07 +0000

Anything that hastens the departure of News Ltd from a position of influence has to be applauded. That Rupe himself should be the author of his empire’s own demise is exquisite. Far better than the heirs doing it a la Packer. I can imagine Rupe’s amazement at discovering the Sun’s page 3 girls no longer cut it when so much flesh is available for free on the intertubes. Rudd’s memorial should feature a George and the dragon scene in recognition he was the first to realise Rupe was no longer someone to be afraid of. You have to feel sorry for Rupe’s minions, left like the GDR border guards twenty years ago today bereft of the awesome power they only so recently wielded.

By: Gary Franceschini

Gary Franceschini — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:42:40 +0000

Should we care? If he puts up a paywall and blocks bots from indexing the articles should we care?

By: Hal9000

Hal9000 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:22:00 +0000

The MSM, of whom Rupe is the doyen, have lost all credibility along with the Bush administration, whose lies they dutifully reported without question. The talk of quality journalism is just that, talk, mouthed by the very people who deliberately killed it off. I look forward to seeing how many ~~acolytes~~ ~~readers Andrew Blot will attract when they have to pay…~~

By: Sir Henry Casingbroke

Sir Henry Casingbroke — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:56:38 +0000

Is Rupe on Ibogaine? I do not think he was incoherent at all, just apres lunch with a bottle of Chateau lafitte aboard and it possibly reacted with his medication. But overall, he was good humoured (except when talking about the BBC, when he lost it a bit) and not too bad for a 78-year-old. He seemed to be across the things he knew, and bluffed and bullshitted his way where he didn’t. Like most peopele. The most interesting part of the interview for me was his double-backing on EMT, he was very bolshie about anthropogenic global warming for a while, at the instigation of his missus but seems now to be sliding back – perhaps someone should send the clip to Wendy.

He is still a political player in the US and here – underestimate him at your peril. Or let me put it another way, if he’s crazy, he’s crazy like a Fox.

By: rumrebellious

rumrebellious — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:24:46 +0000

Reminds me of this actually.

“We subsidise our competitors because we want people to have choice”?! Is that what MX is?

2 or 3 passports?! And abolishing fair use is so incredibly insane.

By: Nickws

Nickws — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:52:30 +0000

I think he has succeeded in one tiny little respect—we’re currently talking about a fight between Newscorp and the great public broadcasters.

Congrats, Rupe! You’ve successfully framed the debate for the last months of 2009!

Of course that doesn’t change the fact that the last time I looked Channel Nine’s website is integrated with MSN, and Channel Seven’s with Yahoo. And both hybrid entities provide written news articles for free.

And Murdoch is on record saying he wants his pay-per-view sites to be structured like the free email accounts myself and millions of other Australians have with… MSN and Yahoo.

(Also, anyone notice how Uncle Rupe declared Obama would prefer the G8 and G20 forums didn’t exist, that the president really wants a G2 comprised of China and the US? Murdoch obviously said that as a way of kowtowing to Beijing and Shanghai, but I can’t help but think that this Machiavellian say-one-thing-mean-something-else type logic hasn’t totally consumed the old man.)

By: Peter Kemp

Peter Kemp — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:14:29 +0000

Um, fair use. OMG, the man is mad.

Indeed Paul, to be consistent the abolition of fair use, ie quoting parts of the News Corpse drivel would mean abolishing it for all written material, ie books, scientific journals etc etc. A student would not be able to cite parts of academic works in an assignment unless specific deals were made with the author.

(I get it, I think Rupe wants to abolish all education so no one will be able to read at all, that’ll fuck Google!)

By: PinkyOz

PinkyOz — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:25:24 +0000

Well, we could say it’s fairly unsurprising rhetoric from Rupert in the end, but buried under the incoherent ranting is a fair argument.

He has a staff of reporters (experience, political leaning and attentiveness excused) that create news content (of questionable value/quality) that he is expected to provide for free while Google will gain revenues from advertising far in excess of what News could charge and they are only required to just pass on the hard work of others at a much lower cost.

Google are making money from the direct use of other people’s content, content that someone worked hard on (presumably). If I chose to retransmit or republish any other media without permissions/royalties, I would be in breach of copyright, so why is it acceptable here?

Remove the evil empire angle for a moment and consider that someone makes a livelihood from writing and publishing the news those jobs do not exist if no one wants to pay for the content somewhere.

Yes we do have other sources of news, and the internet is a powerful tool for letting people report and comment on news, but we aren’t professional journalists, we cannot spend that sort of time researching, writing and publishing news because we have to earn our own living we don’t have that time.

I agree that there are still problems in journalism, a lot of which Murdoch has a lot to answer for, but I doubt we will be well served by selling out the livelihoods of every paid reporter on the planet just to prop up the bottom like of Google.

PinkyOz