[LINK] Rupert Murdoch vs. the Internet

[Kim Holburn]

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/01/08/rupert-murdoch-vs-the-internet/

A sad tale.


> But momentum is building in the media industry for a  
> counteroffensive, and Murdoch is once again leading the charge.

....

> The News Corp. founder and CEO, and other publishers, have trained  
> their guns on search engines and news aggregator sites like Google  
> and Digg.com, calling them "content kleptomaniacs" and accusing them  
> of stealing content to line their own pockets. More importantly,  
> large numbers of publishers and news wire services are on the verge  
> of erecting pay walls around their online media properties, cutting  
> off much of the torrent of free content that fuels the Web 24/7.  
> "The Internet now is this socialist model where everybody can access  
> everything for free, but the democratization of the industry has  
> become unsustainable," says Alfonso Marone, a media strategist with  
> Value Partners in London.


....

> I t's now obvious the decision to throw the doors wide open to free  
> stories was a colossal mistake from the start for newspapers. Walter  
> Hussman, owner and publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, could  
> have told anyone that.

....

> Traditionally, newspapers earned about 80 per cent of their revenue  
> through advertising, with the rest coming from subscriptions.

80% is that right?  I would have thought it was quite a bit higher  
than that.

.....

> There are many logistical and legal questions left to be answered.  
> For one thing, what's to stop people from simply copying and pasting  
> stories onto their blogs? In the view of some, what's needed is an  
> overhaul of copyright laws. Last summer, Richard Posner, a U.S Court  
> of Appeals judge, suggested "expanding copyright law to bar online  
> access to copyrighted materials." Posner also proposed a ban on  
> "linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the  
> copyright holder's consent." The idea was roundly panned, and many  
> journalists accused Posner of trying to protect an outdated version  
> of the news industry. But Murdoch has also raised the spectre of  
> lawsuits, threatening to go after the BBC's online news site. "If  
> you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers  
> now, and we'll be suing them for copyright," he said recently.


And I thought the BBC had a widespread group of foreign correspondents  
gathering its own news but really it's all stolen from Murdoch.  There  
you go.


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
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