Mad Dog Murdock Bites The Hand That's Feeding Him ....RUPERT IS MAD AS HELL AND HE IS NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE: Murdoch threw down the gauntlet to Google Thursday, accusing the search giant of poaching content it dosen’t own and urging media outlets to fight back.
"People reading news for free on the web, that's got to change," says Rupert Murdoch, the owner of The Wall Street Journal.
Robert Thomson, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal which is owned by News Corp, went further in his attack.
"There is a collective consciousness among content creators that they are bearing the costs and that others are reaping some of the revenues. There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet."
Murdoch Whines: Others Stealing Our Work As The Wall Street Quotes Bloggers Almost Daily Without Paying Any Compensation To The Original Content Provider:
But Has Rupert really thought out his wacky proposal out.
The Real Question Is Should The Wall Street Journal Pay For Using Blogger's Content?
Last year The Wall Street Journal referenced Chris Fountain's Greenwich blog, "For What It's Worth" and never once thought of send the original content provider a check for 1/2 a cent for every subscriber or WSJ page view.
Day after day Greenwich Roundup reads the Wall Street Journal and reads blog excerpt after blog excerpt. In The Weekend edition Greenwich Roundup sometimes notices 8 to 10 blog excerpts, quotes and references.
Yet Rupert isn't cutting checks to the original content producers.
Who would not want to be included in Google's information index?
First Of All If Murdoch really believes that Google is stealing copyrights from his media properties, when in fact Google is sending loads of traffic to his websites.
Apparently, Rupert Murdoch. Either that, or he wants Google to pay him to send his online publications traffic.
The fact is Rupert Murdock gives Google permission to index and use his media properties written materials. All of his web sites do not block search engine web spiders from crawling his web site.
Then all Rupert Murdock has to do is put two tiny lines of code at his website that blocks all search engine spiders.
ROBOTS.TXT file
To exclude all robots from the server:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
If Rupert were to put this two lines of code at the Wall Street Journal no search engine in the world would visit the WSJ server.
The dirty little secret is that Rupert pays his Wall Street Journal techies a lot of money to constantly tweak the settings and design of their home page in hopes of attracting more aggregating search-engine robots.
Because despite the hot air billowing out of Murdock's pie hole, Google drives traffic to his news sites. A hell of a lot of lot of traffic.
Google and other search engines could always drop from its index the publishers like Rupert Murdock who expect to be compensated and send all that traffic instead to those who understand that news aggregating is helping, not hurting.
Why Doesn't Rupert Just Take Google To Court?
If Murdoch and other newspapers are so set on monetizing their web content, they should sue the search engines and claim copyright violations in a bid to get the engines to pay for the content.
The outcome of such a lawsuit is far from clear.
Whether news aggregation is theft or a protected fair use under copyright law is a matter of unsettled law.
It's unsettled whether search engines have a valid fair use claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The news headlines are copied verbatim, as are some of the snippets that go along.
When failed Greenwich Time Editor Bruce Hunter got Hearst Newspaper's corporate lawyers to attack Greenwich Roundup, because he has criticized Hunter's poor performance.
Hearst Newspapers corporate lawyers backed down when Greenwich Roundup said "Let's Go To Court" and further pointed out that "There's not a rock-solid ruling on the question." about fair use.
Blaming the Internet isn't going to make the newspaper industry's situation any better.
Blaming one of the only pro-consumer features in copyright law isn't going to make it better, either. Newspapers need to recognizing reality and start dealing with it in a positive and constructive way.
MORE INFORMATION:
Bloggers' Rights From The Electronic Frontier Foundation:
One of EFF's goals is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected.
To that end, we have created the Legal Guide for Bloggers, a collection of blogger-specific FAQs addressing everything from fair use to defamation law to workplace whistle-blowing.
In addition, EFF continues to battle for bloggers' rights in the courtroom:
Bloggers can be journalists (and journalists can be bloggers). We're battling for legal and institutional recognition that if you engage in journalism, you're a journalist, with all of the attendant rights, privileges, and protections. (See Apple v. Does.)
Bloggers are entitled to free speech. We're working to shield you from frivolous or abusive threats and lawsuits. Internet bullies shouldn't use copyright, libel, or other claims to chill your legitimate speech. (See OPG v. Diebold.)
Bloggers have the right to political speech. We're working with a number of other public-interest organizations to ensure that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) doesn't gag bloggers' election-related speech. We argue that the FEC should adopt a presumption against the regulation of election-related speech by individuals on the Internet, and interpret the existing media exemption to apply to online media outlets that provide news reporting and commentary regarding an election -- including blogs. (See our joint comments to the FEC
Bloggers have the right to stay anonymous. We're continuing our battle to protect and preserve your constitutional right to anonymous speech online, including providing a guide to help you with strategies for keeping your identity private when you blog. (See How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else).)
Bloggers have freedom from liability for hosting speech the same way other web hosts do. We're working to strengthen Section 230 liability protections under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) while spreading the word that bloggers are entitled to them. (See Barrett v. Rosenthal.)
Other Resources
June 2005 Comments to the FEC on Bloggers' Freedom of Speech
June 2005 Comments to the FEC on Bloggers' Freedom of Speech
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