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Rupert Murdoch Says Google Is Stealing His Content

Posted by timothy on from the what-part-of-come-in-don't-you-understand? dept.

Hugh Pickens writes Weston Kosova writes in Newsweek that Rupert Murdoch gave an impassioned speech to media executives in Beijing decrying that search engines — in particular Google — are stealing from him, because Google links to his stories but doesn't pay News Corp. to do so. 'The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content,' Murdoch says. 'But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.' But if Murdoch really thinks Google is stealing from him, and if he really wants Google to stop driving all those readers to his Web sites at no charge, he can simply stop Google from linking to their news stories by going to his Web site's robot.txt file and adding 'Disallow.'"

2 of 504 comments (clear)

  1. google: another banker owned entity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Technically he is right. And Google really do take without providing anything back. Does anyone think that their attempted (legal) theft of so-called abandoned works from a court order (a single judge deciding the fate of millions of works) was a good thing? Only those who are in bed with them would think that.

    I do not see Google as heroic. What they do is coopt everyone else and provide tools that remove our privacy and allow for spambots.

    If they are so good then let them release it all into the public domain. Oh, no. They want control. Open source? Hardly.

    And PS we don't have a choice but to deal with them. Everything you hate about oversized corporations and more. Viacom will win their suit

  2. Re:Dear Mr Murdoch by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Let's continue that line of thought. What will Google News have if all of the real news corporations go out of business as they attempt to stay in business by charging for their services? Blogs? But what where will the blogs get the news to rehash if no one is reporting news because they all went out of business? Crowd-sourced news? Come on Slashdot, throw the "big media is biased, news sucks, free news is better" line at me and tell me how much better news will be after the death of real reporting.

    Sorry people, but Murdoch has a point. Professional reporting takes time and money, and if no one pays for it, it's not going to happen.