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Murdoch To Explore Blocking Google Searches
In another move sure to continue the certain doom looming over classic publications, Rupert Murdoch has elaborated on the direction he would take in an effort to monetize the content that his websites deliver by attempting to block much of Google's ability to scan and index his news sites. "Murdoch believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results. 'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,' Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. 'But we'll take that slowly.'"
Am I genius?
The faster Rupert puts himself out of business, the better off everyone will be.
No sig for you!!
He wants to make more money by making his headlines not available to the top search engine?
It has to be political.. there has to be something going on behind the scenes here.
He's not that stupid a person.. and there's no way that someone hasn't explained to him what a robots.txt file is by now..
How has this not happened? Even mainstream media tends to at least try to get a statement from both sides.
I'm sure if the BBC had contacted google.. they would have gotten lots of information on the subject. Or at least a quote they could include.. something along the lines of "google engineer x would like to remind Newscorp that they can _completely_ "block" us (and many others) from "stealing" their content by putting a simple text file on their site.
If I were Google, I'd just cut all his sites off for a month and let them see how far their click-revenue falls off.
No google news, No search results, nothing.
The guy asked for it, so give it to him.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Google should explore removing all pages from Murdoch's papers from their searches in protest. Most people would be very upset if Google did this to them, but I guess Murdoch would be happy enough.
Cutting off his nose to spite his face?
No more Fox News on Google search results. More space on the front page for 'better' sources.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
you dumbass! All you have to do is deny /* or whatever and google won't index you. More likely, this is just posturing for a bribe - maybe it'd work better if he ran a news site.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I stopped reading newspapers (that I pay for) a long time ago. I still read the sunday paper, for the ads
and comics.
Wire services, well there are always some online news services, and once Murdoch's empire has
devalued totally, maybe google will buy them in bankruptcy.
Yes, I am sure that barring searching engines from listing your headlines will do wonders for your revenue. It's not like your competitors are allowing those results or anything like that! Everyone knows that your customers will go to your websites without any help from search engines!
As for fair use? Yeah, it's not like news websites ever make use of that doctrine.
Palm trees and 8
I know the slash-tards think everything is fair use, but this has nothing to do with it. It has to do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_News_Service_v._Associated_Press The term is called "hot news." The ruling basically states that you can't copyright the facts with current events.
Fair use is a defense when you are guilty of copyright infringement. It's an extenuating circumstance. On the other hand, Google has not engaged in copyright infringement because the articles themselves are not copyrightable in the short-term -- as the events are happening. They do not need to use a fair use because the headlines/summaries they are copying are not under copyright.
Worth reading Lauren Weinstein's blog post take on this - trenchantly dead-on, as usual:
Murdoch's Folly: Block Google & Kill Fair Use -- Plus a Nasty Truth
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000633.html
From the Summary: "'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,' Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. 'But we'll take that slowly.'" Fair use is the target here. They don't want anyone to ever be able to use any current culture without payment and approval.
Google should just change the headings slightly using a Thesaurus or some Semantics.
There's a department store. It probably carries a lot of merchandise. But the store owner wants everybody to pay him a fee to walk through the front door. And he wants the local papers to not say what he carries, or what he's got on sale this week. He feels that he should be the only one getting paid for anything that mentions his merchandise.
Would you bother going to his store? Or would you go to the Target or Wal-Mart that's happy to have a flyer in the paper listing everything they've got on sale this week.
Yeah, thought so.
It's your right to be stupid and wrong-headed, Mr. Murdoch. Everyone has that gods-given right. But don't come whining to us when your plan fails to go the way you want it to go. We, after all, never signed any agreement saying we'd only behave the way you want.
This is awesome! Now I don't have to sort through all the FoxNews crap in search results.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
I like how the tone of the headline and article implies some heavy handed operation here. As if "blocking Google" required a massive engineering effort, or it was tricky to block Google.
In reality, this can be done with robots.txt (which Google honors). If you don't trust robots.txt, it's a few lines in a web server configuration file can make sure that all connections from Google will be blocked.
I agree with some other posters. The aggressive language indicates that something else is happening here, behind the scenes. Either that, or you have some really clueless managers at Murdoch's organizations.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
They don't have to move in lockstep if he does have a coalition going. He can block WSJ.com, claim some victory, show it as a case model, and hope others buy his idea (WSJ does not need Google, but the example would probably not work for many other not-as-self-sustaining sites).
It's not politics, it's purely (an attempt to save a failed) business (model). If Rupert doesn't have a coalition going, there's only so much posturing he can do before actually cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
No more Faux news in my google news page!
<speedracer>buh bye little turd!</speedracer>
He's asking Google to pay him to index his site.
Parse it out...
1) They're stealing his headlines
2) Google may or may not have the right to search
3) We'll attack their right to search
4) So if they know what's good for them, pay us to be included in google searches
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Actually I think absurdist's post had it, this is all just him repeating the lie enough times that he can get his followers to back him up and then challenge fair use entirely.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
It's called "FAIR use" for a reason. What the hell.
nonexistent sig
Newspapers are a dieing media. The time when everyone pays for a subscription to get yesterdays news is over. This is just the frustration of a billionaire watching his format die. If he was willing to adapt and embrace new media then he would find new ways to make money. To bad, we need good journalists in new media, not stuck in the past with angry old men.
The #1 search engine could really alter a title somewhat with that other word book (no, not the dictionary) and other word meanings.
Heck, they could do it to content and noone would be the wiser!
(Replacing "or" is hard.)
"Murdoch believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results.
Indeed, they can't, without Murdoch's permission. Lucky for Google that Murdoch grants them permission in their robots.txt.
'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,'
"We"? As in the "royal we"? Challenged by who? On what grounds?
The only thing that seems to be "challenged" here is Murdoch's intellect and ethics. Well, actually, it's beyond "challenged", it's just rotten.
He's a god damned idiot. Or an attention whore. Or both.
This is good. I hope you are atheist as well.
Murdoch knows nothing about how the internet runs, freedom and web crawling. Does he really think that subscriptions based news is the way forward? These people are after one thing....YOUR MONEY!
Sky/Direct TV is a Murdoch Monopoly and brainwashes you into buying their exorbitant packages.....do the psychology on this people.
Do not buy ANY newspapers, he probably owns one of them, save on paper as well.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Google all your news :)
Hmm, let see.
Consumer wants info on "The XYZ Co" and hits Google, Yahoo, Bing.
Content Providers want to push their advertisers so they get income,... so
Content Providers seek as many consumer eyes as possible,...while
Murdock figures out how to crash the eyes visiting his websites.
God, he must secretly want to retire.
And we all thought that Bill Gates was the evil emperor...
Lets build a new internet using vpn, daisy chained wireless devices and open source satellites. Then we can hand the empty old internet over to these corporations and politicians to fight over.
The problems they apparently face will be solved. They can have their chicken and egg situation and eat it.
.....as he gets older that Rupert looks *and* acts more and more like Mr Burns. This comment will probably get me on a NewsCorp hitllist.
Have you ever searched for some information, and Google gave a hit where the surrounding text of the query already answers your question? And then not clicked the website?
Sometimes, but other times I do visit it. Now if the search result does not have surrounding text then I just don't bother with that link at all.
Twinstiq, game news
What else do you expect from a man in charge of a company that nearly sued itself over the one show that singlehandedly kept the network from dying an early death?
Actually I think absurdist's post had it, this is all just him repeating the lie enough times that he can get his followers to back him up and then challenge fair use entirely.
Similar tactics of repeating lies until people believe them worked with the "liberal media conspiracy" and the "fox news is fair and balanced" lines, at least in some circles.
Throw up that robots.txt, and watch your business wither...
Here's the code for it:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Who wants to read Murdoch's bilge anyway.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Merdoch (or his minons) did you perhaps mean to type Moloch?
It looks like News Corporation is already starting to "freeze" Google out. I have a newsfeed for the New York Post, a Murdoch property on my iGoogle page and the article summaries are replaced by text that reads "Information is temporarily unavailable." It's too bad, because the summaries make me more likely to click the link to the full article. As for the talk of providing News Corp. content via a subscription model - forget it. The average Joe figures he pays for his Internet access, so he expects to be able to access any content he wants. If one content provider charges a fee, dozens of other ones will line up to provide the same (or better) content for free.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
So let me see if I've got this right.
A search engine saying "Here's what you're looking for, click here" is not fair use. That's stealing.
A TV station saying "Local Newspaper said today that [entire text of the story, obviating the need to read it, but still sensationalizing it more]" IS fair use?
Yeah. I wonder why you are choosing that viewpoint.
That said, it's a free internet (for now). Give it a try. We'll be waiting breathless for the results.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I want the option to filter out news sources in the searches. I can make Rupert happy by making me happy. I have no interest in reading his rag. There are a few other far right or far left rags I could filter out as well, but I would be happy to just get rid of Fox all together.
It can join the blocked stations on my cable box.
it's Murdoch...or maybe it should be Murdouch(e).
Either way, I don't think he realizes that blocking search engines would spell a death-sentence to websites as it will kill off the steady flow of traffic to his websites and his competitors who don't block SEs will grow as they get more hits and advertisers in turn go to them.
In a dog-eat-dog, ultra-competitive market as it is....this just might spell the end of Fox News and its associates (I'm sure the words "good riddance" were muttered by a boatload of Slashdot regulars)
He can block WSJ.com, claim some victory, show it as a case model, and hope others buy his idea (WSJ does not need Google, but the example would probably not work for many other not-as-self-sustaining sites).
Google News still indexs WSJ.com and you can access all the WSJ articles with a google referrer.
http://news.google.com/news/search?q=site%3Awsj.com
Though to be honest, I've never been blocked from accessing any WSJ articles.
If someone could show me a link that runs into the paywall, I'd be interested in trying it out.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
About how it’s a devious masterstroke beyond our ken.
But I say: never attribute to malice what can be explained by advanced syphilis of the BRAIN.
Seriously, when I read this it was all I could do not to point at my screen and say "heeah, heeah" in the style of Nelson from The Simpsons.
Many people read nothing more than the headlines. For many news articles, the synopsis often carries 90% of the value of the article; the rest is reactions and analysis that an astute reader could provide without help.
Murdoch believes that if people are reading the headlines at his site, many will feel they've gotten everything, and not buy a subscription.
I fear that you might be correct. It makes me very sad inside. Though really... One should never read just the headline. It's point is to be a bit scandalous and a bit provocative while still not being false in order to attract interested readers to read the details. It often gives extremely narrow view of the situation on hand.
I just now went to foxnews.com and chose one article based purely on headline. The headline was "White House Spent 'Weeks' Courting Lone GOP Vote on Health Care Bill". When you actually read the article you notice that it does indeed mostly speak about that but also quickly mentions that he is a republican from usually a very democrat oriented district (got elected due to his opponent's criminal charges) and said that voting against the bill would have been the end of his political career. Kinda adds some perspective to the issue, doesn't it?
Go die in a fire.
best regards, FudRucker
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
...him repeating the lie enough times that he can get his followers to back him up and then challenge fair use entirely.
The problem with that is that "Fair Use", and similar concepts, varies between nations and regions.
While influential in some quarters, other countries often have drastically different fair use criteria to the US, and in some countries there is little or no fair use defense available. Even within Europe, rules vary greatly between countries. Some countries have the concept of fair dealing instead of fair use. However many countries have some reference to an exemption for educational use, although the extent of this exemption may vary wildly.
Wikipedia
The Long Now Foundation
This is all a ploy to negotiate with Google some more beneficial (to Murdoch) terms. I can only see it working if he also manages to get a critical mass of other publications' owners to do the same thing. They don't have to move in lockstep if he does have a coalition going. He can block WSJ.com, claim some victory, show it as a case model, and hope others buy his idea (WSJ does not need Google, but the example would probably not work for many other not-as-self-sustaining sites).
It's not politics, it's purely (an attempt to save a failed) business (model). If Rupert doesn't have a coalition going, there's only so much posturing he can do before actually cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Here's what I don't understand about people like Murdoch. He's 78 years old. I don't like him one bit, but I don't wish him ill either (for that would reflect badly on me while saying nothing about him). I hope he lives well into old age (and uses that time to reconsider his priorities -- more on that later). But realistically, he is a mortal being just like me and everyone else.
I'll speak only for myself here. If I were 78 years old, how much time would I have left on the planet? Two or three years? Five? Ten? Wouldn't I be lucky to have that much, since all of those figures exceed the average life expectancy of a male in the USA? If I am that old and already have enough money to guarantee not only my financial security but also that of any children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, what would be the point of continuing to try to build and maintain a media empire with increasingly aggressive tactics? Every minute I spent doing that would be time I wouldn't get to spend with my family, my friends, appreciating nature and the world around me, and maybe even trying to use my vast resources to make the world a slightly better place. It would be time that I would never get back once it has come and gone.
I really wonder what drives people like this. I want to know what they think they are accomplishing that's so important to them. It's not even a religious cause or a humanitarian effort or anything like that where this kind of devotion is not so unusual. It's just business and he has already acquired a vast personal fortune that is the dream of businessmen everywhere. He has already succeeded many times over yet he continues to play the game. Something here just doesn't add up. How do you explain this kind of dedication? Because as far as I can tell, it's quite pathological though even that doesn't really explain it.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I would be willing to bet that most people do not know about bookmarks, and just search Google (or whatever their favorite search engine is) whenever they want to go to a website. There is probably a significant percentage of people who enter domain names into Google when they want to visit the website at that domain.
Palm trees and 8
So we can sum up this whole thread by giving Murdoch this suggestion:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
Maybe /. should start a campaign that barrages news corps sites with that, and then they would get the picture....
...randomly re-registering his sites' names so that no one can read them. Ever.
i wonder if this block on google will extend to not using google ads on NI sites, and not using enhanced google search to find content on them.... surprisingly, this quality online establishment (http://www.thesun.co.uk/search/searchAction.do?query=murdoch+wants+to+ban+google&view=internal&pubName=sol&submit=+Search+) hasn't picked up the story yet.
I had the pleasure of cycling for about 4 hours with on of the editors from a large Murdoch owned newspaper back in 2000.
He asked me where the internet was heading, and how they could leverage it to provide content, and get the readers involved. I also highlighted problems like the sourcing of press releases as articles and the conflicting information they will find in other sources. Opportunities also would present themselves like geolocated and profiled advertising. To their credit, they have persued much of this. The problem is that Google is their competition. I can find anything I want, for free, quicker, crowdsourced, discussed in forums and critiqued. The only service newspapers now offer is a stream of aggregation - and that puts them in direct competition with search engines.
This has been a perfect storm for Murdoch. He has concernrated media, driving variety out of the the market, and opening doors for players of new technology to enter into a niche and then expand to take his business.
His papers will evaporate. Unfortunately, with it will go the newsagencies, delivery routes and old paper advertising industry that went with it. The biggest danger Rupert faces is Apple Tablet - if you can read on that, and it works well - newpapers are in for a world of pain.
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
In an exclusive interview with one of his employees, Rupert Murdoch announced that it was time to draw a line in the sand in his constant battle to frustrate freeloading consumers by scheduling extensive rhinoplasty.
As the logical extension of his intent to improve monetization of his global media empire, an aggressive research team, led by his own grubby, questing index finger (itself a semi-autonomous publicly traded subsidiary of ArmCorp) had discovered a hitherto unprofitable branch of Mr Murdoch's own face and immediately set to analysing the potential in the "streaming content" market.
"Thanks to the pervasive and anarchic medium of light and an endemic, unscrupulous approach to photon-consumption," said Mr Murdoch to a camera he owned, "the public have been stealing — we believe it is theft — visible spectra which carry a representation of my nose. When I consent to an interview, a TV appearance or a personal meeting with an individual, we are entering into a contract in which I am licensing access to me, Rupert Murdoch, a highly lucrative and profitable range of properties and services.
"For too long, people have been content to pay only for access to my thoughts, speech or round-the-clock footage of the contents of my bowels — via the Times, Sky and Fox News respectively — while stealing valuable images of my nose, its nostrils and their contents, then rebroadcasting and shamelessly profiteering.
"When a reporter negotiates an interview with me, as well as broadcasting the material he has licensed legitimately, he frequently steals additional content without permission. Telling another reporter down the pub 'I just interviewed that arsehole Murdoch, what a leathery-faced, jowly, big-nosed, offensive wanker he is' is time-shifting and re-disseminating unlicensed intellectual property. Commentary based upon my opinions is legitimate as paid output from the premium outlet of my mouth. Any entertainment derived from the rest of my face is theft, pure and simple. There is no such thing as fair use."
The interview itself took place on Sky Channel 149, a pioneering venture to broadcast 24-hour footage of the view from Mr Murdoch's bathroom cabinet. In line with Mr Murdoch's policy of preferring fewer paying customers and no freeloaders, Sky 149 has precisely one subcriber, with Mr Murdoch himself paying himself hundreds of thousands of dollars each month for access, for the purpose of shaving.
Having successfully franchised out his forehead, jowls and cheeks to a conglomerate representing elephants born without ball-bags, and following a failed attempt to charge a subscription fee to customers prepared to pay to punch Murdoch square in the nose, the decision was eventually made to excise the entire section of the business, rather than allow further illicit exploitation, piracy and copyright terrorism.
When questioned as to what purpose the resulting gap in his cranial portfolio might be turned, Murdoch suggested that he was tentatively considering offers from the adult entertainment market to employ his skull cavity as a giant fucking cunt.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Google and all other search engines should immediately start excluding links to Murdoch's web sites from all of their search results. Mr Murdoch should look into other ways of increasing his profits form the content his publications are providing. He should go one step further and make Fox News Channel a premium cable channel that costs $49.95/month...
1) The morons have to pay the HeadMoron for their daily propaganda. 2) The rest of us don't even get any of it accidentally fed to us by Google. I see this as win-win. Go Murdoch!
it's human readable-you won't believe this shit....
http://www.foxnews.com/robots.txt
"User-agent: * /printer_friendly_story /projects/livestream /printer_friendly_story /google_search_index.xml /google_news_index.xml /*.xml.gz
Disallow:
Disallow:
#
User-agent: gsa-crawler
Allow:
Allow:
Allow:
Allow:
#
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/google_search_index.xml
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/google_news_index.xml"
explicit allows.....
I often find disallows to be the neatest part of some websites.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Murdoch would sue. More likely, Fox would sue, whining that Google is discriminating against a conservative viewpoint.
No, what would make more sense is, with each of these articles, publicly respond -- in particular, contact whatever organization published the Murdoch rant. Make two offers:
First, offer to that news organization that a representative will be available for comment every time Murdoch does this. This isn't a big deal, as it'll pretty much be cut and paste.
Second, in this response and in all further comments, make the public offer to do exactly what he is asking for -- stop indexing his stuff. If he says "no", end of story. If he doesn't respond, he's going to look very stupid in future articles like this.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The problem is, nobody is paying anyone for the news today. So there will be no "good journalists" in the future because nobody is going to waste their time doing that job for nothing.
If your current career paid you zero dollars, would you keep doing it out of loyalty? I know some teachers might. Except they need to pay the rent, buy food, etc. So no matter how dedicated they are, they are going to spend their hours doing something that pays for rent, food. etc.
The "new media" consists of reading stuff written by people that are driven to write it by their own ego. So you get terrific articles that are written by dedicated people... except they are utterly the product of one person's delusions about the world. This isn't news or journalism, it is like finding someone making a speech in a public park.
As some other folks have said, nobody is every going to pay again. Or at least not in our lifetimes. It is expected to just all be free because it is on the Internet. So instead of news we are going to have blogs and ranting.
If you've got the mentality of a 4-year-old.
Seriously. It's reactions like these that make us complain when companies that can't work together, and now people mod the idea up because it's against a company they don't like?
But I'd hazard that he knows just how many eyes google directs to his sites.
Instead, I'd suggest he doesn't like how efficient google's algorithm is. I generally get what I'm after with google. I'm guessing he wants to be able to directly control what a search on his sites turn up, relevant or not.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I was thinking about power law distributions the other night, and ended up reading through some old material on Clay Shirky's blog, where I encountered the term "solidarity good": a good that primarily has value because all your peers also know about it. This is one of the factors which drives power law distributions. I mean, we all know who's the world's wealthiest self-produced amateur porn star, which is only important because we all know it.
I'm interested in another class of good which I might term "ubiquity good": something that has value primarily because you know it's pervasive and easily accessible. In software, we're trained not to succumb to the NIH factor. If you position a line of code as a scarcity good, you'll end up rewriting it every time you change jobs. In order to drive down labour cost, the powers that be have voted in favour of churn.
In our economy, most people function as wage slaves: your income is primarily determined by how many hours you have to sell. Only the ascendant sliver of the power law distribution profits from accrued capital. So you have 10% of the population controlling 90% of the wealth who are intensely invested in scarcity goods, and 90% of the population controlling 10% of the wealth who see a lot more upside in ubiquity goods. Which prevails?
Without laws to the contrary (and big government to enforce them) the answer is obvious. I wonder about this sometimes when I use Google Scholar to add a cite to a woeful Wikipedia article. I dive in, poach someone else's hard won fact/authority, jigger the wording, adjust the context, and make if free for all: a billion termites chewing away on scarcity culture, bite by bite. By comparison, the "analog gap" is a pretty small fish.
In theory, we all aspire to make the leap from the wage slave majority to the leveraged minority. The power law says most of us aren't going to make it: the number of seats at the high table seems to shrinking lately, rather than growing.
The argument boils down to one of two cases: A) we should all support scarcity culture, because we all aspire to ascend the economic ladder to the scarcity-enabled rungs of privilege, or B) we should all invest in ubiquity culture, because few of us will succeed in making the jump (as is the nature of a power law).
Power laws have a fractal structure, but scarcity doesn't seem to: for whatever reason, gated communities tend not to work; a quanta of IP tends to either be scarce or universal. Frequently the market manages to exploit aspiration over reality, but I don't see how that's going to play out in Murdoch's favour in this case. There isn't enough middle ground.
The one example of middle ground that comes to mind is stock market price data where scarcity is a function of timeliness. For the big fish, I think the goal these days is to trade on adverse information in under 4ms. The price information runs a cascade of tiers before emerging 15m later as a universal. Each tier wants to conceal the new information from the next tier down until their own trades complete, and so it goes.
Somehow Disney wants to fire the inverse-bullet-time hog-trough at this and slow the process down to the scale of human lifetimes without tipping greater society toward ubiquity goods. I can only say, good luck with that. Murdoch in the middle isn't going to fare much better.
Rupert seems to be trapped in his private version of the Prisioner's Dilemma. If he could get all news sources to abide to his plan, maybe overall their revenue stream would increase and their business would be more sustainable. But is a few media companies reject this, their readership will skyrocket for being the only free sources, and their ad revenue will jump with it.
I believe hoarding is hardwired into the system. Highly irrational in today's times of plenty, but controlling genetic impulses seems to be beyond his abilities. Great! Let's take the law to its next level of absurdity. SNAFU
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I wish him ill, *because* he's still acting like this at age 78. It ties in to those other articles about CEOs and sociopaths.
Even as a bitter old man, Murdoch still feels he has to 'win' any everything, whether it's true or not, no matter who gets destroyed in the process... and his medium for doing this is the news? Despicable.
It will be interesting to see how fast Murdoch will do a complete U-Turn when his sites become a forgotten backwater because Google isn't directing traffic there any more.
I work for someone who is wealthy enough to just plain stop, right now, and live happily ever after. He easily works 60 hours a week at the office, and probably more if he takes anything home with him. We've talked about the quandary you just presented.
His answer as to why he continues to build and expand: "Because I really enjoy it." And I don't think there's much more to be said about it, except that some folks like playing football, or billiards. Some folks paint pictures for fun. And some folks build empires. It's like playing Risk, but with real assets.
Kid-proof tablet..
Here is another article that goes into a little more detail.
The crux of the matter seems to be the fact "readers who randomly reach a page via an internet search hold little value to advertisers." Apparently advertisers want to know some demographic details about the people who read the articles, details that are available with paying subscribers. "Who knows who they are or where they are. They don't suddenly become loyal readers of our content." states Mr. Murdoch of Google news click-throughs.
Mr. Murdoch also claims that there is simply not enough advertising money in the world to make all news websites profitable. He realises that the number of visitors will decrease, but states that he would prefer to have fewer readers who pay to many readers who don't.
Say what you want about Google, but they at least seem to honor robots.txt. Is this technology not available to Mr. Murdoch's websites?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
should join Google and DROP ALL OF MURDOCH'S COMPANIES. Let him know what a day without Search Engines would be like.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I work for someone who is wealthy enough to just plain stop, right now, and live happily ever after. He easily works 60 hours a week at the office, and probably more if he takes anything home with him. We've talked about the quandary you just presented.
His answer as to why he continues to build and expand: "Because I really enjoy it." And I don't think there's much more to be said about it, except that some folks like playing football, or billiards. Some folks paint pictures for fun. And some folks build empires. It's like playing Risk, but with real assets.
Is this person generally a good or at least decent man? Or is he a despotic, ruthless, Machiavellian type like (in my opinion) Murdoch is? I believe that makes a significant difference. I don't imagine Murdoch truly rejoicing in much of anything to tell you the truth. He probably views his personal enjoyment as something he had to sacrifice to a) get where he is today and b) demonstrate his single-minded dedication. If you have ever encountered the type before, then you know what I mean.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This sucks.
I've been reading WSJ for free for the past year by convincing them that I was Google with the RefControl extension.
I work for someone who is wealthy enough to just plain stop, right now, and live happily ever after. He easily works 60 hours a week at the office, and probably more if he takes anything home with him. We've talked about the quandary you just presented.
His answer as to why he continues to build and expand: "Because I really enjoy it." And I don't think there's much more to be said about it, except that some folks like playing football, or billiards. Some folks paint pictures for fun. And some folks build empires. It's like playing Risk, but with real assets.
I know I'm replying to you a second time, but I wanted to add something.
I guess I am one of those "oddballs" (at least in this society it would seem so) because I value quality time with people I love and care about much more than any game of Risk that I don't actually need to play. What follows is a rhetorical question. If your boss has a family, how often does he say "I just don't have the time" to his wife and children in order to put in those 60+ hours a week, or if he doesn't have his own family, how many people hear that from him who still care about him very much?
To me this is not about whether working a job that you enjoy has merit. Certainly it does. It's about priorities and whether you have any that mean more to you. It's about the fact that there are only so many hours in one day and only so many days in one lifetime.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Although you couldn't expecect Rupert Murdoch himself to have been aware of robots.txt, this is what CEOs "have people for", and I'm sure that there are plenty of people at News Corp. who know all about robots.txt, and that Murdoch is therefore, well aware of it at this point in time.
So why would he say something he knows is misleading at best? He's posturing ahead of attempts to get Google to pay him. If he can persuade Google to pay (it doesn't have to be cash after all) in exchange for some other consideration, he's not only getting something he wasn't getting yesterday, it sets a precedent for him to make everyone else pay too.
If Murdoch was really serious he would ban all search engine scanning on all of his sites.
What's a better reason than the actual owner of the site bitching about being indexed and quoted and so on? They wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on and the judge would dismiss it after a few sentences of reading, if he hadn't read about it previously.
Anyway, that's not the scam here, murdoch wants cash from google, and it is that simple. He can't make it from online ad revenue, he's stumped, got no clue at all, which really pisses him off being a past success and like that. It is annoying to him google can make money from ads and he can't, so he wants google to pay him for what he can't do. He knows google came up with a way to make a bundle from ad revenue, and he wants a piece of it. Just like ATT wants cash from google, even though google pays for their bandwith, and end users pay for their bandwith. ATT thinks there should be a third fee that google pays because they constitute a sum nice chunk of their traffic. Just "because" the ATT CEO hallucinated that this is his just dessert or something. No technical legal reason, just he wants a piece of google.
Newscorpse and ATT are *trolling for dollars*, that's all, based on no particular thing other than they want them and google has deep pockets.
I know it could be painful, but you have to make believe debase yourself to subhuman pure reptile brain level to grok how these predatory big phat CEOs think. One of their prime motivations is greed, pure greed outside the normal ken level greed. In their minds, if someone else has something, that is "wrong", because they should own and control everything, so therefore that other person must have stolen it from them. No matter how stupid that is, and how stupid it sounds to ordinary non predatory humans, those psychopaths who hit the top and stay there ruthlessly actually think that way and act out that way because they *believe* this way, it's a real mental sickness. It is just as real to them as anything else. Remember balmer sweating and spittle flying pounding his fist into his hand and growling about "they are taking food off my plate!"? That's just how they are.
The vast bulk of these sorts of insane human predators eventually get caught and do long jail times for crimes, but if they make it all the way to that billionaire owner class level they automatically become part of the new aristocracy class and their odd and criminal behaviors become acceptable again (to their peers, because they are all that way and it is normal at that level, and to the law, because "the law", like any other mercenary endeavor, follows the orders of that same psychopath class for the most part, because that's where their checks come from).
They think and act like rabid starving wolves all the time, that's all, just their nature. When they are small time, they get treated like common criminals, because they are, when they hit a certain size and power level, this changes officially and legally and they can get away with stuff all the time that ordinary people would get yanked for, or at least locked up for observation for, including bizarre illogical speech and threats and so on.
The problem with techies, they need to learn to think like a businessman. We control the information, get it together techies!
And that's the whole problem with techies. They think they control something because they provide a pipeline, but its the content that flows through the pipeline that is valuable, not the pipe itself. The techy value system is an empty railroad roaming the nation without any freight.
This is my sig.
It'd never make it. It'd be dismissed pretty much instantly. There's no protected class of "conservative", and being listed on Google isn't a protected right.
Would, or rather, should be, that Google's network belongs to Google and employing the government to force it to show Fox would in fact be a sort of socialism.
This is my sig.
"...blogs and ranting." Ever heard of Glenn Beck?
It is clearly a slow news day when Rupert Murdoch himself has to step up to make a headline.
Rupert might be around for sometime yet if his mother is anything to go by. http://www.mcri.edu.au/pages/our-people/dame-elisabeth-murdoch-100th-birthday.asp
"There's a doctrine called 'fair use', which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether... But we'll take that slowly."
That's pretty much the definition of FUD. "We can and will destroy you, but we choose not to for now." A.k.a. "bullshit".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"except they are utterly the product of one person's delusions about the world. This isn't news or journalism.."
How is that different from Murdoch's (or any other media baron for that matter) empire exactly?
One word: sociopath.
There is a war going on for your mind.
What makes you think getting rid of Rupert will solve the problem? What makes you think there won't be another prick who will immediately rise to take his place? Do you actually think his attitudes and behavior are all that unique in the corporate world? Have you forgotten Jack Valenti and all his ideological forebears from the last century?
You must be new here.
I, for one, will no longer read webpages served up by his companies if Google no longer can provide his material in search results.
I get almost all of my news from google news aggregation, and then click on links which strike my interest. If Google doesn't give me the link, then I'm probably not going there.
Sorry Rupert! Bad Mogul! [swat with newspaper, preferably one of his own]
I'm an individual! Just like everyone else!
The problem is, nobody is paying anyone for the news today. So there will be no "good journalists" in the future because nobody is going to waste their time doing that job for nothing....So instead of news we are going to have blogs and ranting.
Maybe this is the "free market" trying to work as it should. The paid journalists work for a smaller and smaller number of increasingly massive media conglomerates. As there is increased control from the top the limits grow on what "real" journalists can print. Thus what they do manage to get into print is of decreasing value and people are less likely to want to pay for it. What theoretically should happen is that this eventually causes the huge media conglomerates crash and burn. The working journalists will perhaps suffer the most as this happens but in the end when media ownership splits up to where we again have a viable, independent free press real journalism will again have an important place.
Of course, the massive media conglomerates are continually working to eliminate any actual free market in order to maintain their business models.
Who but a bunch of racist old assholes is going to miss it in their news results?
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Or better yet, just watch his worthless propaganda empire go underwater with a pathetic gurgle.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
That which cannot be found with search is not relevant. Murdoch just confessed he is incompetent to figure out how to make money unless he can monopolize news and even the finding of news. Goodbye Mr. Murdoch. Please retire and watch your grandchildren.
I guess this is what is was like watching the last few mastodons lumbering off a cliff, confident there was food at the bottom.
Well, I don't, so I have a modest proposal: Your friend gives me enough money that I can stop working tomorrow. I'll spend a good chunk of my spare time doing more work on free software, and your friend can carry on working to earn a second fortune, and we'll both be happy.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Did anyone pay for tv news ten years ago?
Just because the consumer doesn't pay at the point of purchase doesn't mean it's impossible to make money from it.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Thank you i came here to make this comment. There is a future of-for the paywall. Many people pay, WE say grumble grumble, cached -- pagedown page down.
Normal users with a broken computer PAY! Pay here 9 dollars a month or whatever and you get a subscription to a technical resource full of people begging to solve your problems.
I am sure they make money from doing it. Murdoch knows how to make money Im sure. It will make things more expensive for most, and the technical ruling classes will roll their eyes and click page down.
annoying and should be stopped before it gets out of control... but it wont be.
-
Rupert Murdoch is a douchebag, plain and simple.
Fox News is a JOKE as a news station, and that is saying a lot especially here in the US. In fact, the only thing more stupid than Fox News is its audience. Germans who were alive during the rise of the Nazi party are probably saying "Damn! That Fox News sure knows how to fling the propaganda!"
Fox News is a one sided, boneheaded, take-no-prisoners bozonic turd that is polished using the finest paid-for "news correspondents" who are willing to report what Rupert M's lackeys say in spite of these things we call facts and objectivity. In fact, anyone working for Fox News who considers themselves a journalist is delusional and should seek therapy.
Rupert should just sit back and enjoy the fact that he has money and not worry about getting revenge on those who picked on him when he was a kid. In fact, he can actually afford some decent health insurance and can use it to get the mental treatment that he rightly deserves.
The problem is, nobody is paying anyone for the news today.
Advertisers are already paying for free news for everyone. And this has been the main source of revenue for newspapers too.
ROBOTS.txt
robots.TXT
robotsDOTtxt
ROBOTS-DOT-FUCKING-TXT
Now die in a fire, Murdoch. No one is dumb enough to fall for your line of bullshit, not even the US Congress or UK Parliament.
P.S. robots, dot, txt.
I may be able to shed some light on that one. IMHO what he is fighting for has nothing to do with money or power so much as it has to do with legacy. In all likelihood he has committed more time, effort and personal resources to building up NewsCorp than he has with his wife or children, certainly more than he has spent working on world peace or saving the environment. 15 years ago he was well on his way to building what seemed to be an everlasting institution that would be a constant factor in the lives of every individual in the western world, an institution built on what appeared at the time to be an industry essential to our way of life and civilization. While you and I and many members of /. would consider our primary contribution to society (our kids, our communities, the passion for understanding and discovery that we instill in those around us) he made a conscious choice to neglect in favor of what appeared to be a more monumental and potentially even more enduring monument to his achievement.
Now the industry on which he built his legacy is crumbling. While he could devote his final years and vast fortune to things like his family, friends, and community, and sit back and watch while his corporate monument fall, he would never have the chance to recover the lost time and effort it took to build what he perceives as greatest contribution to society. 15 years ago he was looking forward to being remembered for being the architect of an enduring corporate institution, today he's facing the possibility of that being reduced to being a footnote on the Wikipedia page describing the spectacular fall of the corporate news industry.
A similar perspective could be used to describe why we see so much resistance from other industries failing as a result of new information technologies, they are afraid of becoming irrelevant, from falling on the wrong side of the current technological revolution and becoming lost, and forgotten, a fate worse even than their certain death.
Or he could just be evil... whatever works for you.
Why doesn't Murdoch just have all his sites based ENTIRELY on Flash or Java? To my knowledge Google or any other search engine can't index the displayed results of either of those very well.
Maybe if Google would simply remove all references to anything Murdoch from the search engine, then all of the Murdoch sites would simply dry up and blow away.
Doesn't have anything to do with money.
Fox and Murdoch have a vested interest in ensuring that nobody can quote Fox/Murdoch story version 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, 1g, 1h....1y when they try to sell America story version 1z.
Google makes it way, way too easy to demonstrate Fox's unique addiction to revisionism.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I also read The Age daily. If Murdoch has his way and starts charging for his news content online I just can't see the value of paying for it. The site is already riddled with ads and don't get me started on the video advertisements that play automatically when you read some articles. If we all have to pay for a subscription to get news from News Corp websites they wouldn't even consider dropping advertisements on the pages since it provides extra revenue. Like you pointed out, they definitely need to start look at making their websites have more value rather than just allowing users to read articles otherwise people are just going to jump to the next news outlet that has similar articles for free. Even then I would be hard pressed to sign up to a subscription if I can get my news elsewhere for free if they make the subscriptions only for a single site. If they made the subscriptions to cover all their news sites and make an interface like Google News to view all their articles from their news outlets, I might be tempted to pay for it then.
I doubt if Murdoch wants to block Google's access at all (he'd need a morons.txt file instead). He wants them to pay: this would give the hit-count of a free-access google-indexed site (preserving advertising rates), but the direct revenue per view of a paywalled site.
/printer_friendly_story /projects/livestream /printer_friendly_story /google_search_index.xml /google_news_index.xml /*.xml.gz
His web admins and business managers probably understand robots.txt quite well, and have made it consistent with their business intentions. Just for giggles, here is the robots.txt from Fox News:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Disallow:
#
User-agent: gsa-crawler
Allow:
Allow:
Allow:
Allow:
#
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/google_search_index.xml
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/google_news_index.xml
Note that there are entries explicitly allowing the Google indexers...
FWIW, that's the first time in years that I've looked at anything at a fox site.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If you think news corpse is a good journalism, then I have a bridge to sell...
the irrelevance will be complete.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I mean, it's a pretty big struggle right now for conservative voices, nearly drowned out and lost in the liberal sea of the Mainstream Media.
Maybe some kind of "Fairness Doctrine" that compelled media outlets to give time to opposing viewpoints could help boost their message?
Tweet, tweet.
161 references to robots.txt searching the comments :)
What I think Robert Murdoch should do is just Disallow google from the robots.txt file! Anybody else have that idea ?
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
... where Mrs. Bullet meets Mr. Foot?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
It's time for the hackers/crackers of the world to unite and give Murdoch what he wants: A robots.txt that stops googlebot from indexing anything on News Corps servers.
There are several advantages to this:
1) Murdoch gets what he says he wants, free of charge
2) Google gets to show the world, just how effective they are at driving traffic
3) We, the people, get to pull a Nelson on Murdoch
4) The crackers/hackers who pull it off, get to show that they're doing good work
The printed version of The Age is much better than the online version and can be bought at a discount to the "sticker price" if you get it delivered every morning. Imagine that, stepping back in time to mode of reality where you didn't use the internet to get your news.
I read it over breakfast or on the train of a morning... followed by MX (free, advertising driven city-rag) in the afternoon :*)
Although I do read the Green Guide mainly for the ads to see what computer parts prices are doing amongst the bigger yum-cha computer retailers. I know, I could visit their websites but there's no clicking or blinking things in printed ads - they're much less offensive and when you've got a two page spread of laptop, pc, parts and prices, well, it's just a LOT easier to scan and read than on a screen (at least for me) and much more suitable for drawing around things with pens, etc.
The Age is a really worthwhile paper... but the big question is, how much would you pay for all of the above?
Lets say that it costs $2 to buy, every day of the year. Subscriptions and home delivery offer discounts on that price. For arguments sake, lets assume it brings the price to $1.50/paper/day. That's $45/month. That price is subsidised by the printed adverts in the paper. If that's a 50% subsidy, then the cost of the ad-free subscription would be $90/month.
Understanding that it costs someone money to provide the content, how much are you willing to pay for no ads?
Not that I favour censorship, but I think the Internet would be a better place *without* Murdochs "newspapers". :-)
I would be happy for Google to not return results from his sites
"Have you ever" taken a train or an airplane instead of a horse carriage in order to travel across a continent? And not paid the carriage owner as result?
What makes you think anyone had to pay for service fading away into obsolescence?
The modern copyright disputes have "The Red Flag Act" reminiscences all over them.
Set up some accessible pages with just the headlines, they can auto-forward you to the pages with the text.
No sig today...
After a point money = power and only power. As you say, you can buy ANYTHING you want materially with billions in the bank. But when someone else has a billion more than you they have more power than you.
And that's wrong.
If it were right they'd be as smart as you and they're obviously not because they don't agree with you.
So you must have power over this other person therefore you need more money.
And spending money is not to be done unless it buys you power, so you spend a million on a soiree with politicians and heads of state attending but you don't buy a shirt unless the one you have on looks like it belongs to a poor person (because that would make you look like you have less money and therefore be less respected).
etc.
Copiepresse did the same thing in belgium: demand that Google pay them, Google stopped indexing, Copiepresse went to the Belgium court to sue Google for not indexing their site.
If Google stop indexing Fox on their side then they'll have to pay their solicitors to stay as long as Murdoch's solicitors can keep the judge interested in the case.
There is a rather long article on Murdoch's war on the Internet here. It should answer a lot of your questions on what the guy is thinking.
"he, who has quotes in his signature, is a douche" - unknown.
Nice speech!
I think Google should humor him and stop indexing his sites completely. It would be interesting to see how long it would take from him to complain about it. If Murdoch's hegemony want advertising based links, then they need to follow Google's advertising policy - like everyone else does, and buy pay per click links - like everyone else does.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
It's not politics, it's purely (an attempt to save a failed) business (model).
How is that not politics?
... and then they built the supercollider.
No one tagged this one 'andnothingofvaluewaslost' yet?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
This is 100% correct. Print media is frightfully expensive. Tycoons like Murdoch have billions invested in infrastructure which is busy going up in smoke. This is besides his political relevance which is also beginning to erode as the news delivery mechanisms change.
Without the cost of printing, The cost of news comes right down. Advertising can easily fund this and still turn a decent (not obscene) profit for the a news agency.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Gee, I wonder why his business is dying on the internet when other news sites are profiting?
Why can't they just add a Robots.txt into their web-root directory?
Man to whom transatlantic phone calls were high technology in 'doesn't understand how web works' shocker
Isn't the real issue is that he wants people to pay to be entertained? This has nothing to do with news, cause he doesn't have access to any.
I really wish Google would proactively dump all Fox 'News' content. I gave up on Google News long ago as most of their political stories sport the propagandistic headlines knitted on Fox hate machines. I never could decide if Google is clueless to Fox gaming their system or if Google actually prefers incendiary headlines regardless of how untrue they may be.
Unfortunately for Fox News, that would mean that they could not quote anyone or use excerpts from books or speeches without prior approval. He'll find that he can't have it both ways.
I think politicians in particular would like this, because they could cover up anything embarrassing by revoking permission to use it.
Fox isn't about reporting the news, but shaping public discourse on key issues. It's not like Murdoch would care if his cronies wanted to keep something quite. He's probably very trustworthy in that regard.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The world still needs journalists, but we don't need them to do the same things they've always done. The internet has changed a lot of that.
We don't need journalists to do as much original "breaking" news reporting. They've got a billion pair of eyes that can be used to do that, courtesy the internet. I'm imagining a news agency that replaces most of its reporting staff with a social network of 100,000 "cub reporters" who feed stories and leads to a professional staff of researchers, writers, and editors. Cub reporters earn nothing more than a byline -- and maybe a shot at joining the ranks of the pros. They'd be "developed", just like a minor league player -- give 'em some training, assign them a mentor, feed them an assignment to go hunt something down and report in.
I would pay a lot for an fast-moving but authoritative source of news that was demonstrably unbiased (like C-SPAN, bless its geeky 'lil heart.)
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
... he would just hurry up and get it done so I don't have to see any more of that Fox News crap in the Google News searches any more.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Maybe Murdoch feels like it's not his responsibility to put a robots.txt file on his websites. It's like if you put a special sign in your window burglars will skip your house, but really they shouldn't be burgling in the first place. Not that I'm defending him. In fact maybe he's starting to lose it, we could have another Howard Hughes on our hands here.
Some will say that IT is going this way. Why invest in a career in computer science when you can't sell any of your software because they are either pirated or open sourced. This is why I dropped out of Computer Science and transferred to Finance, I'll end up richer than most of those idiots that stay on that program.
The vacuum left by these lost journalists will most definitely be filled by smaller groups/organizations that can be judged on the merit of their writing. You act as if accurate news reporting(lol) is going to be gone forever.
Someone should make a plugin like this one: surfclarity but make it just filter out FoxNews and other NewsCorp results and name it "NoMurdoch" or "Block FoxNews" or some other blatant reference to blocking out FoxNews and then distribute it far and wide...
Could be the start of a whole new way to protest. Get enough people to install and you'll see a news story out of it - and that will get Mr. Murdoch's attention.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Wow, every time this guy opens his mouth, he confidently displays his ignorance.
This one is on par with digging your own grave and pulling the hole in after you.
Not only will the world trudge right by his silly little "news" stands, but they will get their news from any competitor that had enough brains to register with all the search engines.
Sorry Rupert, but the business model of your silly obsolete industry has changed just like that of the music industry. Soon you will be about as necessary to the world as a buggy whip manufacturer. Your inability to evolve your business and accept its new shortcomings means years from now business forensic students will be studying the fossils you left behind. Some peoples true mission in life is to serve as a warning to others. "Don't let this be you!" Your disinformation services will be missed as yesterdays newspaper.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Google should for just one day have Google news load all the articles in frames to show Murdock how absolutely brain dead he is being. Maybe when his newspaper's servers are smoking slag he will realize how much of a service Google is providing for him by only showing people a snip of the article.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
"If your current career paid you zero dollars, would you keep doing it out of loyalty?"
Yes, I love to code. I'd code up a bunch of little toys I enjoy and tools that would help me in my daily life. In fact I'd probably give away everything I made for myself, in some sort of open or free manner. Luckily, by sheer fate, no one enjoys coding business applications enough, and so my boss is willing to pay me to do it. I'd rather be coding other things, but I do need to pay the rent.
If computer AI overlords takes over the programming industry, then I would still make programs and give them away for free. I'd label it as "Authentic organic HAND-MADE" code and cater to luddites. I'd also find another job, but I'd still follow my first love.
Information "wants" to be free in the same way that electricity "wants" to follow the path of least resistance. Picking at the metaphor doesn't alter the validity of the impression conveyed.
Now I don't have to see Fox news headlines anywhere online!
This is a new age. The Internet was originally based on the free flow of information for all. For better or worse (for some) it is changing the way we look at, retrieve, and digest information. The Internet is not owned by any one person or corporation or entity. There are no majority stock holders. There are no CEO"s, no board of directors, no central control, but holy shit it just works! Every morning I get up the Internet is just there buzzing away. How the hell did we do that in this money is all society? This is why the Internet scares the hell out of thees old crotchety greedy bastards like Murdoch. The Internet is a force unto its own, giving people access to instant and usually free information. (as it should be) Like a storm, this force is unrelenting and is changing the landscape of society. Now guys like Murdoch would rather stay outside and yell at the sky to stop storming instead of getting in a row boat and paddle off to safety and "go with the flow" as it were. We will see his corpse wash up soon. In fact that is what we are seeing now. This is the last death throws for Murdoch and the like (they squirm allot just before dying). So if him and others don't wake up and stop flogging us with their old business models which do not apply anymore, and get on the row boat, they will surly drown. Its pitifully obvious that they don't get it.
The guy who is adding a line in robots.txt and getting paid a fortune for 'complex technical measures' is one smart fellow.
'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,'
Great, you overpaid blow hard, put up or shut up so we can goto court and shut your sorry ass down once and for all.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If Google ( and Yahoo et al ) all stopped indexing all his sites and purged their caches of references to his sites, he'd soon see how little companies would pay him to advertise to nobody on his sites.
"Rupert Murdoch has elaborated on the direction he would take in an effort to monetize the content that his websites deliver by attempting to block much of Google's ability to scan and index his news sites."
This is not what the linked article says. Rupert Murdoch may be a douchebag, but don't adopt his "news" organization's penchant for distortion.
Fox news reporters are now banned from using Google as a reference. They now use Bing! lol.
shove his content up his ass. world is full of content. i wont lose anything by not using his sites. audieu.
Read radical news here
It all depends on what side you're on.
He didn't become wealthy by being nice to everyone, that's for sure. But he's good to his family, and is easily the best boss I've ever had.
Kid-proof tablet..
Big Italian family. His younger kids, he's always disappearing to go to some game/practice/performance of theirs. His older kids, he helps them learn how to handle their own businesses. He's also always got all the time in the world for his employees, and always gets done what he says he will when someone asks him for something. He's not even afraid to get his hands dirty: If everyone's busy or out, and the toilet needs cleaning, he does it himself.
It is frankly amazing what he can accomplish, being just one man. I don't know that many people could pull it off so well.
But it's not all ponies-and-rainbows. He's a shrewd bastard when it comes to business, and he'd be the first to say so.
Kid-proof tablet..
What are we going to do with a little wrinkled piggie like you, trying to ruin everything you don't "control"...
When I applied for a job with one of the companies in the conglomerate I was asked how to do an obscure task with a bunch of disks using badly documented software features (I was told it was normal practice to use undocumented, unsupported features).
Then they triumphantly proceeded to say they didn't need a SAN, in spite of their situation being a clear cut case of when to use one..
Don't you ever underestimate the stupidity that may be an institutional badge of honour.
He doesn't have enough money. It's part of the republican cancer. We need to excise it from the family of man.
I too wondered "why hasn't anybody asked Mr. Murdoch about web standards for blocking bots like google", and asked such a question to the BBC who wrote the original article. The answer is simple: only news organizations like sky and fox news get the chance to interview him, and for some reason they never get around to asking questions like these that would not fit the views that Mr. Murdoch wants published as news.
The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews