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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.'"
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.
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
In the early 1990's The Times and The Sunday Times had archive (over a week old articles), which you had to pay to access, there was even a CD-ROM of the updated archive every couple of months, which you had to pay for of course. It was SUCH a great success that the newspaper decided to go for free on the internet, because nobody wanted to pay up for what they could get elsewhere. So now Rupert is going full circle.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
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."
From fox.com/robots.txt:
User-agent: * /*?exid=
Allow: /
Disallow:
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?
Wrong. Fair use is a defense to use when you are accused of copyright infringement. If you prove that what you did is covered by fair use, you are not guilty of infringing because Fair Use is an exception to copyright. An extenuating circumstance is something you invoke either after you are found guilty (in a criminal case) or as part of your defense in a civil case in an attempt to lower or avoid any fines, judgments or other penalties. Your basic idea is right, that Google isn't infringing, but your explanation of Fair Use was wrong and misleading. N.B.: IANAL, but I am a writer, and have had reason to familiarize myself with the concept.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
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.
Cute analogy - except, it's not even his stuff.
Murdoch does not "create" anything (propaganda aside). He's only "reporting" things that happen. Guess what... other people can do that too. "News" reporting is a dying art and rightly so. Back in the day, no one knew what was happening in Zimbabwe. You had to pay a professional team to fly there (or take a boat, a couple centuries ago). They would "report" the current events and either mail, telegraph, telex or eventually send the "story" in through radio or a satellite TV link. All of this cost money, and news companies had to sell a lot of advertising to cover costs.
But guess what? Times have changed. Now anyone with a cell phone and internet access can provide "breaking news". How often do I see CNN or other "news" channels showing the EXACT same video that was on LiveLeak. Except of course they "blur out" the LiveLeak logo (yeah, you try and do that to THEIR content and see how many lawyers you get on your ass). Frankly there's no value in "syndicated" news anymore. Firstly, they're almost always behind the internet, secondly, their reporting is always biased, and thirdly - I really don't want to watch the damned ads.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Troll?
"The problem with techies, they need to learn to think like a businessman. We control the information, get it together techies!"
Therefore, I referenced a site that you have to pay to get the answers to. If you do a google search for "how do you hide web pages from Google?" you will most likely see a link to that site with a "please register with a monthly membership to see the results" [1].
So I ask again: how is this modded troll? (Unless they misread the URL.)
[1] Or you can just scroll down to see the answers, but that's not the point.
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
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.
Then it's just a tiny bit more difficult. Show Google the headlines but not the articles. Google should also follow the metas of the web pages, not just robots.txt
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
Oh yeah? Well http://stackoverflow.com/ !
You really think no-one in his empire is technically savvy enough to know that? He's just trolling. There is no way his websites would survive if he opted out of Google's index so robot.txt is out. Faking page specifically for google is against their terms of services and they might stop indexing him. So that's also out. The only thing he's after is a piece of the ads money.