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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.
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
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.
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.
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/ !