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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.
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.
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.
Considering who actually consumes Murdoch's media, it wouldn't surprise me if they instinctively seek out his biased media by name. Kind of like how most Slashdotters probably don't google stories from Slashdot; they just click the bookmark and read the site.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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
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
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