Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
Google have mentioned "robots.txt" pretty much every time Murdoch has spoken about this idea or anyone has cared to ask them for a comment. They've done so that many times in fact that I expect they've resorted to sending sample "robots.txt" files over to News Corp. just to get them to shut up and leave them alone and have possibly even considered proactively bypassing News Corp's sites. Personally, I think the endless rhetoric from Murdoch and complete lack of action on behalf of News Corp. is because either this boils down to a serious difference of opinion between Murdoch and a good chunk of his senior staff or they have their doubts and don't want to go it alone just in case.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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..
Of course. Merdoch (or his minons) know this. There are probably two things going on: A lame attempt to convince the public that he is being ripped off, and also he is almost certainly in discussions with Google about having Google pay for the content that Google clearly profits from. Neither will work out. And until web content of these "publications" provide a lot more value to the consumer, pay-for-access is a dead idea as well.
Of course there are certain publications, like the WSJ that can pull it off, but most can not, and certainly not local newspapers.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Apparently you're unfamiliar with Mr. Murdoch's favored style of "journalism". You simply state what you think *should* be true, and then cite it repeatedly as "some say X", possibly with a side of tits. USians are most familiar with this from Faux News, but it's apparently practiced throughout the media empire.
http://www.foxnews.com/google_news_index.xml
Murdoch is so intent on blocking Google News that his site automatically generates the feed necessary for the import.
Wait.. I think I missed something.
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.