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UK Newspaper Websites To Become Nearly Invisible
smooth wombat writes "Various websites have tried to make readers pay for access to select parts of their sites. Now, in a bid to counter what he claims is theft of his material, Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times sites will become essentially invisible to web users. Except for their home pages, no stories will show up on Google. Starting in late June, Google and other search engines will be prevented from indexing and linking to stories. Registered users will still get free access until the cut off date."
This is Fox News we're talking about. It's consumers aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, and are fairly attached to their source of propaganda. This may actually be a brilliant move on Murdoch's part.
If the consumers of Fox media had to go to, say, the BBC, or the Washington Times, they might encounter information counter to their views. The resulting cognitive dissonance is painful, and might be sufficient to make them pay for the comfortable conservative pablum ranting of the Murdoch press.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Moving to IPv6 will help for one thing, but what we need is better support on the lower layers. Mesh networks come to mind, where it is possible to allocate a percentage of bandwidth on a wireless AP to devices, and devices that can't reliably communicate with an AP would send packets through the nearest device in an ad hoc configuration, perhaps using some type of endpoint encryption.
Unless something is done, between treaties like ACTA and the neutering of the FCC, we may end up with the Internet turning into not a mere walled garden, but a max security prison with users separated from each other and messages only passed by guards.
You obviously think that your views constitute a universal standard. The Guardian is a hate rag too and mouth-piece for man hating militant feminists. The BBC goes from the centre to the far left, while all the time presenting its views as non-biased. My views sit on either side for different issues but you could probably sum them up as mostly "centre right libertarian". The Daily Mail has its moments but my favourite paper is The Times.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.