

Rupert Murdoch ready to sue Google? - inmygarage
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10461255-93.html

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netcan
Murdoch is lately making himself into the human caricature of capitalism
collapsing in on itself. A growling legal-business-political-PR hydra.

I don't understand his case at all. You don't want to be indexed? Don't be.
The only thing I could think of charging Google with is being a monopoly. He
doesn't claim that, just that they're thieves.

BTW, the meat, such as it is, is here:
[http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&...](http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=The+Raging+Septuagenarian&expire=&urlID=421700822&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Fmedia%2F64305%2F&partnerID=73272)

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philk
_quotes a source high up in the media industry echelon who says Murdoch is
"pretty tightly wound up over Google and has been ready to sue them...He
doesn't trust them at all."_

More than anything else this is a sign of how worried Rupert is by the
internet.

 _The Wall Street Journal, which the company acquired in 2007, is already
behind a pay wall and has fared much better than some of its print-media
brethren in the aftermath of the global advertising recession_

That's because it's the Wall Street Journal. Lets see his other properties do
so well. I know I'll be queuing up for online access to The Geelong
Advertiser.

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dasil003
I think we'll have to wait for the rabies to subside and the dementia to set
in before Murdoch actually tries that one.

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brianobush
I would love to see google just remove them from the index for a few weeks. He
would be back begging them to be re-included in their search results.

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dasil003
I'm sure he's grasping at a legal way to make it illegal for Google to index
without paying and _at the same time_ make it illegal to drop them from their
index. Even if his lawyers find some crazy way to finagle that, I doubt it
could stand up to appeal due to the amount of pain it will cause to everyone
who's not a major newspaper.

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MikeCapone
I still don't get it. Can someone explain to me Murdoch's argument (without
being cynical about it -- what's the straight version)? How is Google pointing
people to his site "stealing"?

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Herring
There's no argument, it's just propaganda. He wants google to pay to link to
news corp. Tarnishing google's reputation is his only leverage.

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inmygarage
It has to do with the titles and snippets that Google provides in its search
results. Murdoch is saying that their using the titles + blurbs without
permission.

More here: [http://www.corporate-eye.com/blog/2009/11/news-corp-wants-
to...](http://www.corporate-eye.com/blog/2009/11/news-corp-wants-to-block-
google/)

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mthreat
Has Rupert heard of /robots.txt?

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alain94040
Are you saying that if your content doesn't have a robots.txt, then everyone
is allowed to copy the content of the site with no restrictions whatsoever,
and that copyright law doesn't apply?

I'm not a big fan of Murdoch, but it's an interesting discussion that should
go beyond the obvious technical arguments.

~~~
corruption
Imagine the world with strict copyright. Search engines would be illegal!

~~~
alain94040
I guess I'll ask again, differently. What do you mean by _strict_? Are you
saying that today, there is an implicit understanding among a class of people
(judges, CEOs of web 2.0 companies...?) to not apply the law strictly? That
doesn't sound very likely.

If Google started copying a full news site verbatim and offer its content when
people search for news, that would definitely be wrong, robots.txt or not.

Strict copyright includes fair use exceptions and so on. Where fair use stops
and infringment starts _is_ an interesting discussion for me.

