<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div class="asset-header"><h1 id="page-title" class="asset-name entry-title"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;"><br></span></h1><h1 id="page-title" class="asset-name entry-title"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; "><blockquote type="cite"><div><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/08/rupert-murdoch-vows.html">http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/08/rupert-murdoch-vows.html</a></div></blockquote></span></h1><h1 id="page-title" class="asset-name entry-title">Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp's websites out of Google, abolish fair use, tear heads off of adorable baby animals</h1>
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For months (years?) Rupert Murdoch has been waving his jowls around and
shouting that Google is stealing from him by not paying to index his
material. And all along, we've been saying, "Pffft, right. If you don't
like it, just add a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index you.
Until you do, stop whining and put it back in your pants." <p>
Now Rupert has promised to do exactly that. He claims that he's going
to take all of News Corp's websites pay-only and have them removed from
Google when he does. </p><p>
You know what? He's lying. But I think it'd be entertaining if every
reporter who interviewed him, for the rest of his life, said, "Hey,
Rupert, when are you going to take all your company's websites out of
Google?" It'd also be hilarious to get the CEOs of the various pieces
of Rupert's empire to comment on whether they want all their company's
materials invisible to search engines.
</p><p>Rupert also thinks that fair use is illegal and that the right
court case would result in it being "barred altogether." Again, another
hilarious interview question for the rest of his career: "Hey, Rupert,
when are you going to abolish fair use? How's that plan coming, pal?"
</p><blockquote>
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/M7GkJqRv3BI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/M7GkJqRv3BI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="344" width="425"></object><p>The revelation came early in the interview, after Murdoch claimed
that Google and others are stealing News Corp content in response to a
question about who he was talking about when he talked about
plagiarists. "The people who simply pick up everything to run with, and
steal our stories...they just take them..without payment. That's
Google, Microsoft, <a href="http://Ask.com">Ask.com</a>..a whole lot of people."
</p><p>Murdoch claimed that readers who visit News Corp sites via
search offer little value to advertisers, and that News Corp would
rather have fewer people coming to their websites, but paying. Asked
why News hasn't made its sites invisible to Google, Murdoch replied: "I
think we will....but that's when we start charging."
</p><p>
Murdoch also claims that News Corp believes that the doctrine of Fair Use can be challenged in court and "barred altogether."
</p></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/46786/epic-win-news-corp-likely-to-remove-content-from-google/">Epic Win: News Corp Likely To Remove Content From Google</a>
(<i>Thanks, <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/">Dustin</a>!</i>)
<p>
<font color="red">Update:</font> So here's what I think it going on.
Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his
sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary
insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index
MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move
instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump). </p><p>
So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or
Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just
got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating
budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google. </p><p>
He may, in fact, get a taker. And it will be a disaster. A search
engine whose sole competitive advantage is "We have Rupert Murdoch's
pages!" will not attract any substantial traffic. The search engine
will either go bust or fail to renew the deal.
</p><p>On this fair use question, my guess is that some evil Richelieu
in the legal department has been passing torrid whispers to Rupert
about how the Berne Convention's "Three Step Test" for exceptions to
copyright is overstepped by US fair use and by many countries' fair
dealing rules. So Rupert thinks that he can take a case to the WTO
(membership in the WTO is contingent on compliance with the Berne
Convention) and get all these rules struck down.
</p><p>Of course, Rupert's own media products make frequent and
copious fair use of other copyrights -- you can't create without fair
use. But the mustache-twirling lawyer at Newscorp probably didn't
mention this to Rupert Palpatine (the lawyer probably thinks it'd be OK
if every single one of those fair uses was replaced by a process in
which lots of lawyers negotiated the terms of every use, probably all
reporting to him). </p><p>
They're wrong, of course. The WTO's rules -- and Berne -- are
necessarily subservient to realpolitik, viz., the US gets $1 trillion
of economic activity out of fair use, and it's not going to get rid of
it because it makes some UN agency sad (if the UN mattered to the US,
the US'd be paying the billions in back-fees it owes). And if the WTO
imposes trade sanctions on the US, they'll just be ignored, because the
world's factory-states (China, with also-rans such as India and
Vietnam) can't afford to stop sending shipping containers full of Happy
Meal toys to America. And if the WTO tries to embargo China, it'll
quickly discover that the rest of the world isn't prepared to live
without plastic tchotchkes and junkware either. </p><p>
So good luck with that, Rupert. have a delightful, Howard-Hughesian
dotage, acting out a crazed, Moby-Dick dumbshow against the Internet,
hoping that the world's politics and economies will reform themselves
to suit your fevered imaginings. This is how history will remember you. </p></div></div></body></html>