Sunday, 3 January 2010

Who or WHAT is Rupert Murdoch?


Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.
In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.
In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google's search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.
"I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said. "We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it's not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story - but if you're not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form."
The 78-year-old mogul's assertion, however, is not actually correct: users who click through to screened WSJ.com articles from Google searches are usually offered the full text of the story without any subscription block. It is only users who find their way to the story through the Wall Street Journal's website who are told they must subscribe before they can read further.
Murdoch added that he did not agree with the idea that search engines fell under "fair use" rules - an argument many aggregator websites use as part of their legal justification for reproducing excerpts of news stories online.
"There's a doctrine called fair use, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether... but we'll take that slowly."

Rupert Murdoch's ideas on how he wants to deal with the internet are regressive. This is not just an opinion but an observable fact  that can be deduced after reading this article (but I will look for some others relating to this story because I dont want to be biased). This clarifys that the news is not just news but an enterprise. Ol' Rupert already has A LOT of money. He is old and successful enough to not need any more I'm sure, not that this can ever be a realistic or rational reason (let alone an excuse) for ANYONE alive to stop  working/making or trying at what they do best HOWEVER it is perhaps one of many reasons for some one like him to continue allowing people to access information for free. (Is this an observable fact too? Am I wrong? Is it true to state that his idea is too greedy and backwards?)  I like to repeat myself so I will now, diversity=success, this is well known and obvious.
Ideas that focus on improving only ONE aspect of our modern culture/society (e.g: Money- as important as it may be) will neglect and dilute other aspects of culture. No one should have that kind of power over something as diverse as the internet. THE sense of necessity that is integral to design and innovation in art, technology and science  funnily enough is more often pure endeavour and not  financial gain. The best and most useful creations/inventions/discoveries etc were found by accident or through a purposeful and/or industrious undertaking (especially ones that require effort and/or boldness). And always as part of an earnest and conscientious activity intended to do or accomplish something, attempting so by employing effort and interest in the project/subject at hand.

Please watch the following presentations, I think the first one demonstrates and explains some of the dangers of draconian control over the internet and its content to our future, while the second describes other views and dangers of the internet and how it can be used to manipulate (but then again so can T.V and Newspapers etc...Which coincidentally are some of the things that Rupert owns).




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