Rupert Murdoch has given many speeches about how Google and other search engines are stealing his content. In his latest speech, he states, “[w]e are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing … there is a law of copyright and they [recognize] it.” Poor news outlets, all those evil search engines giving them free visibility and hits.
What makes his speeches so laughable is the fact that he could easily prevent search engines from accessing his content. One single line in a robots.txt file and search engines leave you alone. But he doesn’t want this. Newspapers are failing, so cutting off online readership isn’t going to help. He knows this. That’s why he is all talk and no action.
As to the copyright claims, a search engine has fair use to excerpt parts of news stories to display in its results page. The full article is a link to the original source, so no copyright claim there. Technology is changing the way that the world works, and newspapers are no exception. Those who embrace the changes and adapt will thrive. Those who fight it will die. Written communication didn’t die with the ballpoint pen, typewriter, or the computer – it just evolved. Likewise, news will continue to be gathered and disseminated regardless of whether or not newspapers are the ones doing it.
Newspapers are used to feeling special. They were the gatekeepers to the news. If the New York Times considered something important, it became important. Now, some guy with a fedora and a poorly designed site sets the importance of the news. People with cell phones report live, and send pictures and tweets live from the scene of the news. In fact, Twitter was the only real source covering the news of the latest Iranian election. There is a saying in the gun rights world: “God made men and women, Samuel Colt made them equal.” In much the same way that guns have removed any strength advantage that men may have had over women, the Internet has leveled the playing field between large news corporations and individuals in the news industry. Newspapers are no longer anything ’special’ and they know it.
Individuals starting a website do everything in their power to get search engines to notice them. Why is that? It’s so they get more traffic and their ideas are disseminated. The more their ideas are disseminated and talked about, the more people will visit their site. The more people visit their site, the more money in advertising they will make. That is how news works now. Newspapers may not like this new format, but again, adapt or die. Newspapers complain that advertising revenue on the Internet is not paying enough. Maybe it isn’t the advertisers that have the problem. Maybe it’s that the content the papers are running doesn’t warrant that high a price. Most local papers are not used to competition. On the Internet there is a ton of competition, quality competition. Because of that, advertisers have a choice as to where to spend their money. Newspapers need to earn it. If they think that cutting off search engines and hiding behind pay walls is going make advertisers pay more, they should have taken a few more classes in economics.
Stephen Burch
