BUSINESS
Murdock Threatens To "Bar" Fair Use Reporting
2009-11-09 05:52pm
News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch says his company has been "asleep" in allowing all of its content to be freely distributed on the internet and has threaten to use the courts to "bar" the doctrine of fair use.
In an interview with his Sky News political editor David Speers, the media mogul again indicated News Corp would start waving a big legal stick to stop other internet media using any of its intellectual property.
Asked why people should pay for online content, Mr Murdoch replied they shouldn't have had it free all the time in the first place.
"I think we've been asleep. It costs us a lot of money to put together good newspapers and good content and they are very happy to pay for it when they buy a newspaper, and when they read it elsewhere they are going to have to pay." He said it was "not huge sums" that people would have to pay online and people would be "surprised" at how much can be done and how cheaply into the average home.
He pointed to an expectation that News Corp wants sizable returns from its online investments when asked if he was making a profit off the Internet. "There are no news web sites or blog web sites anywhere in the world making any serious money. Some may be breaking even (or) making a couple of million."
Mr Murdock used the interview to again attack what he describes as "content kleptomaniacs."
"The people who just simply pick up everything and run with it, and steal our stories. We say they steal our stories, they just take them without payment ... there's a whole lot of people."
Mr Murdoch didn't seem to agree with the argument that content originators benefit from exposure by search engines such as Google?
"What's the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google, come to us. Sure we go out and say hey we got so many millions of visitors, we got to advertise, but the fact is there is not enough advertising in the world to go around, to make all the web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our web site, but paying."
When challenged that his news organisations could just remove themselves from the search engines, he said "I think we will. But that's when we start charging. We do it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall but its not right to the ceiling, you get the first paragraph of each story. If you are not a paying subscriber of WSJ.com you get a paragraph and a subscription form.
Was this WSJ model what we can expect to see in other online publications? "Maybe, maybe. There's a doctrine called 'fair use', which we believe could be challenged in the courts and bar it all together. But it's ok, we are getting a lot of advertising revenue so we will take that slowly."
The doctrine of fair use defines the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as news reporting, and is a content gathering cornerstone for most mainstream media, including publications owned by Mr Murdoch.
Mr Murdoch seemed to admit that online news services were more cost effective in the long run.
"They are the cheapest things in the world. It will be even cheaper when you get it electronically. There are two models – charge the same or more and put the circulation of the newspaper up. People like to read news in different forms. You've got to recognise we won't be using paper, printing presses (and) trucks in getting this news to people in this way."
Will The Hard Copy Newspaper Disappear? "It may. I don't think so, but not for 20 years at any rate. Its' somewhat of a generational thing. It is hard to find people under 30 who buy newspapers. "
Would It Be Sad To See The Demise Of Print? "No. The world moves on and changes. I'm not saying they will be gone in 20 years, but I love the news business and contacting, communicating, with people. I don't mind if its on television, on radio, in a newspaper, or whether it is on the Internet or some new form of over the air transmission."
Mr Murdoch said the shift to online is "probably" the biggest media change he has seen at the helm of News Limited since 1953, but the arrival of television also had lasting changes on newspapers.
"In the late 1950s the arrival of television and gradual stripping out of big national advertising ... caused newspapers to become almost monopolistic in each city. Cities could only support one paper because so much advertising had gone to other places."
Asked why people would want to pay for content online when they can get it for free at established news providers such as the BBC and ABC, Mr Murdoch replied that the BBC was a "scandal" because it is funded by a compulsory government levy and "will go into any commercial enterprise where they see an opening."
He said his news business would successfully compete against the news services that remain free because "we're better".
"And anyway if you look at them most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now and we will be suing them for copyright. They'll have to spend a lot more money on a lot more reporters to cover the world," he claimed, but quickly backtracked. "I don't think we will have to go to court. They know the law. They'll adapt to that. It's like Google. You can say now to Google, 'Take that down'."
Mr Murdoch claimed You Tube became a "runaway success" on the "back of reruns of people posting Simpsons and Family Guy. We wondered was it great publicity for us or was it taking our audience and in the end they said 'take 'em down' and they were down the next morning. They don't even argue. One telephone call and they will take it off," he said. A quick check on You Tube revealed numerous Simpsons clips still remain however.
Mr Murdoch said it was "nonsense" for White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to suggest Fox News was a communications arm of the Republican Party, and not a news outfit.
"He's (Mr Gibbs)a very young inexperienced guy. They don't like criticism ... We do have a couple of commentary shows in evenings which tend to be strongly critical."
On his controversial Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, he said it was a "Libertarian view point this guy takes. He says don't trust the government, don't trust me, trust yourself. It's pure libertarian, and it has struck a nerve."
Mr Murdoch also defended Glenn Beck calling President Obama a racist. "But he (Obama) did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. It was something which perhaps shouldn't have been said about the President but if you actually assess what he was talking about he was right."
"Do we have commentary shows in the evening – yes," he said, likening them to the editorial pages of newspapers, while admitting later he loves to talk to his editors about things. "I basically chose the editors, but I have never fired an editor for disagreeing with me on politics," he said.
(C) NewsRoom 2009