Rupert Murdoch's News Corp: Still Failing To Understand The Internet After 20 Years Of Flops

from the profound-social-cost dept

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has a surprisingly long -- and stunningly unsuccessful -- history of trying to become a major force in the Internet world. This goes all the way back to 1993, when it rather presciently bought an online company called Delphi Internet Services. Unfortunately, after that smart early move, News Corp clearly had no idea how to build on the community that formed around the company, and Delphi was soon completely eclipsed by AOL.

In 2005, News Corp had an even bigger chance to establish itself as the leading Internet company when it bought MySpace. For a while, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the world, and surpassed Google as the most-visited Web site. But again, News Corp managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: MySpace was eclipsed by Facebook, and in 2011 News Corp sold the site for $35 million -- rather less than the $580 million it had paid for it six years earlier.

It is against that background of an apparent inability to understand the basic dynamics of the online world, and how to make money there, that we have the following press release from News Corp:

Early last week, in a letter to European Commissioner for Competition Joaquín Almunia, News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson opposed Google's settlement offer with the European Commission, saying the internet giant is "willing to exploit its dominant market position to stifle competition."

Coming from a global media organization that has a dominant market position in several countries, that's a little rich. But it gets better:

Citing Google's "egregious aggregation" of content, Mr. Thomson said that, along with serious commercial damage, there is a "profound social cost" to Google's actions. "The internet should be a canvas for freedom of expression and for high quality content of enduring value. Undermining the basic business model of professional content creators will lead to a less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society."

Google doesn't "aggregate content": its main search engine provides links to pages based on their popularity, while Google News uses snippets that link to the full article on the publisher's site (with no advertising on the Google News page.) As for the "commercial damage", Techdirt has written several times about the fact that publishers are at liberty to withdraw from Google's index if they really don't like it, as well as the fact that those who do so soon come back when they find their traffic falls dramatically.

But that misunderstanding about Google's non-existent "aggregation" is nothing compared to the hypocrisy of claiming that there is a "profound social cost" to Google's actions. Many would say that the social cost of News Corp's large-scale phone hacking in the UK was rather more profound:

The News International phone-hacking scandal is a controversy involving the now defunct News of the World and other British newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of the then News Corporation. Employees of the newspaper were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of stories to publish. Whilst investigations conducted from 2005 to 2007 appeared to show that the paper's phone hacking activities were limited to celebrities, politicians and members of the British Royal Family, in July 2011 it was revealed that the phones of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, relatives of deceased British soldiers, and victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings had also been hacked.

Completely indifferent to this kind of social cost, News Corp would have us focus instead on its key concern here: the claim that Google is "undermining the basic business model of professional content creators." This framing helps explain why News Corp managed to destroy two thriving Internet communities all those years ago.

The key to understanding News Corp's persistent online failure is its blinkered view that only "professional content creators" count, and its evident contempt for creators who are not "professional". Central to both Delphi and MySpace were the contributions from the community of users -- the posts, the comments, the chat sessions, the pictures etc. If its corporate culture regards these of little value, News Corp was almost guaranteed to mis-manage and undermine those early online investments.

If you want some amusement, it's worth reading the News Corp CEO's letter in full, to see how he rails against "the unlawful and unsavoury content that surfaces after the simplest of searches," and the fact that "the value of serious content has been commodified by Google." Ironically, the one area where the News Corp letter has some faint praise for the Internet giant -- "Google has been remarkably successful in its ability to monetize its users" -- is also arguably where Google's immense power really is deeply problematic.

As many critics have pointed out, Google's business model is based on obtaining as much information about its users as possible -- what News Corp calls "impressively precise data about users and content usage" -- and then selling that knowledge to advertisers in various ways. Had News Corp's CEO warned about this "commoditization" of personal data, his case against Google would have been stronger, especially in a European context where online privacy is a key concern. But that would have required rather more understanding of the Internet world than News Corp has ever been able to muster.

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Filed Under: aggregation, blame, internet, robert thomson, rupert murdoch
Companies: google, news corp.

News Corp. Sends Angry Lawyers In When Other Publications Use Leaked Documents To Report On Its Failing Businesses

from the despite-doing-the-same-to-others... dept

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has a rather long and somewhat sordid history of obtaining confidential information and publishing it. But apparently when someone else does that to News Corp., the company declares war. The Australian website Crikey got its hands on some internal News Corp. documents showing how badly its Australian newspapers were performing. The financial results were disastrous. Apparently, News Corp. didn't take the story particularly well and sent in its angry lawyers:

In a letter to general counsels at Fairfax Media, Seven West Media, APN News & Media, the ABC, SBS, Nine Entertainment Co and Ten Network Holdings, Ian Philip, chief general counsel at News Corp Australia, wrote: “It has come to the attention of News Limited that Crikey.com.au has today published documents and information which is highly confidential and commercially sensitive to News.

“In particular, Crikey has published in full News Corps' Weekly Operating Statement for a week ending 30 June 2013, as well as a number of articles referring to the contents of the Weekly Operating Statement.

“The disclosure of this document is entirely unauthorised, and News is taking the necessary and appropriate action against Crikey (including considering all available legal avenues).

“News will also take appropriate action against any other entity or individual who publishes the Weekly Operating Statement and/or its contents, including by referring to or summarising its contents.

Soon after this, Crikey and News Corp. "reached a legal agreement" whereby Crikey agreed to take down and "destroy" the document, but with no gag order or injunction on its reporting over what was in the document.

Of course, the really amazing part in all of this is just how hypocritical News Corp. is in trying to suppress the leak. Others have pointed out that News Corp. has a history of doing exactly the sort of thing it's now complaining about:

Media academic Associate Professor David McKnight, who has authored a book about Mr Murdoch, says News Corp is being "extraordinarily hypocritical".

"Coming from a media company that frequently publishes leaks, you really only have to imagine what News Corp would do if they had their hands on an equivalent document on Fairfax's internal operations, it would have been spread all over the front page with half a dozen gloating articles inside," he said.

"I can't imagine that News Corp would go ahead with the suggestion that there would be legal action, I mean it would just be the most extraordinary hypocrisy."

And, in fact, another publication (part of Fairfax) notes that News Corp. has indeed done exactly that to Fairfax in the past:

News Corp titles in the past have published the odd article based on internal Fairfax Media documents (not more than 20 or so in the last year). And nothing could be more scrupulous than their concern for the public good when The Australian published outdated salaries of senior ABC journalists.

Oh, and that same report notes that News Corp.'s own reporters, in publishing the salaries of ABC journalists, had mocked them as "overpaid." But the internal report that Crikey published showed that not only is News Corp.'s The Australian losing a ton of money, its employees are paid even more than those ABC journalists.

And those ABC journalists are now having fun with this, highlighting a number of recent News Corp. stories that rely on leaked documents. Here are just a few:

Last month, The Advertiser obtained leaked documents ...

— The Advertiser, 25th February, 2014


The deal is outlined in a document obtained exclusively by The Daily Telegraph.

— The Daily Telegraph, 22nd July, 2013


The Weekend Australian can also reveal that a highly confidential report, prepared by global management consulting firm Bain & Company, recommends ruthless strategies to slash costs.

— The Australian, 10th May, 2014

And, of course, this effort to suppress the news has only drummed up that much more attention for just how poorly Murdoch's Australian news business is doing, increasing the length of the news cycle.

Filed Under: australia, leaks, legal threats, rupert murdoch, the australian
Companies: news corp.

News Corp. Finally Realizes Locked Up, iPad-Only News Publication Was A Dud, Shuts It Down

from the about-time dept

Back in 2010 there was all sorts of buzz around News Corp. investing a ton of money into a "secret" project to launch an iPad-only paywalled publication called "the Daily." Before it even launched, we explained why this was a bad idea that missed the point. We also highlighted Rupert Murdoch/News Corps' long list of failed internet projects -- with the large majority of them flopping because they were about trying to create "broadcast" style properties online, without recognizing that the internet is more of a communications (many-to-many) medium than a broadcast (one-to-many) medium. And, of course, soon after The Daily launched there was evidence that very few people cared.

To be honest, given all the bad press about how few people were reading it, combined with stories of staffers jumping ship soon after it was launched, I had kind of figured that The Daily had already been shut down. However, the latest news is that News Corp. is finally putting it out of its misery and shutting it down, giving most staffers 3 months severance. A few staffers are being folded into the NY Post:

News Corporation also announced that effective immediately, Jesse Angelo, the founding Editor-in-Chief of The Daily and long-time Executive Editor of The New York Post, will assume the role of Publisher of The New York Post. As part of a digital restructuring initiative, the company will cease standalone publication of The Daily iPad app on December 15, 2012, though the brand will live on in other channels. Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post.

Mr. Murdoch said: “From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term..."

Apparently the site was losing $30 million a year.

Perhaps this should stand as a response to the people who insist that giving away newspaper content free online was "the original sin" of the industry and they should have focused on paywalls. Paywalls don't help you build up "a large enough audience." The link above quotes a reporter there saying: "It was a really cool, hip product. I think this is nothing more than bad timing." I'd say it was much more of a bad model -- both business model and delivery model -- than "bad timing."

Filed Under: broadcast, communication, failure, paywall, rupert murdoch, shut down, the daily

Rupert Murdoch Admits Defeat: Now Wants London Times To Appear In Search Results

from the nobody-predicted-that dept

Remember back in 2009, when Techdirt reported that Rupert Murdoch hated Google so much he had decided to block the search engine from indexing his titles, even though this would inevitably cut down their visibility and online traffic? He obviously thought that he would put this upstart technology in its place, showing that mighty media moguls don't need this Internet thing in order to flourish just like they did 50 years ago. According to this story in paidContent, it seems that strategy hasn't worked out too well:

In the next few weeks, paidContent understands The Times' website will begin showing articles' first two sentences to search engines, in a marketing exercise designed to attract new subscribers.

The limited free preview does not alter News International's belief that it should continue charging for The Times (visitors will be invited to subscribe to read full articles). But it does suggest that, having signed up 130,751 digital subscribers since mid-2010, the publisher is having to look in new places to maintain customer acquisition momentum.

This shows that Murdoch has finally realized that being left out of Google is the online equivalent of not being listed in telephone directories in earlier times. It also suggests that attempts to gain subscribers for the online edition in other ways are not going so swimmingly, which must raise questions over the long-term viability of the paywalled approach for this title.

Murdoch's move comes at an interesting time for the newspaper industry in Germany. As we discussed recently, a law currently being considered there would require snippets to be licensed and paid for on the basis that search engines are gaining a benefit from even these short extracts. By allowing his title to be indexed and short excerpts to be displayed for free, Murdoch is essentially admitting that the marketing value of snippets to him outweighs any nominal loss due to Google's supposed free-riding -- as Techdirt suggested -- thus undermining the supposed justification for the German proposal.

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Filed Under: copyright, london times, paywalls, rupert murdoch, search, snippets
Companies: news corp.

Temporary Paywall Removals Only Highlight The Fundamental Paradox Of Paywalls

from the backwards-economics dept

While there's room for debate on whether Rupert Murdoch's paywall strategy for the UK Times and Sunday Times has been disastrous or just mediocre, it certainly hasn't been a massive success or reinvented any online news business models. Now we're beginning to see some telling cracks in the facade: the Times paywall recently came down during the Queen's jubilee weekend, and now TNW reports that a similar free-access period is being considered for the 2012 Olympics.

Now, promotional giveaways are hardly a new or crazy idea, and they don't typically say anything bad about a business model—but I don't think that's really what's happening here. Certainly the Times hopes to convert some of those free readers into paid online subscribers, but there's also a clear pattern in the items they choose to make these exceptions for: huge social events that are attended and discussed by lots of people. In other words, precisely the sort of thing where blogs and social media offer the most competition to a newspaper. Why would anybody pay for Olympic reporting when the web is going to be absolutely flooded with constant updates on every little thing that happens, supplied for free by the fans and hangers-on? If the Times content is behind a paywall, it will be all but ignored.

And this really goes to show why, in the long run, paywalls are unsustainable. If the biggest, most popular topics are the hardest to control—and the ones that lose value the most when controlled successfully—while at the same, time social media and citizen reporting output is growing and expanding to new areas constantly, then the inevitable conclusion seems clear: paywalls are, at best, a temporary way of extracting a little bit of cash at the expense of long-term relevance. If your goal is to directly sell news as a product, but you discover that you have to eliminate your prices whenever product demand is highest, something is clearly wrong—you're trying to apply an old model where it doesn't actually fit, and getting kooky results. The solution is not to keep compromising the broken model, but to embrace the underlying realities (infinite content, no barrier to publishing, the huge value of share-ability) that broke it, and build new models around them.

Filed Under: newspaper, olympics, paywall, rupert murdoch, uk
Companies: news corp

Google Sued Because Some People Wonder If Jon Hamm Is Jewish

from the they-should-just-ask-adam-sandler dept

We've written about a bunch of court cases around the globe, in which Google was sued (and often found liable) for the results of its autocomplete feature, which suggests popular searches based on what users have typed. For reasons that still are unfathomable to me, courts seem to think that Google should somehow be considered responsible for displaying what its users are searching for. These kinds of lawsuits appear to be particularly popular in France, and the latest one seems especially silly. Apparently Google is being sued because autocomplete sometimes shows the name of famous people with the keyword "jew" after them. This includes such non-Jews as Rupert Murdoch and Jon Hamm.
The lawsuit is being fought by a group, SOS Racisme, which claims to "fight discrimination," but if that's the case, then one hopes that racism has all but been obliterated in France, since the group has moved on to fighting ridiculous cases like this one. All that Google autocomplete is showing is that a lot of people (potentially ignorant ones) have searched for these names, along with the keyword "jew" or "jewish" to determine if the individual is Jewish. The fact that users search for something and Google displays that isn't something Google should be liable for. Why blame Google for the actions of its users?

But, more to the point -- and I say this as someone who is Jewish -- what the hell is anti-semitic about doing such searches in the first place? I'm really at a complete loss to understand why this is so horrible. Yes, the reason behind the searches may be ignorance (and some of the results may point to pages that spread ignorance), but the group bringing the lawsuit seem to be suggesting that this is an absolutely horrible thing that people may be prompted to do searches on whether or not non-Jews are really Jews. The only way this story makes any sense is if all real racism and anti-semitism and other forms of ignorance and bigotry have all been eradicated in Europe. Assuming that's not actually the case, perhaps it's just one clueless group overreacting.

Filed Under: autocomplete, france, jon hamm, rupert murdoch
Companies: google

News Corp. Accused Of Hacking Competitors Smartcards To Increase 'Piracy' Of Satellite TV Rivals

from the all's-fair-in-murdoch-land dept

Four years ago, we wrote about claims that News Corp. had hired hackers to break the encryption on DISH Networks' satellite TV smart cards, and to "flood the market" with those cards, thereby increasing "piracy" of DISH's service. News Corp., of course, owned DISH's main competitor, DirecTV. The whole thing seemed really bizarre, and we were skeptical. This kind of thing only makes sense if you actually believe that "piracy" like that directly takes away money from the company whose service is hacked. But, it seems just as likely that flooding the market with hacked smartcards would take away business from both DISH and DirecTV in the cases where it was a true substitute (rather than going to people who would never pay for either anyway). Either way, that case ended with a jury finding News Corp guilty... but of just hacking one smartcard, for which the company was fined a grand total of $49.69... and another $1,000 for "damages." Honestly, I'm not even sure that makes sense, because if it just hacked a single smartcard, it sounds like it may have just been for reverse engineering purposes.

Of course, in the intervening years, News Corp.'s name has become a lot more closely tied to the word "hacking" thanks to the News of the World scandal where reporters regularly "hacked" into voicemails (and, by "hacked" I really mean used a widely known loophole that makes it easy to listen to many people's voicemails). So with news breaking that News Corp. is again being accused of hacking, a lot of people are thinking about the recent scandals -- but the details suggest that this may have been identical to the DISH/DirecTV story above, but with a UK focus. Basically, News Corp's subsidiary NDS is accused of hacking ITV Digital, a UK competitor to News Corp's Sky TV.

In this case, there are some more details, where it certainly suggests that at least someone at News Corp. was working closely with some hackers to publish the codes necessary to make unauthorized smartcards for ITV. ITV eventually did go out of business, and of course the article linked above quotes an exec there insisting that such "piracy" was "the killer blow for the business, there is no question."

Again, this doesn't make much sense to me. Even if all of these actions were done via News Corp., how does that actually help News Corp? People who got the hacked ITV smartcards weren't going to buy Sky TV services either. The whole thing seems pretty strange, suggesting it was either exaggerated, or whoever at News Corp. decided this was a reasonable strategy didn't even think about how getting more hacked smartcards would likely be a challenge for Sky just as much as it was for ITV.

Filed Under: competition, hacking, james murdoch, piracy, rupert murdoch, satellit tv, smart cards
Companies: directv, dish network, itv, news corp., sky tv

Rather Than Bitching About The Failure Of SOPA/PIPA, Rupert Murdoch Should Take A Closer Look At His Own Policies

from the check-out-your-mirror,-rupe dept

It's well established that Rupert Murdoch threw a bit of a hissy fit on Twitter, after public protests helped put SOPA and PIPA on hold. However, as plenty of people have been pointing out, perhaps the real problem is with Murdoch's (and others') own business model choices. Danny Sullivan recently put forth an open letter to Murdoch, talking about the difficulty of getting The Simpsons legally, despite paying for it:

That’s right. I pay you three times for The Simpsons. First, I get it broadcast over the air. That’s me paying you for it, because the airwaves are mine — not yours. You’re simply allowed to lease them from the public. You’re getting a piece of that spectrum from me. In return, I expect you to deliver me valuable content through it. Well done with The Simpsons.

But you know, it’s easy to miss things broadcast live over the air. Also, my signal is pretty bad. So I pay a second time, to DirecTV, to get exactly the same content you send over the air to me through satellite TV. I get a better picture. I get the ability to DVR episodes to watch later. And I pay something like $125 per month for my subscription, some of which goes into your pocket.

That brings me to my third way of paying: Hulu Plus. I don’t DVR everything. Somehow, I missed The Simpsons when it started up again this fall. But Hulu Plus has turned into a lifesaver in these cases. It has let me catch-up on programs. It’s been well worth the $7 per month I pay for it, some of which, again, goes directly into your pocket.

Yup, triple pay. So, clearly, Sullivan can watch the Simpsons when and how he wants, right? Nope:

And now to tonight. My son fired up Hulu Plus, so we could watch The Simpsons, as we have in the past. But no luck — he got a “web only” message. Turns out, I discovered after doing a little searching with your least favorite search engine, last year you started limited next-day episodes.....

Despite paying for Hulu Plus, I cannot watch The Simpson on any device like my Roku player that is designed to play The Simpsons direct to my TV.

I gather this is because you don’t want me to buy Hulu Plus and stop paying for DirecTV, right? I get that. But it’s not like I have the same option to watch archived episodes on DirecTV, If they’re offered on demand, they are impossible to find.

Sullivan points out that all this is really doing is pushing kids to go to their search engines and to start exploring the infringing sources Murdoch seems so angry about. Seems like more of the same old story we've heard over and over again... with the twist here being the fact that Sullivan is already paying three times for the same content and still can't get it legally.

Filed Under: business models, rupert murdoch, the simpsons
Companies: news corp.

Rupert Murdoch Lashes Out Bizarrely Against The White House For Asking Congress Not To Break The Internet

from the get-your-stories-straight dept

While the lobbyists favoring SOPA/PIPA have decided that the talking point on the White House's statement opposing SOPA/PIPA as written really means that the bills, as they are, are great, it appears that no one sent Rupert Murdoch the talking points. Murdoch, who has been personally lobbying Congress in support of the bills, took to his relatively new Twitter account to lash out at the President:

So Obama has thrown in his lot withSilicon Valley paymasters who threaten allsoftware creators with piracy, plain thievery. -

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 14, 2012

Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them.No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 14, 2012

Film making risky as hell. This has to lead to less, hurting writers, actors, all concerned.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 14, 2012

Of course, almost nothing in those statements is true. First, it's well documented that Hollywood spends ridiculously more money lobbying than the likes of Google. Second, Silicon Valley is the heart of software development. Kind of bizarre for him to claim that Obama's "paymasters" from Silicon Valley want to... um... destroy Silicon Valley. Third, nothing in the White House's statement said that they were solely supporting the other side's view here. They simply expressed specific concerns with the existing bill. Considering that they specifically rejected parts of the bill that would lead to censorship, excess private litigation and problems for online security... is Rupert Murdoch really coming out in favor of censorship, excessive private litigation and a broken online security system? Really, Rupe?

Next, when it comes to streaming films, it's true that Google puts advertising around certain videos on YouTube. However, it's not all videos, and their system (quite famously) allows the actual copyright holder to make the money from those ads, leading to a rather lucrative new revenue stream for many content creators. Furthermore, for years, people have mocked YouTube for losing a ton of money, so it's not like this is a particularly lucrative part of Google's business. As for filmmaking being "risky as hell," so what? Lots of things are risky, but most of us don't think that the government should censor free speech, break internet security and create massive undue litigation... just to make Rupert's investments less risky. That he seems to think that's a reasonable tradeoff shows just how Rupert Murdoch views the government: as a tool to funnel extra money to himself. Furthermore, his claims that it will lead to "less" are just laughable as well. The number of movies made per year has more than tripled in the past fifteen years, just as online piracy ramped up. Also, Nigeria, China and India -- three countries known to have more infringement than the US -- all built up huge film businesses over the last few years, despite all the infringement.

After thinking about it for a few hours, Murdoch went right back to it:

Seems like universal anger with Optus from all sorts of normal supporters.Maybe backing pirates a rare miscalculation by friend Axelrod.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 16, 2012

More pirates.Whole entertainment ind employs 2.2 million ave salary 65 g. Good jobs and expanding foreign earnings. Made in America, too!

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 16, 2012

He later admits that he had a "damn you autocorrect" moment in that first one. "Optus" was supposed to be POTUS, but his iPad "changed it." First of all, we haven't seen any "anger" towards Obama over this -- other than from Murdoch. Quite the opposite. We've seen widespread agreement (and surprise!) that the White House would actually dare speak out against Hollywood on an issue. And, once again, it's insulting and ridiculous (but typical of the disdain the Hollywood old guard has for the rest of the world) to claim that concern over censorship, excess litigation and online security problems means "backing piracy." As for the stats, it's nice to see him use the 2.2 million jobs number, rather than the 19 million jobs that is usually thrown around (someone in Hollywood really needs to get Rupe the talking points memo on this one), but even that is misleading.

As was highlighted in an excellent report by Zach Carter just last month, the 2.2 million jobs number is complete bunk:

[The] 2.2 million jobs figure, however, exaggerates Hollywood's contribution to the American economy. According to supplemental data provided to HuffPost by MPAA, only 272,000 people work for movie studios and television companies. The lobby group claims that an additional 430,000 people work in related "distribution" jobs dependent on Hollywood, legal web streamers like Netflix, the few remaining video store clerks and cashiers checking out DVD purchases.

But the vast majority of the jobs Dodd & Co. claim are threatened by online piracy are only peripherally related to the entertainment business. MPAA takes credit for nearly 1.6 million jobs at florists, catering companies, hardware stores and other industries that work with major movie studios, assuming that these jobs could not ultimately be out of a job without Hollywood help.

Yeah. 1.6 million of those jobs are not actually in the entertainment industry at all. Rupe, before you tweet, perhaps try learning the details of the "facts" you're about to spew so you look a little less ridiculous next time.

Filed Under: pipa, protect ip, rupert murdoch, sopa, the white house
Companies: news corp.

Rupert Murdoch Personally Lobbies Congress For SOPA And PROTECT IP

from the wouldn't-he-just-love-that? dept

Well, well. Apparently dealing with the fallout from the News of the World reporters hacking into phones in the UK isn't keeping Rupert Murdoch busy enough. He showed up in DC last week to make a personal plea to Congress to support SOPA and PIPA and censor the internet. It's been clear for quite some time that Rupert Murdoch doesn't get the internet. His history is littered with massive and expensive internet failures. So it's no surprise that he's lobbying hard for a law like SOPA and PIPA, which will restrict up and coming online competitors and help clear out some of the field so that maybe he and his son James can finally get their wish to turn the internet into something that looks a lot more like TV: with the big media conglomerates delivering the content, and everyone else just consuming (and paying for) it.

Filed Under: copyright, lobbying, pipa, protect ip, rupert murdoch, sopa
Companies: news corp.