Mr. Rupert Murdoch knows a lot of things about the news business, but lately, things aren’t going his way. He’s arguing that a lot of people are stolen news contents from news websites, from his and others. As of now, he is going through legal route to make his point, and Google is one of those he’s targeting. It’s understandably, that Mr. Rupert Murdoch is going to charge everyone for his contents over the Internet, because he is from the traditional media which has failed somewhat to co-exist with the Internet. For an example, people are expecting contents over the Internet are mostly free, and we can use YouTube as a perfect example for this.
Mr. Rupert Murdoch argues that it’s a lot more expensive for him to get good contents to his audience nowadays, and so he may have to stop them (i.e., Google, Bing, etc.) from indexing his websites and remove all links that point to his websites. His point is that his contents become so cheap that in a sense, the contents worth nothing. Mr. Rupert Murdoch shows frustration for search engines make a lot of money by not creating the contents, but just by indexing the contents, especially his. In the same sweep, Mr. Rupert Murdoch will also make people pay for his contents, particularly on the Wall Street Journal.
In recent interview with Sky News, Mr. Rupert Murdoch points out that most news websites and blog websites aren’t making any serious money, because there aren’t enough advertisers around to pay for that many heavy traffic websites on the web. I’m disagreeing with his point of view, because Internet is a much different beast from the past media, and so new approach should be taken when Internet is in play. Although it’s perfectly sane for Mr. Rupert Murdoch to cry foul, I think he and other smart people should come up with a better model than just simply making people pay, because kids nowadays are born into a world where most contents over the Internet expect to be free!
You gotta be damn good to make people pay for what you put onto the web, because not everyone is in sync with you Mr. Rupert Murdoch. Some prominent news organizations have already denounced that they are going to charge people for contents, instead they take the new route by providing excellent free contents. On a second thought, new comers may not mind so much, because the new journalistic startups then becoming the alternatives, that’s the alternative of pay. In the end, I think everything will play out as if an invisible hand was there to direct the market. The free enterprise will dictate which model will be the best for contents on the net, free versus pay. Only the future could tell if Mr. Rupert Murdoch is right. Source.
