NewsCorp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch sounded confident that he would be able to stop Google and other internet related operations from using copyrighted stories without paying for them.

From the Guardian.uk.co

Rupert Murdoch has launched a spirited defence of putting up paywalls around his newspaper websites, while embracing the game-changing potential of Apple’s iPad. The News Corp chairman hailed the new device as a possible saviour of the newspaper industry.

Murdoch renewed his attacks on search engines, such as Google, whom he accused of stealing journalism from traditional media outlets. He told a National Press Club event at George Washington University that the newspaper industry had to stand up for itself and charge for content while using copyright law to defend its journalism from being used without permission.

“We are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing … there is a law of copyright and they recognise it,” Murdoch told a packed audience of students, journalists and other media professionals.

He said search engines had tapped into a “river of gold” by aggregating content but that the days of free news had to come to an end. “They take [news content] for nothing. They have got this very clever business model,” he said.

In June, Murdoch’s British titles the Times and Sunday Times will join joining his business title, the Wall Street Journal, behind a paywall.

However, some critics say consumers are now too used to getting online news for free and will not pay subscriptions in big enough numbers to form a viable business model for quality journalism. Murdoch dismissed this fear, saying consumers could be forced to change their habits. “When they have got nowhere else to go they will start paying. If it is reasonable. No one is going to ask for a lot of money,” he said.

Murdoch also fired a shot at the New York Times – a bête noire of Murdoch’s and the Journal’s main rival – by saying its paywall plans were halfhearted and needed to be more restrictive.

“They don’t seem to be able to make up their mind. They will have opposition internally from some of their journalists, especially their columnists,” he said.”To really make it work they have got to put a paywall up. I think most newspapers in [the US] have got to have a paywall.”

 

If Murdoch wants to stop what he feels is the theft of copyrighted material then he will have to place all of his content behind a paywall because ethere is no way that he will be able to get companies like Google or Microsoft to pay for content of dubios value to them beyond the potential to attract more eyeballs to their sites. 

Newspapers will have to figure out how to survive in the coming years and moentize their online content but I will be that with a few exceptions that by placing content behind a paywall will only lead to short term monetary gains and exacerbate the decline of the industry.

 

 

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