In an
interview with Sky News Australia, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch accuses Google, Microsoft, Ask.com and others of stealing
content, and discusses his plans to stop the "kleptomaniacs" from indexing content once New Corp. puts a subscription model in place for its online publishing network of Web sites.
Murdoch says the plan could include implementing a model similar to the Wall Street Journal's, where readers typically get the first paragraph from stories for free, but a subscription
provides access to the remainder. And while Google's argument has been that search engines direct traffic to the publisher's content, Murdoch opines "there is not enough advertising in the world to
make all the Web sites profitable. We would rather have fewer people coming to the Web sites, but paying."
When asked why people should pay for Internet content they can get for free
from other sources like the BBC and the ABC, Murdoch makes the case that taxpayers should pay for the content. He says the news agencies steal a lot of content from newspapers, and "we'll be suing
them for copyright [infringement]." Most of the time Internet sites are willing to take down the content, no questions asked.
Theft and piracy through search engines and posts on Web
sites have become a heightened focus for News Corp. During the interview, Murdoch points to France as initiating a policy that could become a standard worldwide. The three-strike policy aims to
protect digital music against piracy, according to Murdoch. Web sites caught violating a music copyright law for the third time must close the site and "can't come back," he says.
Ironically,
Sky News made the interview, with political editor David Speers questioning Murdoch, available on YouTube, Google's video site that Murdoch points to as one of the piracy culprits.
But
Murdoch's plan to charge readers appears to have hit a snafu. The Guardian reports that Murdoch's
subscription model has been delayed and may miss its June 2010 target.