Newspaper Publishers Form Organization To Take Control Of Information Published on the Web

[DudeAsInCool]

In his article, 'Paying for Free Web Information', Noam Cohen at the New York Times explores the complicated relationship between newspaper publishers, search engines and the web:

"NEWSPAPER publishers and other content producers have a complicated relationship with giant search engines like Google and Yahoo. They simultaneously try to curry favor with these sites, hiring people known as optimizers with magical incantations to make articles show up high on the results pages and drive traffic, all the while grumbling that maybe, perhaps, it isn’t fair for the search engines to make copies of their material — so that it can be searched or appear on aggregation sites like Google News — without compensation."

Sam Zell, publisher of the Tribune organization out of Chicago, who just bought the New York Times, puts it this way:

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do?” he asked. “We have a situation today where effectively the content is being paid for by the newspapers and stolen by Google, et cetera. That can last for a short time, but it can’t last forever. I think Google and the boys understand that. We’re going to see new deals and new formulas in the media space that reflect the reality of cost benefit.”

Those sound like fighting words to me...

Read more at the New York Times

[Shawn]

In the media moguls' perfect world small news places, *cough* like many *cough*, would have to pay or be sued to point people to their stories if any of the wording is duplicated.

[DudeAsInCool]

In the media moguls' perfect world small news places, *cough* like many *cough*, would have to pay or be sued to point people to their stories if any of the wording is duplicated.

Yep...and yep...