Tag: Rupert Murdoch

Confronting Rupert Murdoch on his Copyright Hypocrisy

Over the last little while, I have been essaying about the New Media Economy, from What Can Newspaper Reporting Learn from Yuricon? through Can the Hero Model Save the Publishing Industry? to Can the Teaspoon Model stand up to Bloodsucker Streaming Sites?.

Now, Rupert Murdoch, NewsCorp, and Fox are real big advocates of respect for copyright:

Fox sued Warner Bros. in 2008, alleging that the studio and the movie’s producer, Larry Gordon, failed to obtain the rights from Fox, where the project had been in development.

The studios did not announce details of the settlement. But under the terms of an agreement hammered out over recent days, Warner Bros. agreed to pay Fox as much as 8.5% of the film’s gross receipts plus about $1.5 million to cover the movie’s development costs, according to a person familiar with the situation. The agreement extends to sequels or spinoffs, the person said.

So when Japanese anime is streamed by bootleg video streaming sites – why is Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace happy to continue host the videos, even after they have been informed that the material is bootleg material? Indeed, in some of the videos you can see the logo of the site that is providing legal free streams – since the bootleg was made by a “premium” subscriber to the legal streaming service.

Is Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace and Twentieth Century Fox breaking the law? Well, no – that is, they have the legal right to wait until the copyright owner notifies them of the violation.

Which is the point of the system that the Big Corporations have set up. A big firm with lucrative media can set up a unit to regularly sweep through internet for bootleg copies, and issue a legal Cease and Desist letter. But a smaller New Media company, in a smaller niche market – a smaller niche market that has seen four distribution companies shut down, restructure or go bankrupt in the last four years – does not necessarily have the resources for that operation.

And Murdoch’s MySpace will continue streaming videos for bootleg “free anime” – until made to stop.

CENSORED: Glenn Beck’s Exposé On Murdoch’s China Connection

When a courageous speaker of truth emerges from the forest of lies that is modern media, the risk is ever present that censorship, suppression, or worse could occur. Sadly, that is the case today. Glenn Beck produced an episode of his program that continued his valiant search for communists burrowing into the woodwork of America like subversive termites eating away at the foundation of our national home. However, this episode has mysteriously disappeared. Fortunately, I have acquired a transcript (h/t Esquire) of the “Lost Episode” that reveals perhaps the most insidious enemy of freedom yet unveiled by Beck.



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News Corpse: Rupert Murdoch Attempts Suicide

Murdoch’s paywall is a gift to the competition

The UK Telegraph, Shane Richmond, August 06, 2009

They’ll be doing the conga round the office at The Daily Mirror today following news that Rupert Murdoch plans to charge for the online versions of The Sun and The News of the World by next summer.

It’s not clear exactly what the plan is but based on Murdoch’s comments it sounds like a paywall. He said: “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.”

Ok, now repeat after me:

We have never charged for news.

We have never charged for news.

We have never charged for news.

Back to Murdoch: “Quality journalism is not cheap.”

I’m sorry, I thought we were talking about The Sun.

This is a great opportunity for the Mirror, The Daily Star and, I suppose, producers of pictures of topless women, to hoover up those Sun readers who aren’t sure whether they want to pay.

The Hateful Slander Of The New York Post – Act Now!

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post has a long history of shameless bias and insensitivity. This is, after all, the paper that published a cartoon portraying President Obama as a monkey being shot to death.

Now the Post has moved their repulsive imagery onto the front page and presented it as news.

What first drew my attention to this was the utterly disgusting reference to the death of David Carradine. What Post editors must have thought was a cutesy play off of “Kung Fu,” the TV series in which Carradine starred, was entirely inappropriate and shockingly lacking in sympathy for the deceased’s family and friends.

But upon further examination, I noticed that the image at the top was no less repulsive.

Fox News Confidential: The Truth Behind Its Secret Mission

Ever since October of 1996, Fox News has been regarded by serious media analysts as a somewhat less than objective mouthpiece for conservative propaganda. From the start they adopted a posture that appeared to be bent on shilling for Republicans by drenching their reports with partisan disinformation.



       (Stickers of the above image can be purchased at Crass Commerce)

The intent couldn’t have been more transparent. This was a network birthed by the planet’s most notorious practitioner of tabloid piffle, Rupert Murdoch, who adorned it with a spritz of soft-core porn, and masqueraded it across America’s TV screens as if it were actually news.

But the real intent was something else altogether…

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Murdoch Unleashes O’Reilly, NY Post On Keith Olberman

The ongoing melodrama featuring MSNBC and Fox News is heating up again and reaffirming Fox’s status as the scum suckers of news.

Two weeks ago, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post gave readers an insiders view of the conflict that centers around the blood feud between Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. The battle lines have extended all the way up to News Corp. executive offices, including Rupert Murdoch’s. In the Kurtz column he quoted Fox chief Roger Ailes threatening his counterpart, Jeff Zucker, at NBC:

“Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

Them’s fightin’ words, but that was just the first volley…..

Clintonstein Meets The Scaife Man

Clintonstein Meets The Scaife ManClintonstein Meets The Scaife Man

Hillary Clinton was interviewed yesterday by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. She took the opportunity to continue a pattern of personal attacks on her opponent, Barack Obama:

“He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”

What’s interesting about this encounter is not the rough and tumble tenor of modern electioneering. That has sadly become all too familiar in these dog days of democracy. What rattled my antennae was the venue Clinton chose for these remarks.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is owned by billionaire right-winger, Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife has a place all his own in what Clinton herself tagged the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” He is a principal in, or contributor to, rightist political and media organizations like NewsMax, the Media Research Center, the American Enterprise Institute, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the Landmark Legal Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, and the American Spectator.

Just to start…

Fox Business Network: Cause Of The Recession?

Dow Jones announced yesterday that it will be adjusting the components of its Dow 30 stock index. This is the first change since Dow Jones, parent of the Wall Street Journal, was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, parent of Fox News and the recently launched Fox Business Network. The index will be replacing the Altria Group and Honeywell with Bank of America and Chevron. The result will be an increase in the weighting of financials and energy in the index.

It will be interesting to see the effect over time of these trades, but given the propensity of Murdoch to attempt to manipulate outcomes to his liking, one must wonder if there is a hidden purpose to these events. He has previously confessed to trying to shape the agenda on the war in Iraq. He also promised to make the FBN a business friendly network.

Murdoch’s machinations of late have not met with the success to which he is normally accustomed. Fox News is presently the slowest growing cable news network. FBN got off to a pathetic crawl. And I wonder if anyone else has noticed this sign of the Apocalypse: When the Fox Business Network launched on October 15, 2007, the Dow Jones had just hit its all-time high. Since then the markets have collapsed, diving 15% in the four months since FBN’s debut.

FBN Decline

Coincidence?

Who Will Fight The Media Now?

With this morning’s announcement that John Edwards would be suspending his quest for the Democratic nomination for president, the media reform movement has also dropped out of the campaign.

Edwards was the only candidate to have directly addressed the problem of the media in this country. He recognized the danger of unregulated corporations controlling access to the media megaphone that all candidates and initiatives rely on if they harbor any hope of success. His own candidacy was a victim of the exclusionary predilections of Big Media.

Who will carry on the fight for media reform now that its strongest advocate in the race has withdrawn?

Brought to you by…

News Corpse

The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.

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