Tag Results for Google

OK, that headline was admittedly a bit of naked, attention-baiting hyperbole, but a couple of recent legal cases in Paris and Milan have got advocates of universal web access muttering under their breath.

First there was the conviction of Google in an Italian criminal court for hosting a user-generated video of some teenage boys harassing an autistic child. The New York Times reports that Google took down the video within two hours of receiving a request from Italian police, but by then the clip had already been publicly accessible for two months.

An judge in Milan, Oscar Magi, sentenced three Google executives in abstentia to six months in jail for invasion of privacy, a ruling the company called "astonishing." Italian prosecutors were apparently able to convince Magi (who hasn't released the arguments underlying his ruling yet) that Google was acting as a direct content provider, not simply as a conduit, because service providers are supposedly protected from liability by European Union trade rules.

Web freedom proponents have called the ruling alarming, but have consoled themselves with the fact that Italy is a special case. Web use in the country is low compared to the rest of Western Europe, and President Silvio Berlusconi has a serious dog in the Internet-regulation fight. Berlusconi is a mogul who is not only the dominant player in privately-owned media in Italy, but who also indirectly influences publicly-owned media by virtue of his office.

Imagine Roger Ailes in the White House or Rupert Murdoch in 10 Downing Street and you start to get the picture. Web providers who host video are the competition, so chilling them just makes good business sense.

Yet now from our Friends at the Citizen Media Law Center at Harvard comes news of a criminal case in France that can only be described as bizarre.

A New York University Law School professor, J.H.H. Weiler, is facing a criminal charges in Paris for refusing to take down a negative review of a book about the International Criminal Court written by an Israeli law professor, Karin Calvo-Goller. Weiler, published the online review in his capacity as editor of the site Global Law Books, but it was written by law professor from Germany.

Calvo-Goller asked Weiler to take down the review, saying it contained factual misstatements and went beyond mere opinion. Weiler reexamined the article and refused, saying it met generally-accepted standards for book reviewing and criticism. So Calvo-Goller brought a criminal libel complaint in France against Weiler, who is now faced with the prospect of having to fly to Paris to defend himself at trial.

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The Beat the Press panel offer their own rants and raves about the media this week - including WCVB-Channel 5’s handling of the Gail Huff-Scott Brown marriage; fallout from the NBC late night feud between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien; Google's decision to no longer support China's censoring of searches; and media comparisons between former President Bush's response to Hurrican Katrina and President Obama's response to the Haiti earthquake.

In what could be a clever bid to defuse the controversy stirred up by media owners like Rupert Murdoch, Google has announced that it will allow publishers to set a limit on the number of articles people can access through its search engine without paying.

The News Corp. chairman has called search engines like Google and Yahoo "content kleptomaniacs" for aggregating news content without sharing profits with the companies that create it. He has threatened to block Google from indexing stories produced by News Corp. properties like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News.

Google officials said yesterday that the company will change it's "First Click Free" program to allow publishers to limit users to five pages per day without either registering or subscribing. It seems as if it's a compromise that could work, since publishers like Murdoch who are hell bent on putting their content behind pay walls could still get the benefit of referrals from Google.

The announcement comes after much reporting, including by our own BTP panelist Dan Kennedy of "Media Nation," that Murdoch was in talks with Microsoft about an exclusive content deal with its new Bing search engine.

I can’t remember the last time the media world was as excited about a business deal that may or may not be consummated as the one involving Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch. The reason, I think, is three-fold.

First, it potentially moves us beyond the tired old debate about pay walls (I say “potentially,” because we don’t know if Murdoch will give up on that misbegotten notion).

Second, it could provide an answer to the question of who should pay whom, and how.

Third, it could represent a monetary boost for paid journalism at a moment when the profession is in the midst of an existential crisis.

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Two things are clear about Rupert Murdoch’s pronouncements that he will build a pay wall around his sites, and that he’ll make them invisible to Google’s search engine.

First, he’ll fail utterly if that’s all there is. (How much would you pay for NYPost.com? Yeah, I thought so.) Second, given his track record as a media visionary, we should be cautious not to assume that’s all there is. As I told Chris Lefkow of Agence Presse France a few days ago, Rupe has a history of being two or three steps ahead of everyone else.

Now, it’s unclear what Murdoch may have in mind, and it’s likely that’s because he doesn’t know yet, either. But a media-savvy reader has been feeding me stories suggesting that newspaper publishers — including Murdoch — may be inching toward an embrace with Microsoft, whose well-regarded search engine, Bing, has quickly established itself as the number-two competitor to Google.

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More and more newspapers are beginning to charge for their web sites. Newsday is now charging for online content.  The Boston Globe is changing the pricing of its Globe Reader.  Will it make for a healthier news industry?

News executives love to rail against Google as a parasite that steals their content. Yet none dares to insert a simple piece of code that would make their sites invisible to Google’s search engine.

Until now. Rupert Murdoch (photo), the biggest, baddest media mogul of them all, says he’s moving ahead with plans to start charging for content across the News Corp. mediascape. And he adds that when the moment arrives, he will indeed block Google from indexing his content.

Murdoch even goes so far as to say that he’ll eventually mount a legal challenge to the doctrine of fair use, which allows third parties to use small snippets of copyrighted material without permission for certain purposes, including education and criticism — and, in Google’s view, search indexing.

Publishers have long had a love-hate relationship with Google and Google News. On the one hand, Google News, for many people, has established itself as a substitute front page, making newspaper home pages all but irrelevant. On the other hand, many newspaper.coms receive much of their traffic from Google.

Now Murdoch has adjusted the equation to pure hate.

Two predictions:

First, he may enjoy some success in shoring up WSJ.com, by far his highest-quality outlet, which is already partly subscription-based. But if he thinks people will pay for online access to the sagging New York Post or even a successful operation like Fox News, then he’s going to learn a bitter lesson.

Second, by essentially killing his Web sites, he may well succeed in shoring up print circulation. That’s a short-term strategy, but it may be exactly what he’s got in mind.

Photo of Murdoch at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davis is (cc) by the World Economic Forum, and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

With New York Times (NYT) stock at $7.65 a share - it was flirting with $40 five years ago - NYT shareholders might feel somewhat down on their luck.

Then again, maybe they're overlooking the White Knight scenario.

This morning, in the wake of Warren Buffet's massive offer for Burlington Northern Railroad, CNBC suggested that the Times might also find a willing suitor. Google, the network noted, pledged just six weeks ago to make one acquisition a month. And with NYT hovering near historic lows and Google currently topping $533 a share - boasting $5.94 billion in revenue last quarter - might a potential marriage be in the offing?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has long admitted that newspapers have been crucial to his company's success. Now, perhaps, we'll see the favor returned.

YouTube and Google have launched a new site aimed at hosting news video and training civilians in the basics of video journalism.

It's called the YouTube Reporters Center, and the likes of Watergate reporter Bob Woodward have reportedly signed on to offer their expertise. Google News is an official partner, and YouTube is seeking more.