Or should Bing get AP, Reuters *&* Gannett

ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan ruminates.

http://i.techrepublic.com.com/downloads/tbq008.mp3?tag=leftCol;post-3406

Let’s see if Microsoft wants to get into bed with Mordred.

“Rashi [ ] gives a parable of a body of very hot water that people are looking at, standing afar, afraid to go in. That is, until someone else goes in first. The first person entering, although himself scalded, cools the waters, allowing everyone else to follow.”

The situation, of course (in a pure business sense), is more complicated than this. Add in Doug’s concerns about compensation for producers and some heavy ironies get heavier.

-mason

Rushkoff was not criticising Mordred’s business acumen, but rather citing this maneuver to make a point about compensating authors and artists. Like half the threads here, this one is splintered in a few directions. Your view is a good comment (in any case) on a few of the ways the topic of Mordred (generally) has been treated in this forum.

But i’m just another armchair quarterback rocking all night long listening to Mohammed’s Radio.
I’ve “been up all night listening for his drum
Hoping that the righteous might just might just might just come.”

Wishing you and your’s all the gasoline and meat you can burn and eat. Keep your lamp down low and if that ain’t enough check out what i was able to find!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9dapcQ_erY

-mason

When Murdoch bought the Journal, everyone said he lavishly overpaid for it. Now it’s worth ever more.

When Murdoch said the Journal was going to switch to a pay site, all of you armchair quarterbacks said it didn’t stand a chance, and Murdoch was going to be the biggest laughing-stock failure on the web. Today the WSJ’s freemium model is the envy of the industry.

Now Murdoch is the only one with the chutzpah to take on international monopolist, Google, and you dopes can’t stumble over each other fast enough to pronounce your certainty of his failure.

More power to Murdoch. Perhaps he may not succeed with this, but all of you are talking politics instead of business sense. You don’t like the political slant of his news-outlets, so you criticize his business acumen. Fools.

The WSJ gets an exclusive story, let’s say about some CEO doing insider trading. The story is not open to Google.

Various bloggers have access to the WSJ. They pay for a subscription. They summarize the story. So does the New York Times, the Associated Press and so on. These are things that all happen now.

So now someone hears about this story. They’re not a WSJ subscriber. They go to Google, do a search, and the end up not at the WSJ but instead at one of its competitors.

How did the WSJ win in this?

The WSJ has a relatively select audience that’s going to read it each day, because for that audience, it provide a nice daily digest of news they want. A far larger audience is never, ever going to go to the WSJ — not even for exclusives.

If the WSJ isn’t in Google, well, no loss, I suppose. The audience that wants them will seek them out. But that audience already is seeking them out, I’d content. Cutting off Google cuts them off from receiving direct links, direct page view, direct traffic that actually also does still help pay their bills, as well.

Of course, Murdoch’s talking about taking all of News Corp out of Google. Not sure how much I’ll miss Fox News no being there. But the point is, life will likely go on for both players just fine if he makes the move.

When you write this:

“Murdoch understands is that a revolt against the free will take more than erecting a subscriber login between a Google link and a story. All the login does is push the user to find an alternative source for the information—some other publication’s free link.”

This makes no sense. Right now, Murdoch’s publications voluntarily chose to let people coming from Google access some selected paid content for free. He could change that today and put up the barrier and still be in Google. But then, as you suggest, that simply means they’ll look for the news elsewhere. So if he’s not in Google at all, they’re still going to look for the news elsewhere, aren’t they?

Who knows if money can be restored to its roots? (metambivalence)

If Doug’s payment system works it will certainly be indicative of and sustained by a re-awakening of consciousness to both the real and (by a certain logical extension) the symbolic. And that’s to be desired.

But to dither about hoping for a promised post scarcity abundance is madness, murderous and masochistic. Everyone, according to his abilities, must cease feeding the beast. That is why each must receive according to his needs from our better angels.

-mason