“The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.”
Such are the words of Rupert Murdoch in an edited transcript by Ben Parr.
Matt Batt alerted me to the quotation as part of a larger story probing whether the internet creates a fail whale, or confused downtime, for the traditional media.
I added this comment:
Our content? Our content?
Hello, Mr. Murdoch, you do not create content. You report content. So do I. You and I, Mr. Murdoch, are equals, along with Mr. Batt. Once you recognize we are equals in content creation and distribution, you will recognize we are not aggregators and plagiarists. If you fail to recognize this, you may as well label yourself the same–or shall I remind you why Fox-TV and NBC report the same content? Is NBC a plagiarist too?
Am I right or wrong? Who owns the content?
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Rupert is operating from such an old paradigm now, when the “content” was a physical medium that you paid money for, held in your hand, folded up and read at the breakfast table. It must be strange to experience the shift to such an open, free and global flow of information. It’s all slipping beyond his grasp and I imagine that would be frightening to a man who has held such control for so long.
“content kleptomaniacs” – hilarious!
Rupert Murdoch is welcome to hide his content behind a pay per view firewall. It won’t stop news being “plagiarised”, or people getting it for free! Besides, traditional media has become totally reliant on reporting
“news” they found online, so it works both ways!
Adam to Eve, post-coitus: “I think we just created content!”
Edison to Watson: “Watson! Come here, I created content!”
Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for man, created content for me.”
etc.
Nobody owns a content but there’s such thing as exclusivity or being the first to produce the content. Everyone can get chunks out of a certain content but the great deal of attribution is a sign of acknowledgment on who came up with the content first.
It’s not that hard to give back to where its due. I’m not a journalist. I’m a blogger. If there’s a need to attribute something from a source, it should be done.
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I think you can own a piece of writing an article or press release, if someone else write about the same thing you can’t stop them.
Great comment Ari, you put it plain and simple… They are nut cases.