Murdoch Accuses Google/Yahoo of Copyright Theft

(MoneyWatch)  Speaking at an annual cable TV show in Washington, D.C., earlier today, the biggest media mogul of them all, Rupert Murdoch, launched a direct attack on Google and Yahoo. "The question is, should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyright... not steal, but take," said Murdoch, as reported by Reuters tonight. "Not just them but Yahoo."

Murdoch is saying nothing original or useful here. All he is doing is pandering to the ongoing, misguided common wisdom among newspaper publishers that there is something wrong with the big search engines directing users to stories on their sites via hypertext links.

The concern, apparently, is that Google and Yahoo may be harvesting some ad dollars in the process. Hello? I challenge any major newspaper publisher to reveal precisely how much of their traffic comes from Google and Yahoo, and to explain why they shouldn't be sharing their monetization via ads back with these major benefactors?

Murdoch made a bunch of other random remarks, none of which are worth repeating here. He's still advocating that competitors like The New York Times should erect a paywall around their content, as his Wall Street Journal maintains, but I am assuming those running those henhouses have at least enough sense not to listen to the fox!

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt will get his chance to refute Murdoch's statements next week at the Newspaper Association of America's annual conference in San Diego.

That should be interesting...