
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Site Blocked by News Corp. Fights Back
It was recently discovered that search engine/news aggregator NewsNow.co.uk had been blocked by Times Online, a publication from News International, a subsidiary of News Corp. This has been viewed as a possible beginning to what News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has been talking about for quite some time - blocking search engines and aggregators from using its content (and using apparently includes linking).
NewsNow founder Struan Bartlett is not exactly backing down from the fight. He has gone so far as to launch a campaign called Right2Link, the premise of which is essentially: linking to online content is a basic right, or officially:
Whether you are a consumer, an NGO, a blogger, an independent researcher, a concerned citizen or a business, your right to link needs protection.
Bartlett offers the following video to make his case
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg7n0_0XDD8