Robert Hampton

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19th November 2009

Net loss

I got home to discover that people who have no clue what they’re doing have been put in charge of the UK’s Internet policy:-

First, Lord Mandelson:

Mandelson says in his letter that he is concerned about “cyberlockers” – websites that offer users private storage spaces whose contents can be shared by passing a web link via email.

“These can be used entirely legitimately, but recently rights holders have pointed to them as being used for illegal use,” Mandelson writes in the letter.

As an astute Guardian commenter points out, people’s homes can be used legitimately, but also used to store stolen goods. Therefore, by Mandelson’s logic, we should ban houses as well.

Rupert Murdoch, on the other hand, holds no official Government position, but regularly gets sucked up to by those in power (and those who want power), so we need to pay attention to him. But why is he so angry at Google? The search engine directs web users to his content, on his web sites, with his adverts.

Anyway, if he’s really so unhappy about search engines “stealing” his content, all he has to do is insert a 2-line robots.txt file in the root of thesun.co.uk to prevent it being indexed… and then watch his traffic plummet.

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One Response
  1. Comment by Scott
    19th November 2009 at 11:25 pm

    Murdoch’s rant has a certain charm, in the sense that it seems like the last dying roar of a dinosaur as it sinks into the tar pit with its skull on fire. It’s so much fun watching people rant about things they don’t understand; see also the Pope on contraception and Noel Edmonds on televisual quality.