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It's always funny when you see old masters of the universe become Marxists when someone is about to eat their lunch. Doubly so when it is a business that has sp

by monochr 12y ago

It's always funny when you see old masters of the universe become Marxists when someone is about to eat their lunch. Doubly so when it is a business that has spent the better part of two centuries appropriating the public space into a private one through ever increasing copyrights. Now they run across someone who does it better than they could ever dream of. And all of a sudden the forms of IP that Google uses to corner the market from publishers are in huge need of public debate. One these people will cover in a neutral and even handed way in their own publications. But what's not up for debate are the bits of IP like they paywalling publicly funded research for a century or more. I'll take out my magnifying glass to look for my violin.

rolux 12y ago
Very good point. Döpfner's position is truly schizophrenic. He admires Google's success as a business, states that his news sites depend on the traffic Google provides (for free), but still wants the European Commission to regulate the fairness of their search results, and has lobbied the German Government to make Google pay for links to his content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht). With BILD, the flagship product of his publishing house, he is in charge of the most hateful, sensationalist and ignorant mainstream news outlet in Germany, however, he claims to be concerned about the future of journalism. He likens Google's position to former state monopolists Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post, yet his company has never contributed to the criticism of the monopoly power of those German companies. And finally, he's worried about privacy, while violating people's privacy has been, for decades, BILD's core journalistic principle. Döpfner's publishing house striving to become Europe's leading digital media company is a hilarious, sad and frightening thing to imagine.

by monochr 12y ago

rolux 12y ago

Very good point. Döpfner's position is truly schizophrenic. He admires Google's success as a business, states that his news sites depend on the traffic Google provides (for free), but still wants the European Commission to regulate the fairness of their search results, and has lobbied the German Government to make Google pay for links to his content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht). With BILD, the flagship product of his publishing house, he is in charge of the most hateful, sensationalist and ignorant mainstream news outlet in Germany, however, he claims to be concerned about the future of journalism. He likens Google's position to former state monopolists Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post, yet his company has never contributed to the criticism of the monopoly power of those German companies. And finally, he's worried about privacy, while violating people's privacy has been, for decades, BILD's core journalistic principle. Döpfner's publishing house striving to become Europe's leading digital media company is a hilarious, sad and frightening thing to imagine.