Rupert Murdoch has all but declared war on internet search engines for using the content that his (and others’) websites are generating. It seems more than just a little bit duplicitous for this billionaire tycoon to claim that search engines which may in some ways use the content that his websites/agencies generate are harming his business. When search engines index websites they tend to bring traffic to those sites, they don’t diminish the potential profits or hits of the webpages and their advertisers.

The internet is a massively decentralised information network in which assertions of ownership over generated information seem to be anathema to the very nature of the ubiquity of that information in the digital age. The free flow of information is exactly what makes the internet the stunning success it has been. Attempting to isolate content and news articles is actually almost humorous considering the relationship Murdoch’s media has always had with it’s own creative fabrications, conservative interpretations and sensationalism of the media.

In simple terms - Murdoch is making a mad grab for more power and cash and see his own personal influence as the most effective way of kick starting this greed train. Before he gets his legions of lawyers out of the dungeon to attempt to cripple the search engines he really should think carefully about the roles that those search engines play in generating profits for his insular and conservative media networks.

The internet is successful precisely because of it’s open information architecture. Any attempt to wind this back is small-minded, greedy and very likely (along with most corporate or governmental internet censorship and regulation) to fail miserably. Will we live in an age of omnipresent, freely available information and digital democracy or will we be deeply enmeshed in a vast prison-like architecture of purely profit-driven information technology ? I like to think that people are smart enough to reject media imperialism in favour of something far more egalitarian. Large websites can actually block search engines from accessing their content which would seem to imply that this is all about Murdoch trying to find a way to claw some of the big search engine’s profits into his own vast piggy bank.

Murdoch has accused the search engines of being “content kleptomaniacs”. He could as easily be accused of asserting his own brand of “digital dictatorship”.