Evil Emperor

Google are a bunch of wimps. In the last week, Rupert Murdoch (the head of News Corporation, neé SPECTRE), bullied them into limiting the amount of free access to some of his news websites, after accusing them of "stealing" his content. If you're not familiar with the shadowy gamesmaster of the media, he owns several of the UK's major newspapers (The Sun, The Times) as well as the wingnut Fox News in the US, and David Cameron, not to mention everything else that falls within the Iron Curtain of 20th Century Fox's evil empire. And as their owner, he is famed for influencing editorial decisions (It was the Sun Wot Won It in '92 for Major) with his own special brand of right-wing narcissism. He looks like Kim Jong Il's puppet from Team America: World Police, and his speeches are the verbal equivalent of a catastrophic reactor leak.

Anyway, the new rules are going to let us internet wanderers use Murdoch's plethora of sites five times a day before being asked to pay for the privalidge of his company's famed taste for hard, truthful and above all, unbiased information. This policy genuinely seems to have spouted directly from Murdoch's hubristic jealousy of the internet and the free data available to everyone. I don't want to endorse dystopian conspiracies, but his influence in the politics through his media kingdom is a very real threat; the Tories and to a lesser extent, Labour, follow The Sun around like a puppy asking for a treat after performing a trick. This is media realpoliticking in its most sinister manifestation; I'm not suggesting that Brown or Cameron actually formulate how to run the country by looking at the red-top headlines every morning, but Murdoch's share of the media holds the largest readerships and therefore the largest section of potential votes. Politicians pay far too much attention to him in pre-emptive tributes - which wouldn't be so concerning if Murdoch didn't appear to be fuelled by pure, unfiltered avarice. He is the ultimate arch-capitalist; I wouldn't be suprised if some day, deep in an apocolyptic future, he instigates an interstellar civil war with his godlike mental powers, whilst ruling both spacefaring nations from his Saturn-orbiting asteroid fortress as part of some dark scheme to finally destroy socialism.

What this could all add up to is the death of the true spirit of the web - the demise of the Online Dream. If Murdoch is successful in securing yet more concessions and eventually creates exclusively paid-for media websites, what effect will that have on other news websites? Will The Mirror, or The Telegraph follow suit, or my beloved Guardian, in order to keep competetive? For now I cannot see a market audience stupid enough to pay money to read Jeremy Clarkson's ejaculatory misinformed opinions, or AA Gill's anecdotes about murdering baboons like in the good old days. I mean, people do not search on a specific newspaper website for trustworthy information; people google it. Everybody knows newspapers are biased, and nearly all of their content, excepting breaking news, is skewed or slanted. This is not about Google "stealing" news, (nobody can really believe the Murdoch press is the only source of news) this is nothing more than sheer global monopolisation and absolute capitalist excess.

I sincerely hope Google stands up for itself, because it is the greatest symbol of freedom of information. I want Comment Is Free to stay free - for people to enjoy the unbridled liberty that the internet grants us - for better or for worse. This man would threaten everything that gives us the truth: not just the internet, but the BBC and all the other wells from which we can draw knowledge. Murdoch trying to monetise his online territories is equivalent to the British raising taxes from the Thirteen Colonies: we need a George Washington, or else our virtual New World will become enslaved forever.