Shotguns and Rocking Chairs Don’t Work Over the Internet, Mr. Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch does not understand the Internet.

Maybe he just doesn’t want to. Maybe he just wants to go back to the good old days when a news establishment couldn’t be challenged by people working in their basements. Or maybe he genuinely does believe he can completely block off the WSJ’s content with a pay wall and have people actually pay for something they’ve always gotten for free and could just as easily continue to get for free from elsewhere.

But for better or worse, the Internet is here to stay. He’d be better off, y’know, innovating. Instead of shouting about pay walls and blocking his sources of traffic and trying to force his competitors to do the same thing to avoid losing his readership over it.

By the way, traditional news companies can innovate. The New York Times is doing an excellent job of this, even releasing public APIs for other developers making mashups from their content! The BBC even released an open source Javascript library for other web developers to benefit from their work!

But if Rupert Murdoch wants to try to wish away the Internet, I’ve no problem with that. I’ll just keep reading the NYTimes, giving them advertising revenue and link traffic. I might even buy a subscription. Maybe even through TimesReader, which runs on all platforms where Adobe AIR does.