Vancouver Sun: Beijing outclasses London in managing Murdoch

[michael gurstein]

Jonathan Manthorpe's coverage of Asia is the very best reason to subscribe
to and read the Vancouver Sun!

And this one is a beaut!

M


http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Beijing+outclasses+London+managing+Murd
och/5129528/story.html#ixzz1Sff7ADFF

Media tycoon's lust for a piece of Chinese market was so all-consuming that
authorities there easily milked his companies of their skills
 
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun July 20, 2011
 
A screen grab image taken from television on Tuesday shows News Corp. chief
Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, giving evidence to a Parliamentary Select
Committee on the phone hacking scandal, as Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng
(centre) looks on.
 

When dealing with Rupert Murdoch, the British political and chattering
classes should have taken advice from the Chinese.

Beijing quickly saw in the 1990s that when "the Dirty Digger" comes calling
it is a good idea to lock up your wives and daughters, keep a tight grip on
your wallet, and don't let him over the doorstep.

But the political and propaganda chiefs of China's Communist Party soon took
their view of Murdoch and his multifaceted media empire News Corp. to the
next level.

As in their dealings with so many other foreign business people, the Beijing
authorities saw that Murdoch's lust for a place in the China market of 1.3
billion people was so allconsuming he could easily be led around by the
nose.

Murdoch and his son and apparent heir, James, poured about $2 billion into
television and online enterprises in China.

They lost at least half of that while the Chinese authorities milked the
Murdoch companies of their skills in not only modern media communication,
but also in methods of content control and censorship.

Last year, Murdoch and son admitted they had hit "a brick wall" in China and
sold off their three remaining television channels, Xing Kong, Xing Kong
International and Channel (V) Mainland China, as well as their Fortune Star
Chinese movie library to an investment fund controlled by the Beijing
government.

The irony is that as the Murdochs withdrew from China they fixed their
attention on taking full control of British Sky Broadcasting, a bid that has
now gone down the tubes in the muck and mire of the scandal around phone
hacking by employees at the now defunct London tabloid, News of the World.

Murdoch's attempt to get into the Chinese television market started badly.

When he bought the Hong Kong-based Star TV satellite service in 1993 he
proclaimed in a speech brimming with hubris that this medium would be "an
unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere."

But Murdoch had already been taken for a ride. He bought Star TV for more
than $500 million from Richard Li, son of Hong Kong's tycoon of tycoons, Li
Ka-shing.

Somehow in the excitement of making the deal it failed to get mentioned that
Star TV's output in China was totally pirated and there was no income.

Within a month, Beijing made clear its view of Murdoch and his crusade to
bring the light of open information and ideas into the dark corners of
China's authoritarianism.

The ownership of private satellite dishes was banned.

The speed with which News Corp. changed tack and became a cringing
supplicant at the court of Beijing was astonishing.

Murdoch sold the Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post, to a
pro-Beijing Malaysian businessman, who has tempered its previously vigorous
coverage of China.

Murdoch's book publishing subsidiary, HarperCollins, produced a biography of
China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping written by his daughter - and
business tycoon - Deng Rong.

And to reinforce his new attitude toward Beijing, Murdoch ordered
HarperCollins to back out of a contract to publish the memoirs of Hong
Kong's last governor, Chris Patten, an account that was bound to anger the
Chinese government.

In 1994 Murdoch went further. The man who only a year before extolled the
reforming influence of free information took the BBC News out of the Star TV
satellite package because it was causing too much friction with Beijing.

A couple of years later Beijing apparently considered that Murdoch was now
suitably submissive.

In 1996 News Corp. made a joint venture with Liu Changle, who had links to
the propaganda ministry. They created Phoenix, which broadcast to a limited
number of urban households politically trustworthy enough to watch foreign
media.

Phoenix introduced Westernstyle fast-pace news reporting, but kept well
clear of sensitive topics.

The Chinese state-controlled media and censors learned a lot from Phoenix
and apparently decided that Murdoch could be managed.

He was given more access and over the next few years he sent teams to help
state operations such as China Central Television and People's Daily
newspaper develop their websites.

He also brought teams of Chinese television managers and technicians to his
satellite TV operations to learn how t

Re: No JSTOR downloads or bicycle-helmet-masks for you

[maxigas]

From: Michael Zeltner 
Subject: Re:  No JSTOR downloads or bicycle-helmet-masks for you
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:37:03 +0200
> On 19 July 2011 20:18, Pranesh Prakash  wrote:
>> http://goo.gl/SiGGj (PDF)
> 
> Unfortunately this is already offline.

Hm, we can help that: http://metatron.sh/static/aaron-swartz-indictment.pdf

   PGP key: http://maxigas.hu/maxigas.gpg
  ..   .. .. .   . . . .. ..
 . . . . ..   .   . . ... .. ..
.  .  . ..  . .  . .   . .. .
   . . .. .   . . . .. ..
Fingerprint: EE2E D824 B5C3 4544 C2B8  B75F 2183 52B5 8EC1 57C1





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Re: Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.

[Patrice Riemens]

I think two issues, though very much related, are being mixed up here.

On one hand there is the commercial corruption of big academic presses
and academic journals publishers making obscene profits on basis of
publicly financed information resources and then gouging the public,
and every year more (*). The facts are well established and well
known. And things are slowly - too slowly - changing.

Then there is what you could call moral corruption, and that is alas
much more difficult to combat since it is happening from within
academia itself. At the Commons Conference in Berlin, where I hold an
agitated (my trademark ;-) elevator pitch for radical open access,
I learned with some surprise from the (German) chair of our working
group that he knew many academics who were quite attached to the
'closed shop' system of academic publishing. Because its financial
wall 'protected' them against the great unwashed...

It's a funny world. But not for Aaron. Do sign!
Cheers, p+3D!


(*) And then we are not even talking about rights recovery agencies, which
for all practical purposes can be considered criminal rackets - in the
case of the Spanish SGAE this is even actually so.
JSTOR, being a non-profit, does admittedly not fall in that category. Yet
it 'recovers costs' that should not be there in the first place.




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Re: Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.

[Alex Halavais]

Indeed, it's not clear from the indictment if "breaking" into the
wiring closet required more than opening a door. It seems they are
resting the "restricted area" argument on the fact he went into MIT
buildings without being and MIT student or staff member, something
that I and many other people have done.

In the end, this is a draconian prosecution of a violation of Terms
of Service, something that should appropriately be handled as a
civil matter of contract violation. That it is not is a rather
stark indicator of what happens when global media companies create
globalized IP regimes and shift legal structures to leverage state
power in the service of IP-holders' bottom lines. JSTOR may be
backpeddling now, but (as Adobe did with Sklyarov) but make no
mistake, the US government is pursuing this because of decades of
lobbying to make thoughts into property, and to extend the fiction of
a temporary monopoly to a moral certainty of idea ownership.

That the prosecuting attorney can say with a straight face "stealing
is stealing" makes very clear what the new normal is, and we know how
we got here.

Alex






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Re: Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.

[Rob Myers]

On 20/07/11 14:33, Nick wrote:
> 
> "wire fraud" (for "obtaining property") [count 1],

That's one of the things they went after Steve Kurtz for in the end...

- Rob.





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Re: Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.

[Nick]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 07:55:19AM -0500, Jon Lebkowsky wrote:
> JSTOR isn't free: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR. A news article says
> "Of the 4.8 million documents downloaded, 1.7 million should only have been
> available for purchase through a sales service."  However Aaron already had
> free access to the database. He's being charged with circumventing security
> or "breaking into" the system to get millions of articles quickly.

Well, the MIT connection he was using already had full access, though
according to the indictment he "[broke] into a restricted computer
wiring closet at MIT" get access.

As far as I can see the only offense against JSTOR was actually
writing a script to bypass its cumbersome web interface, so as to
download articles more conveniently. And using it to download lots of
articles.

This results in counts of "recklessly caus[ing] damage to MIT and
JSTOR" (for using their services heavily) [count 4], "wire fraud" (for
"obtaining property") [count 1], and "computer fraud" (for "using
JSTOR in excess of authorised access") [counts 2 & 3].

I am one of those people who enjoys writing bots to do things which
would take me ages on web sites. I do not relish a world in which
such actions are prosecuted as criminal by parties not related to the
websites in question.

Perhaps a better course of action for Aaron to have taken, with the
benefit of hindsight, would have been to anonymously release his
"keygrabbing.py" script and implore people from all over to help
download articles.

I see that JSTOR is an independent non-profit, it would be interesting
to see how their non-profit application worded "we intend to help the
public good by restricting access to these works by the public."






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Re: Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.

[Jon Lebkowsky]

JSTOR isn't free: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR. A news article
says "Of the 4.8 million documents downloaded, 1.7 million should only
have been available for purchase through a sales service." However
Aaron already had free access to the database. He's being charged with
circumventing security or "breaking into" the system to get millions
of articles quickly.

MIT and JSTOR had settled their claims against Aaron and asked the
government not to prosecute, so it's an interesting question why the
prosecutors decided to indict.

See
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/20/activist_charged_with_hacking_mit_network_to_download_files/?page=1for
more info. Toward the end of the article:

"[Attorney Jerry] Cohen said the use of criminal charges here is the
latest in what has been a government trend to prosecute such cases,
which he described as taking 'a sledgehammer to drive a thumb tack.'

'It might be taking too big a weapon,' he said. 'It???s intended to terrorize
the person who???s indicted and others who might be thinking of the same
thing.'"
~ Jon L.


On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 3:24 AM, Nick  wrote:

>
> I've never understood how jstor can claim to limit access to journal
> articles. Aren't they publically funded? Even if not, charging huge
> fees (and in so doing stopping access from the vast majority who
> aren't affiliated with a university) for works created (one hopes)
> for the purposes of sharing knowledge, and without any payment to the
> author, seems so obviously poisonous it's shocking there isn't louder
> dissent (or maybe I just haven't had my ear to the right places).


<...>



-- 
Jon Lebkowsky (@jonl)
Polycot Associates 
Twitter  |
LinkedIn|Facebook|Wikipedia|
Blog  | EFF-Austin 


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Re: Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.

[Fuster, Mayo]

Hi!

I would put my hands in the fire (don't know if in English this
expression = exist - meaning I strongly beat) that the academic
publication system works= though corruption and traffic of influences
between the private academic j= ournals and academic authorities,
as it is now being public in regards to t= he SGAE (now with a big
scandal in Spain) and similar societies of authors = and editors for
the cultural sector.

Do someone knows about cases of denouncing academic corruption in
courts? I= ask this because I think we need to go beyond promoting
open access and ex= plaining how absurd it is, and start denounce the
current system.

Cheers! Mayo

«·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·»
«·´¨*·¸¸« Mayo Fuster Morell ».¸.·*¨`·»
«·´`·.(¸.·´(¸.·* *·.¸)`·.¸).·´`·»

Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.info

Ph.D European University Institute
Postdoctoral Researcher. Institute of Govern and Public Policies. Autonomous 
University of Barcelona.
Visiting scholar. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute. Open University of 
Catalonia (UOC).
Visiting researcher (2008). School of information. University of California, 
Berkeley.
Member Research Committee. Wikimedia Foundation

http://www.onlinecreation.info
E-mail: mayo.fus...@eui.eu
Skype: mayoneti
Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748



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Re: No JSTOR downloads or bicycle-helmet-masks for you

[Michael Zeltner]

On 19 July 2011 20:18, Pranesh Prakash  wrote:
> http://goo.gl/SiGGj (PDF)

Unfortunately this is already offline.

> "In all, [Aaron] Swartz stole approximately 4.8 million articles, a
> major portion of the total archive in which JSTOR had invested...
> Swartz intended to distribute a significant portion of JSTOR's archive
> of digitized journal articles through one or more file-sharing sites"

He faces serious prison time and a hefty fine, which given his actions
and the seems rather draconian. Demand Progress has a website in
support of Aaron, outlining the situation:

>> The government contends that downloading so many journal articles
>> constitutes felony computer hacking and should be punished with
>> time in prison.  We disagree.
>>
>> The charges are made all the more senseless by the fact that the
>> alleged victim has settled any claims against Aaron, explained
>> they've suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not
>> to prosecute.

You can sign their petition here:

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/support_aaron/

Best,
Michael
-- 
http://niij.org/


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Jay Rosen: Phone hacking crisis shows News Corp is no ordinary news company (The Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

(And then there are those who still believe that "To-Morrow Never
Dies" was about Robert, not Ruppert ... ;-)



original to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jul/19/rupert-murdoch-phone-hacking


Phone hacking crisis shows News Corp is no ordinary news company

Rupert Murdoch's news organisations are not in the news business. What
they crave is influence


Watching the phone hacking crisis crack wide open over the last few
weeks has left me puzzled about its ultimate causes: what is it about
News Corp that has produced these events?

I don't think we understand very much about this. We can say things
like, "Ultimate responsibility goes to the man at the top," meaning
Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO. And that sounds right, but it still
doesn't explain how any of it happened. "The key people are criminals,
liars, or willfully blind..." We could say that, but then we would
have to explain how so many of them ended up at one company.

Puzzles like these have led many people to the conclusion that there's
a culture inside News Corp that is in some way responsible, and I
basically agree with that. Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of
Milly Dowler, said after Rebekah Brooks resigned: "This is not just
about one individual but about the culture of an organization." Carl
Bernstein agrees. He wrote this in Newsweek a few days ago:


"As anyone in the business will tell you, the standards and
culture of a journalistic institution are set from the top down, by
its owner, publisher, and top editors. Reporters and editors do not
routinely break the law, bribe policemen, wiretap, and generally
conduct themselves like thugs unless it is a matter of recognized and
understood policy.

Private detectives and phone hackers do not become the primary
sources of a newspaper's information without the tacit knowledge and
approval of the people at the top, all the more so in the case of
newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, according to those who know him
best."


Bernstein tells us that one of his sources is a former executive at
News Corp, who says: "Murdoch invented and established this culture in
the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take
no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the
means."

I think this is correct as far as it goes, but now I want to introduce
my theory of how this culture works and why it exists in the first
place.

When the news broke that the Murdochs had hired the Edelman firm to
handle public relations in the UK, I thought to myself, "Edelman has a
crisis response practice, but do they have a denial division?"

Because to me that is the most striking thing about the way News Corp
has reacted to these events from the beginning. Denial! Not only in
the sense of deflecting questions with "move along, nothing to see
here..." (when, in fact, there is something) but that deeper sense
of denial we invoke when we say that a woman is in denial about her
unfaithful husband or a man about his coming mortality.

Denial is somehow built into the culture of News Corp, more so than
any normal company. It isn't normal for the CEO to say, as Murdoch
said on July 15, that his company had handled the crisis "extremely
well in every way possible," making just "minor mistakes," when the
next day the executive in charge (Rebekah Brooks) resigns, then a day
later gets arrested, followed by Murdoch's closest aide, Les Hinton,
who also resigned in hopes of reversing the tide of defeats.

Your top people don't quit for minor mistakes, but no one in News Corp
seemed troubled by that July 15 statement. The Wall Street Journal
reported it without raising an eyebrow. Murdoch was confronted with
his "minor mistakes" quote in Tuesday's parliamentary hearing but he
turned down the chance to take it back. Where does denial so massive
come from?

Here's my little theory: News Corp is not a news company at all, but
a global media empire that employs its newspapers – and in the US,
Fox News – as a lobbying arm. The logic of holding these "press"
properties is to wield influence on behalf of the rest of the (much
bigger and more profitable) media business and also to satisfy
Murdoch's own power urges.

However, this fact, fairly obvious to outside observers, is actually
concealed from the company by its own culture. So here we find the
source for the river of denial that runs through News Corp.

Fox News and the newspapers Murdoch owns are described by News Corp,
and understood by most who work there as "normal" news organisations.
But they aren't, really. What makes them different is not that they
have a more conservative take on the world – that's the fiction in
which opponents and supporters join – but rather: news is not their
first business. Wielding influence is.

Scaring politicians into going along with News Corp's plans. Building
up an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, which then admits Rupert into
the back door of 10 Downing Street.

But none of these fac

Re: Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.

[Nick]

I've never understood how jstor can claim to limit access to journal
articles. Aren't they publically funded? Even if not, charging huge
fees (and in so doing stopping access from the vast majority who
aren't affiliated with a university) for works created (one hopes)
for the purposes of sharing knowledge, and without any payment to the
author, seems so obviously poisonous it's shocking there isn't louder
dissent (or maybe I just haven't had my ear to the right places).

Regardless of whether it's the US Government or Jstor who are
punishing him (though admittedly I don't understand the reasoning
allowing government involvement; this is after all surely a civil
issue, not a criminal one, legally), the fault lies with jstor for
defaulting to 'locking the articles away' in the first place.

/me wonders how difficult it is to bypass the access
restrictions of jstor...







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