The change from Centralised Newspapers to De-centralised Internet is a fairly big one. This problem has many sides to it. The Internet is free, un-regulated, un-censored and essentially anarchy of information. Lets say for a second, I dont care about Newspapers. Eventually, we are going to see wider use of Intellectual Piracy, Distribution of anti-social content (porn/home made weapons/peoples personal details listed without consent) and eventually, National Security problems. Nobody cares right now because nothing motivates our way of thinking. We just want free stuff and to ensure the internet is un-filtered and remains free. What happens if a Company goes too far? Lets suppose Google stores information that a Countries military finds dangerous. That Country might choose to Regulate its interned or impose Information Sanctions to protect itself from harm. It might censor national interest content, anti-social content, protect earnings by taking crap websites offline (defamation), create jobs by promoting local regional websites or criminally prosecute the illegal file downloaders. You might say the Internets too big and this isnt possible. Actually, the regional profits would boost your country. Im not saying this is great, just giving an alternative. The question is, how long will the Internet remain Un-Regulated for. My guess is until a really large Corporation does something stupid to force a countries hand. Google Maps was risky, Google Street View was extremely risky and really invaded peoples privacy. You see, stuff like this will turn heads if Google goes too far. On the other hand, perhaps Google isnt the threat, maybe there are other Companies? Whats stopping me from posting all my ex-girlfriends name/address/phone nos on some website overseas where this country cant prosecute? There may have to be a time when we have some type of authoritarian / regulation. Im not sure really. Just putting that out there for debate.

Rupert Murdoch doesn't own ALL Newspapers. There's also Fairfax Media. For a list of some of there Newspapers check this site out: http://www.fairfax.com.au/index.ac This involves a lot of issues with the most important one being, government regulation over the internet. The internet is a wierd thing. You start visiting websites and almost expect to get everything for free. If you dont like something, you can complain that the author sucks and then move on to the next free thing so your still happy. Business has been trying to profit on the Internet but failing for two reasons: Online Ads (Google?) have virtually made the maximum price of any website as little as the cost to what advertisers will pay for it; Secondly, current web navigation tends not to promote user-distribution but rather heavy globalisation / monopolies where 80% of 'normal' people still use only around 10% of the entire internet. Effectively, this makes tonnes of websites ineffective and forces the value of content down considerably to where its virtually worthless. Subscription based websites are harder and nearly impossible to run unless your a really huge monopoly, and information isnt really worth your time to research and develop. Not only does this hurt the Technology Industry by reducing effective income/value/growth but it will probably hurt anybody who relies upon 'information' as income to exist. This becomes more than just an Information Technology problem but spills into other industries as well, hurting Journalists, Scientists, Universities and Programmers etc. Someone will say, 'Oh but... good programmers still get paid!'. There's no doubt that this can be true but in general, someone gets filthy rich short-term while everyone world-wide gets devalued in the long term. I think its inevidable that the Internet is going to come under pressure at some point in the future as Government questions these concerns and discusses whether it needs to protect information or regulate it. Even IF, a single Country only regulated their own information and communications, the motivation to do so would come in the form of protected information, growing industry and more jobs. So I'd imagine the motivation would exist (if they could enforce it?). Im not saying Im for/against this, rather Im more the observer on the sidelines. Technology changes and if this was a prediction, it would seem kind of logical. In the end, I think this is going to come down to whether the Internet should be Regulated/Censored/Copyrighted or Not-Regulated/Un-censored/No property rights. I think Rupert Murdoch is hoping he can speed up the persuasion process. If he changes peoples point of view, maybe others will start take notice? Perhaps other Business and maybe even Government might discuss the problem? Regardless, Government cant ignore that No Intellectual Property Rights has great consequences (as does anarchy) that go beyond Newspapers, Pirate Bay and Google Books etc. Governments at some point will be forced to face this problem and all it will take is for a single Company to go that little bit too far. While Google holding almost a pure monopoloy on the Internet may seem harmless, tracking all of a countries websites, recording a countries search queries, tracking surfing habits through adsense, storing peoples records etc. There are some Countries which would not only consider this downright dangerous, but a National Security Risk. Its a good thing we have trust in our beloved Google. Technically, Copyright and Computer Laws partially do exist but have never really been worth the paper they're written on. They simply haven't been enforced so people couldnt care less about them. The odd person is unlucky to get caught but majority do whatever they want. It'll be very interesting to see what happens with this... I suspect some of these issues will be causing a few people a great deal of headaches in a not too distant future. Decisions might have to be made.