Bob Niles is taking Microsoft and News Corp. to task for trying to restrict access to content. Their agreement, he says, is oh so 20th century — when you could get away with creating content and then parceling it out.
Not any more:
But, today, it (the deal) illustrates just the latest example of backward-thinking by legacy media executives who’ve been left lost and clueless by the Internet revolution.
Niles is more than a little gleeful about this wrong-headed move because he detests “the Fox News’ cynical Republican-propaganda-masquerading-as-news” stuff that News Corp. produces.
But he also makes the point:
The Internet is killing one legacy media business model, however, and that’s the supply-side model based on creating value by restricting access to content. That’s the model upon which the News Corp.-Microsoft deal is based. While it might have worked in a pre-Web, channel-driven world, the public simply has spun too many ways around content-control deals to make this one worth Microsoft’s time or investment.
Can’t say as I disagree with much that Niles had to say.
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