This may be the single dumbest anti-Google screed ever

Last month, John R. MacArthur fired off what may be the single dumbest old media-blame-new media anti-Google screed ever to post in the pages of the Providence Journal. In case you missed that gem, MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's Magazine, remedied that situation by reposting his piece on the publication's website.

I'll confess to being a Harper's fanboy, someone who has read the magazine starting back in the day when it was edited by the brilliant Lewis H. Lapham. It's been a staple of American intellectual life since its start in the mid-19th century. All the more remarkable, then, to read MacArthur decry what he calls "Google's systematic campaign to steal everything that isn't welded to the floor by copyright -- while playing nice with its idiotic slogan 'Don't be evil.'"

Larry Page and Sergey Brin as 21st century incarnations of Butch Cassidy and Sundance. Do tell.

This for-profit theft is committed in the pious guise of universal access to "free information," as if Google were just a bigger version of your neighborhood public library. Acceptance of such a fairy tale lets parasitic search engines assert that they are "web neutral," just disinterested parties whose glorious mission is to educate and uplift. .... Publishers and writers are belatedly recognizing the self-defeating nature of their own free-content platforms, as advertising is dispersed through ... [Read more]





by Charles Cooper via CNET