Rupert Murdoch has moved to block a giant automatic news aggregator from gathering up content from his British newspapers, the Guardian reports. Members of his U.K. paper conglomerate, News International, will no longer be able to be picked up by the popular portal NewsNow.co.uk. That includes online content from the Sun, News of the World, and the Times. “News International makes a significant investment in journalism and we believe that it is entirely appropriate for us to ask that our rights are respected,” a News International spokesman said. “NewsNow has acknowledged that they require our permission to use our content and, in the absence of our permission, has ceased to do so.” This is the opening salvo in a battle Murdoch has long been promising to fight against people who steal his newspapers’ content and reproduce it for free. So far it’s just this one website across the pond, but now that the ball’s rolling, aggregators here in the United States can’t be too far from his sights.
News International to block NewsNow from all its websites [Guardian UK via FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]
