Murdoch targets Google over Google News, lawsuit to follow?

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch targeted Google on Thursday over the use of newspaper headlines in Google News.

Murdoch rhetorically asked an industry event in Washington D.C., “Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?” going on to respond “‘Thanks, but no thanks.”

Gregory Rutchik, chairman of The Arts and Technology Law Group told Forbes that this could be the precursor to something more: “Murdoch wants to be paid for his newspaper assets. His statements may be a precursor to a lawsuit that would bring Google to the bargaining table to figure out just how to do that.”

Google has always rightly claimed that their use of headlines and short extracts constitutes fair use. Google also notes that they send 300 million page views to newspaper sites every month.

Because all good stories should end with a kook, Anthony Moor, deputy managing editor of the Dallas Morning News Online and a director of the Online News Association told Forbes “I wish newspapers could act together to negotiate better terms with companies like Google. Better yet, what would happen if we all turned our sites off to search engines for a week? By creating scarcity, we might finally get fair value for the work we do.”

Why make it a week? make it permanent, because there’s just going to be such a great big void of news online. Must. Stop. Laughing.