By Hal Crawford, ninemsn.Rupert Murdoch has made many good points in his recent push to make his online news outlets profitable, but the central thesis that freedom is best served by charging for content is wrong.
In fact, Murdoch's move represents a big threat to freedom.
There appear to be two basic prongs in the News Corporation plan to make money. The first is to find a good way to charge people for its content.
This may be practically difficult, but operations like Apple's iTunes have shown that people will pay if it is easy and they get something they want.
The second prong is to legally prevent other publishers from using the same content to make money.
Murdoch sees this as an essential part of his plan, and it is this push that undermines one of the key tenets of a free society.
That idea is: no one owns information. Read on...
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