Rupert Murdoch Urges China to Increase Media Competition, Protect IP

BEIJING: In Beijing for the World Media Summit, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corporation, urged the Chinese government to open up the country to media competition and to ramp up IP protection efforts.

In his speech at the Great Hall of the People, Murdoch also told attendees that intellectual-property violations would inhibit the growth of Chinese media companies, who could benefit from increased competition in the market from international outfits.

“The embrace of the digital age is as vital to China today as its decision 30 years ago to take its place in the global economy," Murdoch said. "The policy then was called ‘the open door’—China now has a chance to open its digital door."

Murdoch then called on content creators, local and international, to recognize that the “Philistine phase” of the Internet’s evolution was almost over, and that users would have to pay for quality content in the near future.

“The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.”

He continued: “Wouldn’t it be an auspicious sign of our times if the contemporary catalysts for freer trade, traditional and digital, were China and India? It would show definitively that the world was no longer run by a rich man’s club.”

China should expect more criticism as it increases its presence on the global stage, Murdoch continued, and he urged local authorities not to over-reach. “I’ve had some personal experience of that phenomenon. A cursory search of the Internet will throw up some rather vigorous and vitriolic criticism of this curious character called Rupert Murdoch. But myth is, in the end, not material. A preconception is not a personality. As China emerges, it will be the subject of more criticism, in the true sense of the word. The people in this hall will sometimes be doing the critiquing. My personal advice is not to take it personally.”