Ignorance and bile in the Daily Mail: UK Paper Insists Google Is Out To Destroy British Culture
UK Paper Insists Google Is Out To Destroy British Culture
from the troll-bait dept
Matthew A. Sawtell was the first of a whole bunch of you (seriously, stop submitting this!) to send in the hilariously myopic rant by Daily Mail editor Alex Brummer in which he claims that Google is out to destroy British culture. Brummer takes a criticism that has been levied by a few folks within the entertainment industry in the last few months — that the government of David Cameron has somehow been “suckered in” by Google because one of Cameron’s top advisors is married to someone who works at Google — and then layers onto it some hysterically clueless claims about Google’s desire to destroy culture.
This all comes in response, of course, to the UK review on copyright, which David Cameron announced with a nod towards Google, and how its execs pointed out the lack of fair use rules in the UK would have made it difficult for a company like Google to start in that country. The results of the review are expected relatively soon, and this article seems to be part of the media campaign to stop the government from actually implementing anything sensible. I mean, we’ve already seen the preposterous claim from UK publishers that fair use would stifle innovation.
In this piece, however, Brummer simply goes into paranoid fantasy land with a bunch of his claims against Google. I can’t even bother to go through them all because there’s not that much time in the day. But here are a few howlers.
The reason is very simple. The company wants to plunder intellectual property — songs by Adele and other British singers — so that it can disseminate it free to anyone who logs on to Google anywhere in the world.That must be why Google’s current music search points everyone to places where they can buy the music. It also must explain why Google has been negotiating with the record labels for big licenses to allow for music streaming in a music locker system. It also must explain why Google has become a huge source of revenue for the record labels via YouTube and its content ID system.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised and upset by this. I know that the Daily Mail is just selling outrage to those who wish to feed off it to make them feel alright about the cost of their sheeplike compliance for the entirety of their meaningless lives, but this level of ignorance really annoys me.
Alex Brummer is the Daily Mail editor so you (I) would think that he might want to think before plugging his word processor into his spleen, bypassing whatever organ might be used for thinking, and venting his ignorance into the world. Google, in his article, become an avatar for the digital world and are blamed for the changes in intelectual property culture, privacy invasion and, shockingly, working towards universal internet access.
The level of ignorance displayed in his article is staggering. It’s well worth clicking through and reading Mike Masnick’s article that goes through many of the points made in the article. It is the underlying arrogant stupidity that worries me.
I don’t understand how anyone could publish a piece like Brummer’s without some research. Even just googling some stuff and thinking about the results would show that his initial assumptions were off the mark. Thinking is just not part of the exercise though.
The point is to feed the readers of the Daily Mail with fear about the digital world and how it is attacking the very fabric of Britishness. It is easy to sit in my position and refute the article but it is very scary to think that there will be people who will read the article and believe it.
The world has changed as a result of digital information and the internet. Most of the changes can be hugely positive if we think about them and shape our use of the technology sensibly. That might not sell so many newspapers though.
