News International CEO Murdoch attacks British Library for developing digital newspaper archive

James Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, one of the world's largest newspaper publishers, made a speech (reproduced by the Press Gazette) on Thursday in which he attacked the British Library for its plans to create a digital archive of 40 million historical newspaper pages in its holdings, to be available on a paid website. His reason? That the move will harm the market for paid search in his and other papers. Because publishers are and have been obliged to deposit copies of all they produce, Murdoch clearly sees this as unfair competition, or what he called an unfair balance.

Should it be controversial to suggest that public bodies are prevented from endlessly extending their remits, profiting from work they do not create, or dampening innovation and investment?

The British Library is partnering with publishing company Brightsolid to digitize the newspapers over the next 10 years and for the first time.

As well as out of copyright material (pre-1900) the library will also seek to digitise in-copyright newspapers with the permission of the owners. It is planned that access will then be made available for a fee online.

The British Library’s chief executive Dame Lynne Brindley called it “the most significant programme of newspaper digitisation this country has ever seen“

She said: "Historic newspapers are an invaluable resource for historians, researchers, genealogists, students and many others, bringing past events and people to life with great immediacy and in rich detail. Mass digitisation unlocks the riches of our newspaper collections by making them available online to users across the UK and around the world; by making these pages fully searchable we will transform a research process which previously relied on scrolling through page after page of microfilm or print.