[Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.]

It’s tough to get the printer’s ink out of news people’s veins. For many, journalism = printing, and in printing, each copy costs extra. It’s an analog, manufacturing mindset, and one to finally bid goodbye.

Of course, we all know how freely we can fling stories about on the web, but second copy value — and cost — has an evolving business model implication, as the news industry looks for new pillars of support. That business model implication is syndication. Syndication in the old world meant the syndicates — among them, King Features, Universal Press Syndicate and now-put-up-for-sale United Media —and it meant wires, like AP, Reuters, and AFP, all of whom built big businesses on the increasing margin in the second, third and fourth copies of editorial content created and redistributed. Other syndicators (think Lexis-Nexis and Factiva) have built big businesses, selling multiple copies of stories to corporations and governments for their workforces and to schools of every level and size.

Now, we’re beginning to see next-generation syndication embraced by digital news startups, and that’s good news, a good supplement to advertising and sponsorship revenues, to membership charges and conferences.

Take GlobalPost for example. GlobalPost CEO Phil Balboni embraced syndication as a revenue source from the site’s early planning and rollout. “I knew I needed multiple revenue streams to support our business, and syndication of our original content — in a world of rapidly diminishing international reporting — seemed like a no-brainer to me especially given our pricing flexibility.”

GlobalPost now gets about 12 percent of its overall revenue from syndication. It shares its correspondents’ posts with about 30 newspaper, broadcast and other news sites in the U.S. and worldwide. It counts among its clients CBS News, New York Daily News, the Times of India, Australian Associated Press, Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Newark Star Ledger. Sites pay a monthly flat rate and can use their fill of GlobalPost stories. In addition to web use, print publications can and do use them in print as well.

GlobalPost isn’t alone. Politico added a syndication network, the Politico Media Network, to its bag of tricks early on. For Politico, it’s a multi-pocket pool play, leveraging a related advertising network around the syndication and its own partnership with Reuters.

California Watch, the new initiative of the Center for Investigative Reporting, is figuring out the contours of its syndication business. Early in its life, it has found daily newspapers, broadcasters, start-ups and the ethnic press to be eager customers of its work, with some big stories reaching audiences of two million or more. Early on, CIR has priced its work fairly inexpensively, in the low hundreds of dollars. As it is getting traction, it is thinking of syndication as a key business model and will test pricing models over the next year

The Chicago News Cooperative, the supplier of local news coverage for the Chicago edition of The New York Times, operates on a similar principle, able to sell stories to multiple customers.

The principle here is devilishly simple — but has not been well enough applied. It’s been described from the inception of the Internet: the second copy is free (or really close to free). It’s also part of a basic Newsonomics law, Law #9: Apply the 10% Rule. Let technology do the value multiplication, not expensive-to-hire-and-feed humans.

Every syndication dollar earned is another dollar that doesn’t have to be wrung out of highly competitive advertising markets. Importantly, the syndication dollars derive from what journalism organizations do best: create high-quality content. The big notion: create better-than-good-enough content, the kind of stuff that is beginning to flood the web. It’s another way to affirm worth: the more companies that want to use your content, the clearer the value proposition in the digital world.

So what’s old is new again. In addition, syndication offers the potential of selling beyond traditional media that may offer significant new revenues. For local news companies, established for more than a hundred years or a few months, it’s a destination-plus model. It’s not about readers coming to your site; it’s about getting people to read your content —and get paid for it. It’s also — witness the Politico model — a way to enable an ad network, related to syndicated content. In fact, I can envision a range of locally oriented sites — from the Yelps, Open Tables and Zillows to government sites to niche mom’s and family sites and beyond — that may find use for various kinds of content. The first step for would-be syndicators: inventory and categorize what you have, and talk to would-be customers about what they might want to use.

Some have said that in the digital world, news companies need to think of themselves both as creators and aggregators, doing what they do best and linking to the rest. Let’s amend that: creators, aggregators, and syndicators, doing what they do best, licensing with zest and linking to the rest.

The social networking site plans to roll out features next month that will give its 400 million users the option of sharing their location with friends as part of their news feeds.

We’d be naive to think manufacturers were twiddling their thumbs while Apple pimps out its iPad. Sure enough, there could be as many as 50 tablet devices from competing manufacturers worldwide this year, according to mobile microprocessor company ARM.

In anticipation of the upcoming tablet invasion, ARM has rented out more space at the Computex electronics trade show in Taipei to accommodate the new devices, according to ComputerWorld.

“The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers,” said Roy Chen, ARM’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager, during a press meeting in Taipei. “You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter.”

ARM licenses its microprocessor technologies to many manufacturers for their mobile devices, so we can trust that Chen has some inside knowledge about upcoming tablets. (The iPhone’s processor is ARM-based, for example.)

Chen noted the majority of the tablets will launch in China, but that “companies everywhere” are delivering tablets as well. He didn’t name specific companies. However, in the United States we’re aware of upcoming tablets from HP and Dell. And before the iPad even lands, startup Fusion Garage plans to release its JooJoo tablet.

Wired.com last year predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet after hearing from industry sources that several major manufacturers, including Dell and HTC, were planning to launch tablets.

See Also:

• Dell Names Secret ‘Slate’ After Non-Existent Apple Product …
• Would You Buy an iPad? Wired Readers Weigh In
• HP’s Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Classic RPG series returns...

The original Deus Ex was a genuine classic. The sci-fi RPG was a role playing game in the truest sense. It gave you real decisions to make and numerous customisation options. Ten years on and it still shines very bright. Invisible War, the sequel - released in 2003 - was less ambitious, possibly to make it more appealing to the console userbase. It was still a way above average action role-player though. 7 years on and the wait for a new Deus Ex is nearly over. The teaser trailer for Human Revolution has just been released at GDC (you have probably already clicked on it above). Whether it will match the impact of the PC original remains to be seen - actually, it probably won't - but personally I can't wait for this.

What do you think then? Excited by Human Revolution or will nothing better the original Deus Ex?

Google's growth animated and digital teddy bears storming Worthing seafront in this week's roundup

"Meet Google. The noun that became a verb." That's how this little film starts, going on to list all the vast projects that the company is involved at the moment using lovely animation. Made in the style of the viral "Did you know?" videos, it gives you a pretty good impression why people call Google a "frenemy". So is Google Darth Vader? Or just a business?

Remember Charlie Brooker's parody of TV news reporting recently? Here's the American equivalent. Enjoy the Onion ripping apart up-to-the-minute coverage of some irrelevant story that has no ramifications whatsoever. Excellent – but not to be watched if you dislike strong language or dead fish.

Finally, we have teddy bears invading Worthing seafront. They hop above the streets, play with some cars, and kill some pigeons – all the stuff that you do when you are an animated teddy bear in a viral video fantasy from a rather talented young man.

1 The Beast File- Google (HUNGRY BEAST)
If you want to know why they call Google a "frenemy," watch this info-animation from Hungry Beast for Australian TV channel ABC.

2 BMW S1000 RR. Dinner for RR
You know that conjuring trick where you pull out the tablecloth so quickly and smoohtly that dinner remains undisturbed? Well, BMW has tried it with a food bank and one of their motorbikes, and ...

3 The Handsome Men's Club
A post-Oscars Jimmy Kimmel gets Robert Downey Jr, Sting, Patrick Dempsey, Tad Dampsey, Ethan Hawke, Ben Affleck, Matt Demon and others to make fun of Handsome Men – that is, themselves. Really kicks of with when Lenny starts to sing. So who is most handsome?

4 Turning into Michael Jackson
Amazing transformation: Why beauty operations? Séverine takes you on a tour using make up and scotch tape to look like Michael Jackson!

5 Teddys storm Worthing sea front
Cutie of the week! Watch an endless row of teddy bears taking over the seafront of Worthing. Internet creativity as its best.

6 Iron Man 2 Trailer 2
Marvel Comics meet blockbuster featuring machines, special effects, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke to perform a film fest coming in May. But the trailer has already made it into the charts.

7 TRON: LEGACY - Official Trailer
Another movie in which technology plays the main role, and this time its a father and son tale that puts us back into 1980s cyberspace. Oh, but in 3D. Is that enough?

8 NEW E*TRADE Baby - Girlfriend
Animated human baby boy and baby girl have a serious relationship talk. What happened last night? And was that milkoholic Lindsay there as well? Very well made ad, deserves to go viral.

9 PS22 Chorus "LISZTOMANIA" Phoenix
You think Glee is TV fiction? Than watch this! Here is the pop video of the week featuring the elementary school chorus from Public School 22 in Graniteville, Staten Island, who cover Lisztomania by Phoenix.

10 Captain Kirk deals with a strange alien culture
Looking at the screen, Spock and Kirk can't really believe their eyes. Or ears.

Source: Mostly taken by Unruly Media, but heavily inspired by Mag.ma. Compiled from data gathered at 18:00 on 11 March 2010.

Spaceships on your spreadsheets are fun, says Todd Nash, but there are easier ways to waste time at work

I've been sitting at my desk for half an hour trying to guide a tiny spaceship between two lines of a graph in a computer game disguised to make it appear as though I'm hard at work. If anyone walks over I press the spacebar and it disappears. Despite the fact I've not had cause to create a graph since my schooldays, nobody seems in the least suspicious. This is too easy.

As it is, I'm doing my utmost to draw attention to myself. I start sighing and banging my fists on the desk each time I lose a life, but everyone has their headphones on and is oblivious to my crime.

In the end, I show the graph to my colleague and tell her it's the results of a survey about office productivity, while I merrily steer my ship through the middle of it. It's a good couple of minutes before she notices that something is up. "Is that a spaceship?" she tentatively asks. Finally, I've been caught!

This is the latest internet timewasting scam as showcased by Can't You See I'm Busy!, a website that allows bored office workers to play simple flash games without getting caught. With backdrops closely resembling typical office applications such as spreadsheets and Word documents, the site proudly estimates it has already cost the economy more than £4m in reduced productivity.

Should you grow tired of spaceships, two further games are provided to fool your boss with. Breakdown clearly takes inspiration from the Atari classic Breakout, except with the text of a work document to destroy instead of blocks. A further game, CostCutter, is a Tetris-like puzzle that involves removing cubes of the same colour before they reach the end of the screen under the guise of a simple bar chart.

To be honest though, I'm finding them a little dull. In fact, I'd probably rather be working. The games are pretty retro and only really interesting for the first five minutes; not long enough for a proper skiving session. Let's face it, I can spend longer than that making a cup of tea.

It's not just online games that have cottoned on to the benefits of providing a safe outlet for slackers. Totesport, an online betting website, provides a little exclamation mark at the top of the screen which, when clicked, quickly redirects you to a nondescript "sales spreadsheet". The football365.com forum too has a "Quick, Boss!" button just in case you get caught off guard.

It seems it is easier than ever to get away with doing things you shouldn't be doing in the office. All we need now is Facebook to jump on the bandwagon and nobody in the UK will be doing any work whatsoever. What are your secret timewasting favourites?

Last night, Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter.

The strict instruction makes it clear that even though news continually breaks on Twitter first — especially in disaster scenarios — Reuters journalists are to break their stories first via the wire and not on Twitter.

The social media policy in question also addresses a number of other Twitter, Facebook, and online concerns, offering up instructions and recommendations whenever possible.

For example, journalists are advised to get manager approval before using Twitter for professional purposes, have someone double-check their tweets before posting, avoid disclosing personal biases (especially political), and to separate professional and private activity with separate accounts.

The policy as a whole is a fascinating read and exposes that Reuters, as a media organization, is torn between encouraging employees to use social media and the realization that the online behaviors of their staff put them at risk, a sentiment expressed in the comment that these tools, if misused, could “threaten our hard-earned reputation for independence and freedom from bias or our brand.”

In their eyes, a reporter that exposes their political leanings on Facebook, even privately, is no longer free from repudiation. A journalist that follows sources on Twitter or friends them on Facebook risks sharing those identities with the competition.

What’s interesting, though, is the idea that social media poses a threat to the traditional news cycle and notion of journalism has been around since the days when blogging first surfaced. As other news organizations, reputable or not, continue to break stories on Twitter and even mandate social media usage, it will be interesting to see whether or not Reuters can maintain their relevance and position atop the news chain.

Tags: media, Reuters, social media, social media policy, trending

Text added to digital economy bill that could block sites such as YouTube echoes almost word for word a suggestion from the BPI

A controversial amendment to the digital economy bill that could block sites such as YouTube is copied almost word-for-word from a draft written by the BPI, which lobbies on behalf of the British music industry.

The BPI confirmed on Thursday that it drafted a letter which was circulated to government and opposition peers containing a suggested draft amendment to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patent Act. Earlier this month the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Clement-Jones added the text into the digital economy bill almost exactly as provided as part of amendment 120a.

However, the suggested changes – which won approval from peers and will now be considered by the House of Commons – have come under fire from the heads of the four biggest internet service providers in the UK, as well as the UK chiefs of companies including Google, eBay and Yahoo, who said yesterday that they threatened freedom of speech and could lead to British websites being blocked without due judicial process.

In response, the BPI said that the amendment a "clear and sensible" way to deal with illegal downloading – but not that it had been the source of the draft version.

Today a spokesman for the BPI insisted that the organisation was not embarrassed at the disclosure of the source of the amendment.

"This was a suggestion that we made to the government in 2009, with this wording. This version of the proposal was sent to the government and also to the opposition parties. The government decided it wanted to go a different way. The opposition parties, while not fully agreeing with it, saw it as a good framework for what they wanted to put down," the spokesman said. "We have consistently said that the digital economy bill should have sensible measures to deal with peer-to-peer file sharing."

The BPI's proposed amendment, in a letter dated 8 January, is almost identical to the version put forward by Lord Clement-Jones on 3 March. The key difference is the addition in Clement-Jones's version of questions about national security, and of tests to see whether the blocking of a site infringes human rights and freedom of speech, and whether an ISP has tried to "facilitate legal access to content".

Jim Killock, head of the Open Rights Group, a pressure group on digital rights which opposes the amendment, said that it was understandable that a lobby group such as the BPI would try to draft legislation – but that the Lords were at fault for not querying the source and intention of the amendment more closely.

"The BPI has got every right to do this," said Killock. "The question is why the politicians have said in such a complicated arena that they will take the BPI's ideas wholesale without consulting anybody else."

Killock said that ORG, Consumer Focus and Liberty had all provided draft legislation and notes to politicians for the bill - but that theirs took the form of "probing amendments", whose purpose was to show weaknesses in the draft bill which could then be revised.

"It's the politicians who have been irresponsible here. It shows that they're taking the BPI far too seriously," Killock said.

The BPI spokesman responded: " We made a proposal on this – and as is quite common – used statutory language to convey our point. This is something that all sides in the digital economy debate do." He defended the addition of the amendment to the draft bill: "[the peers] made changes to our proposal which was then tabled by them, debated fully in the House of Lords, before being agreed and made part of the bill."

The Ransom Center at the University of Texas has acquired the archives of David Foster Wallace, joining those of Don DeLillio and Norman Mailer.

The archive contains manuscript materials for Wallace's books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace's college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books.

Highlights include handwritten notes and drafts of his critically acclaimed "Infinite Jest," the earliest appearance of his signature "David Foster Wallace" on "Viking Poem," written when he was six or seven years old, a copy of his dictionary with words circled throughout and his heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and more than 40 other authors.

Materials for Wallace's posthumous novel "The Pale King" are included in the archive but will remain with Little, Brown and Company until the book's publication, scheduled for April 2011.

The web site currently contains some tantalizing examples of what the archive will eventually hold, including the first page of a handwritten draft of Infinite Jest, his annotated dictionary -- circled words included benthos, exergue, hypocorism, mendacious, rebus, and witenagemot -- and some heavily annotated books he owned, including his copy of Players by DeLillo.

This is really exciting and sad all at once. (thx, matt)

Tags: David Foster Wallace   Don DeLillo   Infinite Jest   The Pale King

Betaworks, the start-up incubator that helped spawn TweetDeck and Bit.ly, raises $20 million.

Filed under: Cult of Mac, iPad

We've had more than a few inbound requests today, via email and Twitter, asking a slightly obsessive but completely understandable question: When can I pre-order my freakin' iPad?

True to form, the simple answer of "March 12th" is not adequate for the real early adopters, and they ask again: Yes, I know that, but what time can I push the button? When does the pre-order page go live on store.apple.com? Do I need to stay up all night, refreshing the page?

We understand. We know where you're coming from. We asked Apple PR to help you plan your day tomorrow, and they responded:

"Customers can pre-order online at apple.com at 5:30am Pacific time on Friday, March 12."

There you have it. 5:30 am PT, 8:30 am ET, and for those of you who happen to have US credit cards & shipping addresses but are currently elsewhere around the globe, here's the global clock. Now please have a nice cup of tea, sit down with a favorite book, and remember that it's still three more weeks until your new iPad hits your electrostatic digits.

TUAWHow soon is now? Pre-order timing for iPad confirmed, 5:30 am PT originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft let advertisers buy ads in the milliseconds between the time someone enters a site’s Web address and the moment the page appears.

Secret restaurant menus orig. from Mar 10, 2010

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

Tags: post updates

The internet's most valuable domain name, sex.com, is back on the auction block – and bidding starts at $1m

If you've got $1m for a starting bid, and many millions more available, you could next week be the proud owner of the internet's most fought-over domain name: sex.com.

The site's ownership goes up for auction next week by DOM Partners LLC, a New Jersey lender that backed a 2006 purchase of the domain name for up to $14m but which is now foreclosing on the loan.

The auction is scheduled for 18 March at the New York law firm Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP, according to legal notices. And there is good reason for the site to attract bidders: at one point, it was making at least $15,000 a day, according to a 2008 book, The Sex.com Chronicles by Charles Carreon.

In the late 1990s, internet domains used to change hands for stunning amounts: though sex.com sets the price record, others including fund.com ($10m), porn.com ($9.5m), business.com ($7.5m) and diamonds.com ($7.5m) proved how much value some investors saw in the visitor-attracting power of a simple, easily remembered name.

But in many cases those domains were sold before the rise of Google, whose search engine dominates internet navigation, and which assesses sites not by their names but by their reputations, as measured by the number of other sites that link to them. A search for "sex" on Google shows sex.com as the fourth result; the top result is a site first registered in 2000.

The auction is yet another twist in the history of sex.com, which has seen bizarre shenanigans between would-be rival owners including Mexican jails, international pursuits and accusations of hacking which Kieren McCarthy, the author of another book about the struggle for sex.com's ownership, has called "a Trojan war for the digital age".

That war began in October 1995, when Gary Kremen, who 18 months earlier had become the first person to register sex.com, noticed that he was no longer listed as its owner. An 11-year battle, sometimes legal, followed with Stephen Michael Cohen, who also claimed to be the owner, disputing Kremen's ownership. It was finally settled in January 2006, when Kremen, having been declared the owner, sold the site to Escom LLC.

But Escom made the purchase with a loan from DOM Partners – and that has been in default for more than a year. "The loan was in default and DOM partners is foreclosing pursuant to its right under the security agreement," DOM's attorney, Scott Matthews, said. Attempts to reach Escom and sex.com for comment were not immediately successful.

But Richard Maltz, an auctioneer at Maltz Auctions who is running the sale, said on Monday there was considerable interest in it. "We don't know who's serious and who's not, but prospective bidders need a $1m certified cheque. It should be interesting."

Maltz said his firm was arranging for potential buyers to also be able to bid online. It is not known whether Stephen Cohen will be among the bidders.

Kremen, meanwhile, has been successful away from sex.com, having set up match.com, the dating website, and is chief executive of Grant Media.

Social networking site fears reputation permanently damaged by false claim that it let older men pressure teenage girls for sex

Facebook has threatened to sue the Daily Mail for damages after the paper wrongly claimed in a piece published on Wednesday that 14-year-old girls who create a profile on the social networking site could be approached "within seconds" by older men who "wanted to perform a sex act" in front of them.

The paper apologised in print today and online yesterday for the error, which the author of the piece, Mark Williams-Thomas, insisted had been introduced by editors at the paper despite being told it was wrong. In fact, Williams-Thomas – a retired policeman who now works as a criminologist – had been using another, unspecified social network.

But the giant social networking site, which has 23 million users in the UK alone, said that although the Mail has changed the headline of the article online – so that it now reads "I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you" – it had not at first changed the page title of the article online, used by internet search engines to index content, nor the URL of the piece, which is also a factor in search-engine indexing.

At 10am today the title still read "I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you" while the URL contained the text "i-posed-girl-14-facebook-what-followed-sicken-you". The title and URL were, however, amended before noon.

A UK spokeswoman for Facebook said the company was still considering legal action and looking at the "brand damage that has been done".

Charles Garside, assistant editor of the Daily Mail, said that the apology had been produced in consultation with Facebook, and that representatives of the paper and Facebook would be meeting today. The changes to the URL and page title were "a technical matter", he said, adding: "We are removing elements of that".

The incorrect naming of Facebook is understood to be blamed on "a matter of miscommunication".

Facebook staff claimed that attempts to add a comment to the piece, as readers are able to do, were repeatedly blocked by the Daily Mail.

The company is concerned that the article may have done permanent harm to its reputation in the UK. "If you were a Middle England reader and your child was on Facebook, this sort of thing would have a very serious effect on what you thought of us," said the Facebook spokeswoman.

Tensions over Facebook's position in the UK as a popular site among people of all ages, allowing them to contact each other, have been magnified in the past week after Peter Chapman was convicted of murdering Ashleigh Hall, a 17-year-old girl who thought that Chapman, 33, was also a teenager. Chapman had got in touch with Hall via Facebook, leading to criticisms from some senior police officers over the measures that the site takes to protect susceptible individuals .

But the Daily Mail piece, which carried Williams-Thomas's byline, suggested that anyone who signed up as a 14-year-old girl would be approached "within minutes of the profile going up". The piece also said that "messages from men poured in" and that "the first three who approached me were aged between 20 and 40".

However, Williams-Thomas and his agent, Sylvia Tidy-Harris, both insisted on their Twitter feeds that he had not used Facebook for the Mail article.

It "was on another well-known SNS [social networking service], not Facebook", said Tidy-Harris, echoing Williams-Thomas.

Tidy-Harris said that yesterday had "Been a hellishly tough day trying to juggle @mwilliamsthomas misquote in daily mail along with meetings and literally 100ks of calls/emails".

At Facebook, the anger at the misrepresentation was magnified because, they say, they were initially unable to get any response from the paper to their appeals for corrections.

"The people at Facebook in the US were reading this and knew at once that it couldn't have been our platform," said the Facebook UK spokeswoman. "We have made Facebook much more favourable to the safety of minors – minors under 18 cannot receive messages from somebody over 18."

That means it would be impossible for the scenario described by Williams-Thomas to happen on Facebook.

Facebook's representatives said that they tried to get a response from the Mail throughout Wednesday without success, and that attempts by people at its PR agency to post comments on the piece with clarifying text failed. The Mail uses moderators who on that story approved comments before they could appear. By this morning the article had 380 comments.

Williams-Thomas has not responded to requests to specify which social networking service he was using by the time of publication.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

News Corporation Europe and Asia chief calls for tough line on piracy, adding: 'They're not crazy kids. No. Punish them'

James Murdoch today called on governments to get tough on illegal downloading, which he said was no different from "going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag".

Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation's European and Asian operations, was joined in calling for tougher piracy measures at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit today by other media executives including Ari Emanuel, co-chief executive of William Morris Endeavor, the biggest Hollywood talent agency.

But Murdoch, who stressed that future growth would come from original content production, took the toughest line on piracy.

"We need enforcement mechanisms and we need governments to play ball … There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff. It's a basic condition for investment and economic growth and there should be the same level of property rights whether it's a house or a movie," he said.

"The idea that there's a new consumer class and you have to be consumer-friendly when they're stealing stuff. No. There should be the same level of sanctity as there is around property. Content is no different. They're not crazy kids. No. Punish them."

The outburst from the man widely tipped to take over when his father, Rupert Murdoch, steps down as News Corporation chairman and chief executive, attracted a round of applause from media executives at the Abu Dhabi summit.

Only Maurice Levy, chief executive of French advertising group Publicis, sounded an alternative note when he said: "My grandchild doesn't believe he's stealing."

Murdoch also reiterated previous threats by his father Rupert that News Corp may take legal action against content aggregators such as Google to protect its copyright.

"We're being very careful legally to protect our rights," he said. "If there's money getting stuck it's getting stuck in an inefficient distribution layer … where Google and Yahoo are suddenly indexing copyright material and then selling bits of it and making money from it. You may have to withdraw access to those things. You may not."

Murdoch also asked for lighter touch regulation for a business that is the largest shareholder in UK pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB and owns the News International stable of national newspapers including the Sun and the Times.

In an earlier point about investment opportunities, Murdoch said: "When we look at different marketplaces ... it's really a question for us about how free a hand we're going to have to operate."

He was echoing comments made by his father, Rupert, at yesterday's keynote speech in Abu Dhabi about the need for less regulation, particularly in the Gulf states.

Emanuel, the brother of US presidential adviser Rahm, said the industry was talking to the US government in a bid to introduce a "three strikes and you're out" law to govern illegal downloading.

"We are in the midst of talking to the president and some attorney generals and [we are] trying to implement a three strikes and you're out rule," he added.

He suggested that there would be a "fight with ISPs" (internet service providers) over the subject. France last year introduced a similar rule which allowed legal action once internet users had downloaded illegally three times.

Earlier today at the Abu Dhabi conference, Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt made an impassioned presentation on the search company's "mobile first" strategy.

But he was perhaps less forthcoming about the flood of questions about Google's dominance and control over its use of our data.

"Would you prefer another government to hold the information that we have?" he said, adding that the company had enough checks and balances to stop information being misused, and it would also not want to lose people's trust.

Schmidt also suggested that location-based social networking services such as Foursquare and Gowalla could become the next Twitter.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

Free web TV service offers 1,000 hours of shows licensed from BBC Worldwide and production companies

See the MSN Video Player

Microsoft's MSN Video is to launch a free catch-up TV service in the UK on Thursday to try to compete with the BBC's iPlayer – but including 30-second adverts before, during and after each programme.

The iPlayer, which like the original BBC content has no ads, is one of the most popular websites in the UK, allowing people to view or listen to TV and radio programmes up to seven days after their transmission.

Led by Ashley Highfield, formerly a key figure in the evolution of the BBC iPlayer, the Microsoft offering will have roughly 1,000 hours of programming – but will lack direct broadcaster deals. That means it will not be able to compete directly with the direct catch-up services offered by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Highfield is now the head of Microsoft's UK consumer and online business.

Instead, last summer Microsoft acquired licenses for 300 hours of BBC Worldwide and All3Media shows for a trial service, getting access to BBC programmes such as Mock the Week, What Not To Wear and Hotel Babylon, and All3Media shows including Peep Show, Shameless and How To Look Good Naked, and series featuring the illusionist Derren Brown.

From Thursday it will also add more shows from Endemol, maker of Big Brother, as well as RDF, Shed, Digital Rights Group, Raw Cut and Content Film, bringing the total available to more than 1,000 hours.

"The six-month pilot is going full commercial launch," MSN UK executive producer Peter Bale told paidContentUK, owned by the Guardian. "The pilot has worked. We've had a terrific response from our advertisers." He added that "We're having a very high number of people sit through the ads, because there aren't many."

The move by MSN comes amid upheavals in the online video sector, where the BBC is still waiting for approval for Project Canvas, a planned joint venture with ITV, Channel 4, Channel Five, BT and Carphone Warehouse to provide on-demand video over the internet which could be played in internet-enabled TVs, rather than just computers – the present limitation of iPlayer. BSkyB and equipment makers have voiced objections to Canvas, suggesting that there is not proven consumer demand for it, and that it might not work with planned internet-enabled TVs.

The iPlayer has enjoyed spectacular success since its launch at Christmas 2007, becoming an internet phenomenon that has provided the baseline for future broadband quality enshrined in the government's Digital Economy bill. The bill specifies a proposed minimum broadband connection for every household of 2 megabits per second – the minimum required for iPlayer viewing.

Figures released last May showed that it was used to transfer 7 petabytes – 7m gigabytes – of data in a month. It has also recently added an "HD" option for higher-quality online viewing.

But Highfield says that the MSN product is superior to the iPlayer. MSN's average viewer watched for 25 minutes, he said: "That is significantly higher than ITV and Channel 4's online TV services, which suggests we are hitting the mark with our choice of content for the service."

The MSN system offers Microsoft's Silverlight technology to stream the video, automatically adjusting the screen quality to meet the speed of the connection. But it will be usable without Silverlight.

However, without direct broadcaster deals, MSN's video offering won't necessarily pose a direct challenge to the likes of YouTube and SeeSaw, which have each won Channel 4 and Five shows by offering those broadcasters control of their own ad sales.

Bale insisted that MSN is keen to sign such a deal. "We always talk to the broadcasters," he said. "It's publicly obvious that ITV and Channel 4 have made different decisions what their current video-on-demand strategy is."