Friday, November 09, 2012  Irish newspapers have some curious
views about search engines  The Irish newspaper industry seems
to have chosen today for a bout of collective hyperbole about
search engines. Here's what the Examiner had to say: Work
generated through effort, skill, imagination, professionalism,
and usually considerable capital investment, is pirated by
businesses with no connection to the creative process as a means
to win revenue without risk or outlay. This process is hardly
different to what we more commonly describe as theft. The scale
of the piracy is astounding. In 2010, while every media company
in the country shed jobs and cut costs to the bone, a single
search engine operating in Ireland offered around 150,000
newspaper articles that cost publishers an estimated €46.5m to
generate. Last year that site offered more than 350,000 articles
at a cost equivalent to more than €110m. And all without paying
one cent to those who created those articles. There's more in
the same vein from the Irish