New and digital media article 10: Pirate Bay ban lifted in Netherlands as blocking torrent sites ruled ‘ineffective’

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/29/pirate-bay-ban-lifted-in-netherlands-as-blocking-torrent-sites-ruled-ineffective

Earlier on in my research of articles I spoke about the new pirate bay browser and well in the Netherlands the Dutch court states that the ban should be lifted on pirate bay after two dutch internet providers, Ziggo and XS4All too this to court which led to the reversing of the blocking order. Niels Huijbregts, spokesman for XS4All stated that the free internet was victorious and that they are "pleased that the court ruled in favour of the freedom of information, protecting a fundamental right of all Dutch citizens." The judges believe that blocking the pirate bay at ISP level didn't stop users from using the BitTorrent network and illegal downloading, it actually did the opposite and increased piracy.

I believe that if something is taken away from an audience or group of people then they will most likely find a way around it so of course this banning was ineffective but it was surprising that piracy actually increased with the loss of the site. It's possible that it caused some sort of moral panic in illegal downloaders and that of course led to them all trying to find new ways to get their software before other sites get banned and then they'll be unable to obtain any sort of illegal stuff.

New and digital media article 9: ITV to launch pay-TV drama channel on Sky

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/29/itv-pay-tv-channel-sky-itv-encore

ITV wants to continues its strategy of reducing its reliance on free-to-air advertising by announcing rollout of ITV Encore. Almost 10years ago ITV saw its fail of pay-tv as ITV digital, ITV Encore is hopefully going to provide success for ITV as it'll be showing ITV's most popular drama shows. From next year ITV will also populate the channel with original commissions.

I believe that it may not do too well and could potentially fail, its last attempt at a similar product was terrible and failed, this article doesn't state much new about this channel but that its for TV drama shows so I think ITV is wasting time and money into this project.

Build The Wall Analysis

Section 1
David Simon starts with stating that this article is actually aimed at those who have the power to save "high-end journalism" and not actually aimed at everyday readers. He believes that two newspaper executives (Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Katharine Weymouth, publishers of The New York Times and The Washington Post) can rescue the industry which will be a positive for the nation. While other newspapers are currently in a downfall destroying their newspapers and then wondering why it won't sell and therefore leads to them giving the remains online and wondering further why the content is valueless to advertisers.

He therefore proposed to the executives that content matters most and that due to the world of digitisation that people should make people pay for the content. Newspapers need to have content that can only be professionally covered. He seems to talk about Print Vs Digital. Even though content is free online and has been for ages, changing such a view is a dangerous move (e.g. online subscriptions) Therefore content matters and you can provide a paywall for a valid reason. These huge newspaper industries should one day both inform readers that their website will be free to subscribers only and that we shouldn't try to compete and give offers or part of the news online for free. These newspapers also should have someone pursue violations of copyright and therefore put an end to bloggers and protect the newspaper industry.

Section 2
This section is about the newspaper revenue and speaks about how a new revenue stream can be created but i think it says that "no one can act if the times and the post do not" so nobody can use paywalls and create a new revenue stream unless these two popular newspapers do first. These two industry leaders have been very slow at accurately assessing the reality. However, If one newspaper goes behind a paywall then it will benefit the newspaper who fails to act as readers would go to the other newspaper who is providing news for free. It seems as if it's suggesting that the readers would be loyal to those newspapers but one will fail if the other doesn't cooperate to go behind a paywall however it is still possible that some readers will find free papers instead and it's possible that all newspapers need to work together.

The article suggest that nothing beats the content and quality of the times and the post and therefore they need to create a paywall to protect their content. It is also stated that even though the rise of online free newspaper has occurred, more people are reading the product of America's newspapers than ever before. Readers mainly go to The times and The post. Readers currently still do believe that online papers are superior and yet they pay nothing for it and online advertising doesn't deliver enough revenue. The brand loyalty to the Times will buy the times on or offline and will most likely pay for that paper (due to content).

Section 3
This section was a little difficult to understand but I believe it is saying that newspapers have the potential to make readers accept paywalls. 10% of 210.000 Sun readers, for example, who pay a subscription rate less than half the price of home delivery, would represent about $2.5 million. Even though 10% of the many thousands pay for it, this still amounts to a high revenue for the newspapers

Section 4
Here David Simon talks about the outcomes if the Times and the Post go ahead to build the wall. He believes that they'll survive through their new found revenue streams of a cheap yet profitable on lie subscription and increase price of newspapers. Collapse of certain regional and city newspapers create new opportunities for online subscriptions-based news organisations to take over and earn some revenue and maintain a slim-but paid - metro desk. However, local and regional newspapers may not survive in this current battle of a dying industry, if paywalls go ahead then they will not be able to provide credible local products and gain enough online subscriptions.

Overall argument (250 words or less)The main thing I spotted about David Simon's argument is that he believes that content matters most and that with good content and unique content you will be able to gain a large audience and potentially a loyal audience who are willing to pay for a newspaper. He seems to believe paywalls are important in creating revenue for the dying newspaper industry and that we need newspapers and professional journalism, he believes that we need newspapers but currently newspapers are destroying themselves going online, providing poor content etc. However the two major players (The Times and The Post) have the potential of saving the industry but are too slow at reacting, they have a large loyal audience base and can use paywalls as a way to gain revenue, but they both need to work together and use paywalls otherwise the one who doesn't will fail as it isn't gaining the potential revenue. Also due to being leaders in the industry, if they use paywalls first other newspapers will follow, they are waiting on them. Possibly due to content being high in the times and the post, it'll be idiotic for poor content and low audience share newspapers to attempt to have a paywall if the times and post haven't done as they have better content and are for free. Many people are willing to pay for newspapers and subscriptions to the time and the post.

Comments section

I will never pay for “news” again. Most news is not truly news - it is sensationalism, hype and deception. Most news is not balanced - every editor is biased. And it is not just that - I truly can not afford to pay for news. Academics, especially with tenure, got it made in the shade and may be able to afford to follow the “news” as they are funded and it does not come out of their pockets. The question comes down to this - do we want an informed public or not. The answer, at least right now, is no. If the public were truly properly informed the American people would not allow Wall Street to gut Main Street, would not believe the lies of “the terrorists are going to destroy our way of life” and would understand that it really makes no difference - except in perception - of who holds the title of chief cheerleader - oops I mean Commander in Chief, President, which should be renamed CEO of America Incorporated.

#9 Posted by Lawrence Turner on Fri 17 Jul 2009 at 11:55 AM

The above statement I believe disagrees with David Simon, he believes that content is always biased and not truly important news and that he currently is unable to pay for news and just wouldn't want to. He therefore isn't willing to pay for it under the idea that its not properly informing audiences with real news and is just the view of the editor.

Fascinating. What about the big gateway sites, like Yahoo and MSN? I bet a lot of people mostly read their news on Yahoo's home page. Yahoo pays the AP,right? Is there some kind of wholesale deal possible there?

Because people DO pay for the internet. They pay their DSL or their broadband provider, they pay their cell phone bill, they pay for hardware.

I agree that no one in mass media was ready for the fact that the internet broke the advertising business model. I agree that content is valuable, but if its cost was hidden in the advertising revenue stream for so long, is there another place in the online environment that can shoulder that cost, in addition to subscriptions?

#11 Posted by Dana Sterling on Fri 17 Jul 2009 at 01:38 PM

The above statement seems to agree to parts of it but disagree with the main point of the article I think? This commenter states that we indirectly pay for news though the paying of internet service providers, phone bills and hardware etc. and believes that most people don't even get their news from the main papers/sites but from sites such as Yahoo and MSN news. That was how he/she disagrees but he agrees to how the internet destroyed the advertising revenue for the newspapers print industry but this commenter believes there must be another way they can gain that revenue back.

The lack of imagination on display in this article is jaw-dropping.

If, in five years, any part of this article can be looked back upon as anything other than a completely wrong-headed assessment of the state of the industry, if a reasonable person will be able to look back from 2014 on any of the suggestions and say either, "That would have been a good thing to try" or "Thank goodness they did that," I will eat a Baltimore Orioles hat while standing naked in Times Square.

#14 Posted by King Kaufman on Sat 18 Jul 2009 at 04:13 AM

This above comment I chose purely due to the last line but I believe this commenter is against the article believing that the newspaper industry isn't destroying itself and isn't in a bad state and suggests that the whole article is incorrect.

Let's see if I understand the major points here:

Only the New York Times and the Washington Post matter.

No real journalism gets done outside print newspapers.

The regional papers all stink and deserve to die.

The AP must kick out the broadcasters and dump the commercial customers, or die.

If we engineer a mass suicide by the entire newspaper industry, kill the Associated Press, strangle the broadcasters and continue to pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist, we'll ensure the perpetuation of the 1980s Washington Post-New York Times news empire so they can hire 10 reporters in St. Louis.

Did I get the gist of it?

#15 Posted by yelvington on Sat 18 Jul 2009 at 08:56 AM

This comment seems to sarcastically point out what their interpretation is of the article and seems to believe that the article is being biased saying how the two important newspapers are NY times and Washington post only matter and that this is the only way for journalism to work and that regional papers aren't needed.

My opinion

I believe that the paywall is a potential way to earn money and that some newspapers should put some content behind a paywall to help survive and maintain the quality but some newspapers don't need it e.g. NY times and Post etc. as they are already seen as popular and people are willing to pay for it so instead of paywalls they could just increase prices (obviously after market research). If news did have a paywall online then I personally would not like to pay for it, i'd most likely go elsewhere for news as I'm currently not too brand loyal to a newspaper, I do use the BBC or The guardian and if the Guardian puts up a paywall it would be disappointing but i'd just go to the BBC instead for news.

New and digital media article 8: Does technology pose a threat to our private life?

Google's Eric Schmidt believes that we need to create new identities to hide from our embarrassing online past. This article states that with the rise of technology we are becoming more open on social networking sites. things that were usually private and only known to those closest to us. e.g. relationship status, party events, what you ate this morning and where you went etc. we now share all this online freely and it may come back to haunt us.


nothing is challenging our notion of privacy more than social networking, with 26 million of us using Facebook to share the minutiae of our lives every month in the UK alone.

Facebook has seen astonishing growth, from a Harvard dorm project in 2003 to a global phenomenon that had 500 million monthly users by July in 2010. That's already one in 13 people on Earth.


I believe that due to the rise of technology and social sites we have this idea of gaining things being important e.g. followers, likes, friends etc. as if it's a game which therefore leads to many people stating dull information about their location hoping that someone relates to where they're currently visiting. Or posting a lot more private stuff more publicly and eventually we will look back at what we've said and done online and feel embarrassed by what we've said and done and why we've done it.

New and Digital Media Article 7: Yes, I sometimes Google my patients. Is this surprising?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/08/google-patients-gp-rapport-pitfalls

This article states that thanks to the rise of the internet and technology many GPs apparently google their patients to find out more about them. They believe that doctors and GPs are very sociable people and are a people persons so if someone claims to have some sort of fame then it attracts the doctors to finding out more about the person. Sometimes researching a person can also be quiet useful as some of their hobbies etc that they may not have the need to state may have some relation to their visit to the doctors. But they don't do this on a regular basis. They of course do use records that are kept by the NHS of people who have records since they were born and this helps build a better understanding and can be quiet revealing than google can be. Googling patients isn't always reliable though, sometimes when googling celebrities not all the information released is true.

I believe that when googling a patient who isn't famous then it's perfectly fine because the person has placed that information out to the public themselves. However the article does state that some people may not expect their doctor to google them and don't want their doctor to see certain things. Googling someone can help doctors gain a better understanding of a person and their medical issues and what they may be doing that is worsening it or something.

New and Digital Media Article 6: China blocks the Guardian, censorship-tracking website says

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/08/china-blocks-guardian-website

China in the past have blocked several sites such as bloomberg and Wall Street Journal. China tends to block sites that cause a threat to it but the Guardian doesn't believe to have posted anything to harm the relationship between China and the Guardian. "The reasons for the Guardian block are unclear – no China-related stories published by the Guardian in the past two days would obviously be perceived as dangerous by the country's leadership. One article, published on 6 January, explores tensions in China’s ethnically-divided north-western region Xinjiang, but the Guardian has covered the subject before without any noticeable fallout."

In my opinion I believe that China blocks certain sites portraying a certain lifestyle to its people. North Korea tends to block anything harmful to the country and anything that may changed its peoples views, so it's possible that the Chinese Government are doing something similar, they may have seen something posted by the Guardian that may change the lifestyle in China and therefore blocked the site.

New and Digital Media Article 5: Teenagers say goodbye to Facebook and hello to messenger apps

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus

This article states how we are now going back into messenger apps and instead of using social networks like Facebook. Some blame the loss of popularity due to the rise of older generations accepting Facebook and embracing it, going on there and becoming friends with their children which is sort of seen as spying on what they're doing

Mobile operators are estimated to have lost $23bn in SMS revenue in 2012 due to messaging apps

The road to gaining nearly 1.2 billion monthly active users has seen the mums, dads, aunts and uncles of the generation who pioneered Facebook join it too

some 78% of teenagers and young people use mobile messengers to plan a meet-up with friends, according to research advisory firm mobileYouth.

Another factor is the rise of the selfie, often silly self-portraits taken at arm's length with a mobile. Almost half of the photos on Instagram feeds among people aged 14 to 21 in the UK are selfies, according to mobileYouth. 

Snapchat has 5million active monthly users

WhatsApp
Started in 2009 by two ex-Yahoo staff, this smartphone messaging system handles more than 10 billion messages a day and is reckoned to have more than 250m users worldwide. One of the most popular paid-for apps on any platform, and a threat to telecoms companies which charge for texts.

Snapchat 
Allows users to send "view once'"photos, specifying how long the photo will remain on the recipient's device. "Snap an ugly selfie or a video, add a caption, and send it to a friend (or maybe a few). They'll receive it, laugh, and then the snap disappears," says Snapchat. The company is valued at $800m and users send 350m messages per day, up from 200m in June.

WeChat
The Chinese social media app, which handles voice messages, snapshots and emoticons, has more than 200m subscribers. The vast majority of users are in China, though it also has subscribers in the US and UK. It is being tipped as the first Chinese social media application with the potential to go global.

KakaoTalk
A Korean messaging app with more than 90m users that generated $42m of revenues in 2012, ending the year with users sending 4.8bn messages a day. The company recently launched KakaoHome in its home country: a similar app that provides "a customised home screen experience on your smartphone" with widgets, notifications and deeper integration of the main messaging service.

New and Digital Media Article 4: Obama's funeral selfie is a fitting end to my Tumblr – Selfies at Funerals

This article is an article about how a tumblr user/guardian journalist has decided to 'retire' from his tumblr blog of funeral selfies due to the infamous Obama selfie at Nelson Mandela's funeral ceremony. The journalist states that as soon as it was released on twitter/instagram that his twitter followers quickly tweeted him about the incident. The journalist states that his blog consists of many teens posing at funerals and that he didn't expect world leaders to do such a thing.

My opinion on this is that it was incredibly disrespectful for the world leaders to have done such a thing but they did do it as a photo of celebration of the life of Nelson Mandela. The new and digital media angle on this is how global followers all tweeted the same journalist about this event and that he posted the photo a.s.a.p with the rise of new and digital media we are able to communicate so much more faster.

How has news changed in the last 20 years?

How has news changed in the last 20 years and who has benefitted the most? Audiences or institutions?

Over the last 20 years News has changed from being most viewed by audiences of a newspaper to audiences of TV and now audiences on the internet. Since the creation and rise of the internet newspapers have seen a fall in sales and circulation which has led to many newspapers offering their newspapers for free and giving them out at train stations etc. such as the newspaper Metro. This then allows Metro to charge their advertisers more due to their circulation being higher as more people are likely to pick up a free newspaper instead of buying one. Newspaper have also moved online to attract a wider range of audiences. Some newspapers online believe that news should be free so they tend to use online more than an actual print copy which may possibly be charging audiences to view their paper. Even though this is the majority belief, some newspaper do have pay-walls on their sites to prevent audiences from viewing their content or some of their content. For TV we use to use teletext to get news but now we have catch up TV and channels, we have smart TV with online uses and also have the red button news which is sort of a replacement for teletext. TV has also seen arrivals of 24hour news channels which has attracted mass audiences especially when a huge televised event occurs e.g. The royal wedding, Birth of Prince George or horrific events such as 9/11 which gave live updates to billions of viewers. Audiences also tend to gain their information from a wide range of sites on the internet including social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter.Usually the death of a celebrity or some shocking event tends to be first discovered by many over twitter through either family members of the victim, the victim themselves, journalist or from viral UGC. The increase number of people with smartphones and internet has allowed a lot of citizen journalism to occur which benefits both the audience and institutions as the institutions get the chance to showcase a video of an event which they wouldn't have captured themselves as they weren't there and this therefore benefits audiences because they get to have a wider view of an incident instead of just what the institutions capture.

Article: Who killed the newspaper?

http://www.economist.com/node/7830218

This article in the economist is arguing that the newspaper industry is dying but we shouldn't allow it to. Newspapers are seen as the professional journalism written professionally and researched professionally, it's also monitored and checked and tries to provide as much of the truth as possible without stepping over the line. Newspapers are also arguably the only news platform that is able to take politicians into court and have a lot of hard facts to back themselves up. An online blogger who is sitting at home in his armchair isn't really going to have enough money or time or circulation of their blog to provide everyone with potentially true facts and aren't going to be able to be big enough to take on a major story about politicians. Without newspapers Governments will be able to get away with a lot more than they possibly could be getting away with at the moment. However, the decline of newspapers isn't something to be too worried about. Newspapers who do investigate stories which benefit society are in a good position of surviving, as long as the owners do a good job of adjusting to changing circumstances. The article also states that to help survive some major newspapers such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal should put their prices up to compenstate for the loss of advertising due to the rise of the internet and also because they attract a global readership. Another reason to why and how they will survive is thanks to non-profit groups such as NewAssignment.Net who want to combine amateurs and professionals to produce investigative stories on the internet, however even some companies such as CraigsList is supporting this idea even though they were the ones considered as the ones who destroyed the newspapers.

My opinion, I agree that the newspaper industry is dying but I believe it is something to panic about. Newspapers at the current moment in time are important to investigating important news stories with hard evidence and facts which they can take people to court over. Even though non-profit organisations are funding professional and non-professional journalist I believe it would be a short term response. The internet is growing more and more with new bloggers and citizen journalist writing their own opinions and trying to investigate their own news, they are therefore still places to get news from but not all of it will be reliable and some of it won't be able to investigate huge stories.

Broadcast

BBC 
The crown (publicly owned)
Founder(s): John Reith and George Villiers
Revenue: £5.086 (2011/12)
News channels: BBC News, BBC Parliament, BBC World News, BBC Red Button, BBC News 24

BskyB
Rupert Murdoch 
Revenue: £6.791 billion (2012) 
Operating Income: £1.243 billion (2012) 
Net Income: £970 million (2012)
Parent company/Holding company (a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock.): 21st century fox
News channels: Sky News, Fox News

ITV
Owned by: ITV Plc, STV Group plc, UTV Media plc
Audience Share: 
- ITV = 14.0% 
- ITV+1 = 1.0% 
- ITV HD = 1.4% 
(December 2013, BARB)
News: ITV News

Channel 4
Channel four television corporation
News: Channel 4 News
Audience Share: 
- Channel 4 = 4.9%
- Channel 4+1 = 0.9%
(October 2013, BARB)

Print

BskyB
Rupert Murdoch 
Revenue: £6.791 billion (2012) 
Operating Income: £1.243 billion (2012) 
Net Income: £970 million (2012)
Parent company/Holding company (a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock.): 21st century fox
Newspapers: The Times, Sunday Times, The Sun

Guardian Media Group
C.P. Scott
Revenue: £254.4 million
Newspapers: The Guardian

Daily Mail and General Trust
Editor: Paul Dacre
Political alignment: Conservative
Newspapers: Daily Mail
Circulation: 1,863,151 (January 2013)

Telegraph Media Group
Editor: Tony Gallagher
Political Alignment: Centre-right conservative
Circulation: 541,036 (Feb 2013)
Newspaper: Daily Telegraph

Trinity Mirror
Editor: Lloyd Embley
Political Alignment: Labour
Circulation: 1,058,488
Newspapers: Daily mirror

E-media

BBC
The crown (publicly owned)
Founder(s): John Reith and George Villiers
Revenue: £5.086 (2011/12)
E-media: BBC News online

BskyB
Rupert Murdoch 
Revenue: £6.791 billion (2012) 
Operating Income: £1.243 billion (2012) 
Net Income: £970 million (2012)
Parent company/Holding company (a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock.): 21st century fox
News channels: Sky News, Fox News

Yahoo
Founders: Jerry Yang and David Filo
Revenue: US$ 4.98 Billion (2012)
Operating Income: US$ 566 Million (2012)
Net Income: US$ 3.94 Billion (2012)
Total assets: US$ 17.10 Billion (2012)
Total Equity: US$ 14.56 Billion (2012)
News: Yahoo News

Google
Larry Page, Sergey Brin
Revenue: US$ 50.18 Billion (2012)
Operating Income: US$ 12.76 Billion (2012)
Profit: US$ 10.74 Billion (2012)
Total Assets: US$ 93.80 Billion (2012)
Total Equity: US$ 71.72 Billion (2012)
News: Google News, through Google search

Twitter
Founders: Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Biz Stone
Revenue: US$ 317 Million (2012)
Users: 200 Million (active Feb 2013)

Facebook
Mark Zuckerburg
Revenue: US$5.1 Billion (2012)
Operating Income: US$ 538 Million (2012)
Net Income: US$ 53 Million (2012)
Total Assets: US$ 15.10 Billion (2012)
Total equity: US$ 11.75 Billion (2012)
Users: 1.19 Billion (active september 2013)

New and Digital Media Article 3: UK entertainment spending increasing

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/01/uk-entertainment-spending-film-music-streaming

The article states that the UK entertainment spending has increased thanks to the rise of online streaming of music and movies from Netflix, LoveFilm and iTunes etc.

streams and subscriptions rises to £621m, and number of tracks streamed doubles to 7.4bn

Online streaming fuelled a 40% increase in spending on digital videos with downloads

The change to digital viewing led to more than 6.8% fall in the sales of physical DVDs to £1.4bn, reversing a five year decline in total video sales, which managed 3.7% growth to £2.06bn last year

Skyfall was the biggest-selling DVD in the UK in 2013, shifting 2.96m copies

My opinion on this is that streaming has opened up a more convenient and cheap way for consumers and customers to buy certain products such as a movie or a song. However, this idea of streaming has led to an increase of illegal downloading and illegal streaming. So even though the sales have risen in the long term the businesses will be affected as they would be losing potential sales 

News and new and digital media:Impacts on audiences and institutions

Topic Area: News

Impact on audiences: 
- Audiences can access the news whenever they want (easy, quick access)
- Global news: wider range of knowledge, wider access to knowledge and news
- However audiences may accidentally access inaccurate news and spread it
- UGC e.g. 'Citizen journalist', audiences can report news and capture moments through the use of cameraphones that huge news stations may not have due to not being there

Impact on institutions: 
- Fall in newspaper circulation
- Fall in News TV viewing
- Loss of journalist jobs
- A brand can be tarnished due to the use of inaccurate information
- Some newspapers have been forced to move with the trend and go online which leads to better communication with people and news
- News is considered free nowadays (apart from paying for a TV license)
- Newspapers have lost advertising revenue and are blaming NDM for that e.g. Google and craigslist etc.

Links to theories and debates:
- Lin and Webster: 75% of user volume accounted for is from the top 5% of sites
- Pareto's law (80/20)
- Globalisation
- Pluralism
- "Dumbing down of society"
- Castells: "Ushers in the information ages"
- "The internet is the most important medium"

No, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are not to blame for the decline of the media industry

http://gigaom.com/2014/01/02/no-larry-page-and-sergey-brin-are-not-to-blame-for-the-decline-of-the-media-industry/

1) Why has Google led to the decline of the newspaper industry?

The article states that many newspaper companies blame Google and Craigslist for stealing the advertising revenue from them. Google is able to reach a larger amount of potential customers and could be cheaper (pay per click/visit) and therefore attract a large amount of newspapers potential advertisers.

2) Personal opinion: Do you blame Google for the loss of journalist jobs and closing of newspapers?

No, I believe that Google had actually created an opportunity for newspapers to follow the emedia trend and if the newspapers were fast enough to set up a site they may have had their advertisers to have followed them on their sites. Plus most advertisers in newspapers especially local ones aren't always set up gloabally (aren't a franchise) and therefore are likely sole traders or partnerships with one or two stores and are most likely not going to benefit from advertising on google, they'll be more likely to benefit from advertising on the newspapers site 

New and Digital Media Article 2: Pirate Bay plans new 'anti-censorship' browser

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/06/pirate-bay-anti-censorship-browser

This article states that pirate bay has found ways around the ISP blockers by creating its own web browser which has been creating controversy as it has apparently also found its way round international censorships in countries such as Iran and North Korea

After 2.5m downloads of its first PirateBrowser, filesharing site still attacking 'domain blocking, domain confiscation, IP-blocking'

The Pirate Bay's own PirateBrowser web browser has been downloaded more than 2.5m times since its launch in August 2013, but the filesharing site is already working on a successor.

PirateBrowser was designed to help people access The Pirate Bay and other torrent services even if they were blocked by their ISP, while also circumventing other kinds of internet censorship in countries including Iran and North Korea.

It reached 1m downloads by mid-October, and has added a further 1.5m since then, but it seems set to be replaced by a new client later in 2014 that will use peer-to-peer technology to evade ISP-level blocks on people's online activities.

I believe that what pirate bay do is obviously wrong as they are allowing filesharing illegally which is damaging to the businesses who created the certain file e.g. some people would find torrents for final cut pro, logic, photoshop etc which is all quite expensive and therefore with every illegal download the business who created the product e.g. Apple is losing out on potential sales. However technology is so advanced that if pirate bay did shut down people would always find new sites, new ways to get a certain file and this will be a continuous trend as it is difficult to maintain and control.