From a technical perspective it is trivially easy to block Google from indexing and caching content.
I agree. Murdock is within his rights to expect to be compensated for content that he pays people to create. That’s fair. But it’s also fair that he ought to take some precautions to protect his property. If he were to block Google, put them on notice that he will only remove the block if they agree to pay for content, and they still take it for free, then he may have a reason to go after them.
Someone has to pay to create web (or any other) content, it doesn’t “just happen”. The precedent is clear, you can’t go record ABC news for example, and charge people to watch it. The media is evolving but in the end, it will still work, or new content creators will replace the existing ones.
But Murdoch does exactly the opposite.
Consider the Wall Street Journal. If you go to the front door without a subscription, many of the articles are limited to the first paragraph or so. However, if you arrive via a Google page (or seem to), you get to see the whole article.
Murdoch wants that incremental traffic! If he can get the visitor to pay, fine. But he still wants the ad revenue.