The News International spokesperson would not comment about whether the company plans to extend its blocking to aggregators other than NewsNow, or on whether it is negotiating commercial terms with others.

News International had been in touch last year to discuss paying for stories, Bartlett said - NewsNow briefly considered it but decided against it. “We want to make sure that results are not influenced by commercial relationships between [us and] the parties that [we] are linking to,” he said. “If you need to pay to link to them, then you are introducing relationships that are not healthy.”

What recourse does an aggregator have, anyway? “We’ve been examining our legal context around this area for some time,” said Bartlett, who said he has figured out that there aren’t any special tribunals to resolve internet-based complaints like this one. “No-one wants to go to court to resolve this.”

Why has NewsNow been singled out? “We would like News International to come clean on what its policy is on search engines, why it’s blocking us and not others in a similar position,” said Bartlett. News International told paidContent: “We’ve been in communication with NewsNow for several months asked repeatedly to stop indexing our stories. They had refused to do so.” No comment on why NewsNow was pinpointed before others.

Bartlett pointed out that NewsNow has been campaigning against charging aggregators: that might have been the final straw for Murdoch’s people.