Sir Rupert Murdoch has blocked his first news aggregator, NewsNow.co.uk.

The aggregator has been blocked from content available through News International’s Times Online. NewsNow managing director and chairman, Struan Bartlett, said it will soon be denied access to content from newsoftheworld.co.uk and thesun.co.uk. According to NewsNow, it provided approximately 1.7 million pageviews to the three sites. Bartlett argues this statistic isn’t comprehensive as it ignores visitors reading additional pages.

We think NewsNow performs a public service by linking to news from a wide variety of different providers. It lets people compare and contrast reported views in the press. This makes NewsNow a kind of meta-newspaper, said Bartlett.

The media mogul has called news aggregators “content kleptomaniacs” and “plagiarists”. Toward the end of 2009 News Corps chief digital officer outlined its case against search indexing . News Corp intends to install a ‘pay wall’ for those looking to access its content.