Murdoch empire on BBC - it's completely outrageous

Murdoch group attacks the BBC web relaunch in tomorrow's Financial Times, which looks like it's going to be printing this story - the MySpace people are attacking the BBC people over its planned social web overhaul of bbc.co.uk:

James MacManus, an executive director of Murdoch’s News International, accused the BBC of “blatantly commercial ambitions” and of seeking “to create a digital empire. Our view is that can only damage the development of commercial digital media. This is being done with public money. It really is outrageous," he said.

What do all the other Web 2.0 players think? Step forward! (and thanks to RC, who's chipped in already :-)