They claim to be generating the revenue, only to have it stolen by Google and others. If this was the case, /robots.txt could go a long way towards preventing billions of dollars from "leak[ing] onto the Internet" each year.

I had a different understanding of what the core point was, the google part felt more like a sub point.

My understanding was that since the content is freely accessible on the internet, people don't need to subscribe to newspapers, and that online advertising can't cover for the difference.