While there has been widespread coverage of Newscorp rowing with mega businesses such as Amazon and Google over their ‘rights’ to the group’s journalistic output, what’s gone largely unnoticed thus far is the way Rupert Murdoch has dropped former distribution partners and loyal readers in the mire – in circumstances ranging from callous to illegal contractual severance.

The global readership of many quality titles has been dramatically increased since the arrival of broadband internet, but in order for customers to get regular copies physically or online – and thus recoup some income – newspapers have been using the services of third-party specialist distributors.

One such is Canadian distributor Newspaperdirect, which invested heavily in (and effectively pioneered) digital printout technology for hardcopy same-day delivery. Founded in 1999, it is the world leader in multi-channel newspaper and magazine content distribution and monetization.

The service – which has an impeccable reputation – is available in over 100 countries through a global network, supplying millions of individual subscribers, retail outlets, hotels, cruise ships, airlines, corporate offices, libraries and educational institutions with print-on-demand editions of over 1500 major news titles.

But when Murdoch’s Times title paywalls went up in June this year, so too did NewspaperDirect’s ‘right’ to send out copies of Newscorp papers to existing subscribers. And now from Seville to Sverdlosk, thousands of readers have been left without a service for which they have paid – in many cases, for nearly a year ahead.

“The Times just suddenly stopped coming” said one furious former recipient in Spain, “and three times we rang Times Newspapers to get it restarted. On every occasion they were rude and unhelpful, but after threats of action they restored the service…and then broke it off again. They are in clear breach of a third-party contract and they know it.”

Nobody seems to be blaming NewspaperDirect for the cancellations: insiders at the company were said to be ‘tearing their hair out’ at being left in the lurch by Newscorp – a company it has faithfully served for the best part of a decade.

Perhaps these events show two things. One, how little Roop cares for the ordinary reader. And two, how desperate the old swagman must be now that his paywalls without ears are tumbling down.