Slashdot Mirror
Charging Cash For Links
DC2001 sent us the latest
internet scare piece running at Wired. This one is about companies
charging for the right to link them. Of course so far this is totally unenforcable, since it would render search engines worthless (Google
says they have 1,326,920,000 pages- if they had to pay even a penny
for the right to have each of these links, my guess is that we'd be
back to 1992.
Look, iCopyright offers a lot more then just html linking, their service is actually quite good and we use them all the time (LA Times mostly). Check out their PDF fulfillments, they take crappy web publishing and put it into a very nice looking document - and there is usually not a charge for it unless you want to make a lot of copies. The html thing, I don't agree with it either but when you think about it, linking to a site is one thing. Linking to published material is another. If you want to use the argument that the internet is free, well that doesn't wash because of all the sites that make you pay for content. The publishers are trying to protect their content. They will make mistakes along the way, but it is a good idea to prevent people from ripping them off and republishing stuff. It is no different then taking a magazine to Kinkos and making a reprint - that is illegal and Kinkos could get busted for doing so. Just because one is on your computer screen and one is a hardcopy doesn't really make a difference. End of rant, Hello
"grandpa, what's a snake-oil salesman?"
Worse, there are articles *I have written* in both the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post archives, and I don't see a penny of that archive/retrieval money.
The National Writers Union is working on this, though.
Not that I mind my work being redistributed online like mad - for free. It just galls me that my work is being resold for profit without my permission and with me getting a cut.
Guess (sigh) I'll have to start keeping my little personal site up to date and posting my freelance stuff on it a few weeks after it appears wherever.
- Robin
... "throw it on the wall, see what sticks" policies ...
Yeah, I've heard this sort of thing referred to as a "land grab". The net was started by the DoD. Now all these companies are getting on it, grabbing and sreaming, "mine!" like playground kids. These outfits don't care about the whole concept of the internet in general. They seem to want to turn the internet into a web of billboards.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
So does this page mean I owe them $300?
The fewer of these sorts of companies that show up in my search engine, the better. I would love it
if my browser knew about all of sites run by clueless, greedy vultures and cowardly villains, so it could just refuse to show me any links to them, but failing that, this level of insurance that I will never encounter them is a great first step. In addition, I'd like sites that pay to link to other sites to charge for links to them also.
I imagine with this sort of thinking, the remaining portion of the WWW will be a pleasure to use.
Look at people who do things not for money or competition though the money may be needed in their lives and their projects may certainly be able to earn revenue. People like myself, who run an auction site drains time, energy and patience, has enough members that a pretty good income could be earned, but is completely free. Not only free, but totally advertisement free in every way.
There are a lot of others who do some much cooler services to the world on the web and don't look to make a killing at it. It's just as much human nature not to exploit as it is to exploit, in my opinion.
In fact, it isn't specifically that people use the internet (specifically the web) for financial gain. What makes me so upset with these people is that they do so with absolutely no regard for the human element of the web. They're like the adult videostore or strip club that moves into a peaceful neighborhood with lots of small familes and children and nearby schools and churches. Yes, they have every right to make a buck. They have every right to set-up shop. But they do so with such disregard for the other people who are sharing that geography. They couldn't care less that the neighborhood also caters to people just going for a stroll, reading a book in the library across the street, praying in the church a block down, educating children a block up, sipping coffee in the cafe next door...
The internet isn't just a giant phone book or shopping mall. The internet was built by the people (granted, it was the military and scientific arms that did the work, but they are extensions of the public), not some high-priced contractor hired to create a venue for you to sell your blow-up dolls, get rich quick schemes and As Seen On TV gadgets. There were great people from the very beginning of the internet who have contributed to this and when people abuse things like cashing in on linking or forbidding people fundemental online rights (to use the term very loosely) because to do so would seriously compromise their change to extort a few pennies, is a discredit to everyone.
Imagine what it would feel like if a neighborhood gathered together to turn an unused lot into a wonderful playground and then it was obliterated to make way for previously mentioned porn shop or strip bar. I can't imagine anything more analogous.
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seumas.com
Making extra cash is one thing, charging people for nothing is another. A lot of quick start internet companies are looking for ways out of their terminal burn cycle, so the idea that they are going to try and charge anyone for anything they can does not surprise me. Some of it might even work. I think this goes past the money issue though.
The author does point out that the firms in question could use technology instead of the courts to enforce their policies, why they don't they just do that? Nobody would find out about them! If you can't index and link to their content, how is joe schmoe going to find out about the site? For that matter, how would one gauge the content bias, worth, or truth?
I think this is about more content control. If you make linking some sort of business transaction, then you probably get by extension some other legal options that you don't have now. Everybody is worried sick about what might get said about them, or the things they produce. You can't put a positive spin on a lame choice on the net without people seeing it for what it is. Slick marketing is no match for word of mouth when it happens as fast as it does on the internet.
What if just the address is listed like on the 2600 page? Here is their copyright notice http://www.abqjournal.com/copyright.htm You can still get it, the address is still of use, and some software will interpet the above text as a link anyway, and save you the trouble of copying it into an address window.
Sombody needs to write something that can be used to automatically process the above text into a browser, infact make that a filter on the browser content so that it is seen as a link anyway.
Anybody that pays for those links is paying for nothing.
Blogging because I can...
Yes, it's not hard to fake to referer information (a friend of mine did exactly that to get information from an online database). But do you really think Microsoft would have done that if Ticketmaster had employed this trick on their website? And I don't think Slashdot nor any "important" site would fake the referer information.
Besides, most people don't even know how to get around these things.
Links in one way or another have existed for a long time, not just on the Internet but also on paper in the form of references.
But the difference with links on the Internet is that you can easily prevent others from linking to a page on your site. You don't laws to do this, you just use the already available technology to do it.
By utilizing the "refferal" information you can prevent anyone from linking to a given page on your website. You just need to create a little script that checks whether the person arrived at the given page from another page on your website (or from a page on a website that has permission to deep-link to your site).
If instead someone arrived at a page on your site by following a link from some other site, you could easily send him to the frontpage of your site.
The law isn't the biggest threat to fair use. Technology is.
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Unselfish actions pay back better
Ok guys....lets try this.
. htm
"State Takes Newborn Who Had Cocaine in System"
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/210971news12-28-00
Try and bill me people.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Yes, people are responsible for what they do. And No, they don't have to pay $50 unless they agree to a contract that stipulates that $50 payment. It's just like how you're not bound by the terms of a EULA unless you choose to accept the terms. Just because someone says something, that doesn't make it so. Copyright law doesn't grant the copyright owner godlike powers over whoever reads or uses the copywritten material.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That's because this isn't a copyright issue; it's a service issue.
My wildly speculative guess is this: the whole story has been misinterpreted. The $50 doesn't get you permission to link. Rather, it buys you some kind of guarantee that the URL will work instead of someday unpredictably giving a 404.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Now if only I could Slashdot Amazon's 'one-click' system.
you've clearly lost control of this "slashdot effect" that you've patented, and the patent is therefore unenforcable. so nyah nyah.
Duh - to make money!!
Yeah, that's right. Just as, in real life, a private citizen would need to purchase the back issue of the magazine or periodical in order to read it.
But it's they (the newspaper) and not he (the linker) who are providing the content for free. If they want to charge to access their page, that's fine and dandy... it's their responsibility to collect, though.
\//
Correcting myself:
I thought we were still talking about charging for links, but I see that this thread is about charging for back issues.
Pardon me while I go learn to read.
\//
my guess is that we'd be back to 1992. ;)
Would that be so bad?
99% of browsers show you the destination sites name when you float the mouse over the link (except the tacky sites that make pathetic attempts to hide the href with javascript.) Effectively 100% of browsers show you the name of the site you're at, ALL THE TIME, on the screen (e.g. I can see very clearly I'm on slashdot.) So if you were on microsoft.com and are now at ticketmaster.com, you can see it, it is in no way hidden from the user at all.
Moreover, even the vast majority of technically illiterate web surfers understand this incredibly basic point - you cannot possibly even attempt to argue that most people would not be able to realise that. Sorry, if a lawyer attempts to argue that people aren't capable of figuring out which site they're visiting, he/she is delivering one enormous collective insult to the intelligences of many people. If MS had embedded the ticket-master stuff (e.g. the way crit.org might show a web site) or stuck the ticketmaster pages inside frames, then perhaps they can be shown to have made a deliberate attempt to hide the fact that people were at ticketmasters site. But then that would be a totally different issue from mere hyperlinks. The address bar is a pretty fundamental notion in a web-browser, not some advanced thing that only technical type of people understand.
A hyperlink is a URL and is nothing like a quote, neither legally, nor in any other frame of perception of reality. A hyperlink is like a reference in a book (remember those "bibliography"/"references" sections in dead-tree books?) These are not illegal, and are certainly not copyright violations.
No type of hyperlink can be a copyright infringement, since a URL cannot be copyrighted. A URL is equivalent to a book name and author name, or perhaps its ISBN number. And deep-linking is something totally different - that's like copying a chunk of somebody elses work in amongst your own work, which would probably be more like the MS/ticketmaster case.
You're not aiding a crime unless you know I was doing something illegal. Now, if you had an account on that system, (for, say, $50 a month), and you gave me your password, and login name, THAT might be illegal.
A hyperlink is nothing like a quote. It can be a reference to a quote, though.
A hyperlink is essentially just a pointer to more information. It merely tells where something resides. And that is NOT copywriteable information.
That's all we need: more browser bloat!
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The suits suck ass...what else is new?
I have to disagree with you both. To directly quote I would open the page in Netscape composer and cut and paste their material. With borders indicating where there stuff starts and mine starts, of course. That would be a direct quote. A hyperlink is different from the text...but not by damn much. It isn't a quote because the content changes in time. If I quote david letterman its static. If i train a parabolic mike on his ass while he is in public then thats not a "quote" thats "live".
Ok, but what if I give you the URL to a research database of Journals? They usually charge decent money for the right to access their databases. Having merely given you the URL I haven't violated their database, just exercised free speech. Ah but if you choose to make use of the information I gave you then you are, and haven't I just aided and abetted your crime? Isn't aiding and abetting still a crime in and of itself?
No. It's not.
To mangle an old Zen saying, "A finger pointing at the moon does not include part of the moon."
Actually I don't click on ads. Ever. At all. Rarely ever even see them thank to Junkbuster.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Perhaps I should explain my reasoning on why a link is like a quote.
If I place a site's URL in my website but do not make the reference a hyperlink then clearly I am only doing what bibliographers have been doing for centuries.
However, when I turn the URL into a hyperlink I am then making the actual content of the URL appear inside my web application. The hyperlink is more than just the ASCII text of the URL, such as one might find in a printed bibliography.
Several posters noted that if a hyperlink is placed inside an HTML frame then the address bar will not change after the user clicks on the link, so the user may not know she is at a different site.
In addition, it is fairly common for users to run the browsers in Full Screen mode, in which case the user will not see any address bar.
Lastly, I would mention that the XLink XML Linking Language can make the distinction between a hyperlink and a quote irrelevant, since web sites will be able to link to specific portions of other HTML pages without the pages needing to contain anchors or other special tags.
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
if this were to preclude search engines? (how %90 of anything on the web is found). oh by the way could you please shoot out any chance of someone finding my site?
So did Wired pay for the link too?
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
They are not 'charging for the right to link them', but charging for the right to link to their articles.
At the moment we have sites that don't allow linking by using changing urls like www.site.com/00,1002450,303,5029,3025.html where the stupid number changes every week or something. Other sites have meta commands that stop search engines indexing them.
All that has changed is that you can pay them to keep their stupid URL constant for however long if you want to link to them.
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Oh my! You are such geniuses!!! Who would have ever though to charge for a hyperlink!!! I hope you patented your idea, someone is sure to steal it! After all, with all the .com failures how is anyone supposed to make money off the net??? Charge for hyperlinks that's how! ha ha! Oh by the way, how much did you pay for that web server you're running? Perhaps they should change the Apache License to include a clause that requires you to give 98% of your profits to the ASF if you use their software to do something so ridiculously stupid.
Don't link to them. If companies don't get the hits they need, they will change their tune. If nobody pay to link to a site, like say ?.com, then that site has few chances of people going to it. It doesn't make much senses financially. Thats like Sears charging an entrance fee to into there store. People just won't go in.
Personally, I think this is in retalliatiion to the search engines charging for a better position in search results. Maybe these two ideas will cancel each other out.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
That's actually a quite interesting issue.
/. wanted to publish "voices from the hellmouth"; at first, they didn't actually ask each individual poster for permission. This, IMHO, is an example of pedantism getting in the way of what's right (others may disagree, of course). The other side of the issue is that if slashdot claims to own copyright, they technically can be held liable for inappropriate and/or copyrighted material posted on the site (like the deCSS code or M$-kerberos)
1. Yes, comments are theoretically owned by the poster -- it says so at the bottom of the page. That's why there was such a storm when
2. That's a very good question. Remember the DVD case? 2600.com was forced to take down their hyperlinks and replace them with text URLs. Will the insanity never end?
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
IANAL, but I would think that they can't own a copyright on something you said. So you might as well just quote yourself on your web page.
Also, I would think that you should have the right to freely state what someone else has said about you.
If I said you were an idiot then copyrighted what I said, does that mean that you can't tell everyone that I think you're an idiot? How ludicrous!!!
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
it would aper that peoples brains have reverted to prehistoric dinosour proportions.
the whole point of the web is FREELY LINKING RELATED CONTENT. charging for links totally destroys the whole point of its usefullness
that gopher mainifesto from a few weeks back seems to make more and more sence as the weeks go on
Ticketmaster lost.
The linking is allowed. Ticketmaster does not have to make it easy to link to though.
Is that like fast forwarding through commercials while taping?
God the doubletalk:noise:signal is high today about 1 googol:2:1
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
They are for real... very real.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
This is just about the stupidest thing I have ever seen. If people must pay to link to a site, people will stop linking to the site, and the site will lose all traffic not generated from people who come in from the main page, which can then only be accessed if the user knows it exists.
On top of that, anyone could just list the URL to copy and paste without linking, defeating the purpose of link license agreements that are designed to limit negative comment on the material being linked to.
The guys at the journal sound absolutely clueless. "WE ARE A VERY PROMISING UNTERNET STARTUP AND WE WILL PROTECT YOU FROM HAVING YOUR ATRICLES SOTLEN." "OK. Sounds good to me." "WILL YOU SIGN UP WITH US?" "Yeah, whatever." "VERY GOOD. LEAVE EVERYTHING TO US." "Uh huh. Whatever you say. Listen, I've got to shake some scorpions out of my shoes now or something, so uh." "YES. WE HAVE VERYTHING UDNER COTROL." ... a few months pass ...
"Hi. Johnny Wad from Wired here. You know that it costs $50 to link to you guys?"
"Huh?"
"Yeah. Why so much? Do you think anyone will pay? Do you think it's enforcable?"
"Umm. Uhh. The, uh.. editor who... deals with, umm... that company is, uh. Not in. For a week. Or two. Vacation."
Plausible, very plausible. Is iCopyright.com a ThinkLab(!)-owned company? How many people have gone ahead and added iCopyright.com to their FuckedCompany list?
This is wonderfully insane stuff.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Excellent analogy. We have plenty of that kind of thing on the 'net without gimmics like this. I had to adjust my little sisters AOL mail settings so she wouldn't get so many "Bare-ly legal Teen Dripping SlutZ" every day. It helped, but half of them come from AOL subscribers, who need to be filtered individually. There should be a law about this. Eventually some distressed soccer mom is Suburbua is going to hit AOL for a megabucks corruption of a minor suit, and hey...ISPs are responsable for things that pass through them and not the greasy porn czars, eh, RIAA?
What a wonderful world
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
People will pay for entertainment, but not for information. Businesses will pay for the minimum set of things they have to, but if given a less expensive option, they will take it.
As I see it, the issue with these newspapers is that they are expiring articles out faster to get them into the archive where they can make money off them than would any large library.
People and businesses will pay for aggregated and processed information. The requirements are simple: the information aggregation must be large, the location mechanism must be easy to user, the cost must be lower than the value of the time to do the research by other means. Ask anyone who has used Lexis-Nexis for legal research. This sort of charging is similar to following up an Eric search and buying a copy of the article or using any of the dozens of stock analysis sites.
The answer (see above) is to aggregate as much of this as possible in one place- including the AP and Reuters news wires- make it easy to use, and sell it cheap. Arrange the licensing in advance for a flat rate or establish as staggered fee structure for the more desireable collections.
- technik
Because they now owe the albequerque journal $150.00
Hmmm... maybe you should charge the Albequerque Journal everytime someone uses a link you wrote to link to their site. For that matter, charge them for any reference to anything you write. Say, for instance, a reference to your name used in a court summons. And charge them for verbal references. If an employee tells their boss they saw that unpaid link, charge them for referencing your material. Charge them again when they reference your links to their lawyers. Charge the lawyers when they reference it to the judge. Charge the judge if a reference is made during the judgement. Etc., etc., etc.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
On the other hand, the search engine people will not be amused when the site owner complains about some Googlebot visiting their blocked-for-robots page.
On the third had, this is the web, it's my computer that's browsing, and my software. If you can't deal with my browsing your text (or maybe I'm more interested in the pretty pictures...) and not even loading the ads which Nielsen says users have blind spots for by now anyway, well, That's Not My Problem.
"HTML Link permission allows you to link to a specified Web page. Clicking on the licensed HTML link, whether embedded in a logo, in text, or in some other object, results in the immediate display of the Web page. Note: linked-to content is not guaranteed to be hosted by the Web site owner for any specific length of time; refer to the publisher's License Agreement for specific terms of use."
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Free Mac Mini
"The iCopyright.com license agreement also restricts what can be said about the content of the linked-to article. If you sign up to pay $50 to link to, say, an Albuquerque Journal article, you agree not to say anything "derogatory" about "the author, the publication from which the content came, or any person connected with the creation of the content or depicted in the content."
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Free Mac Mini
In one sense, links don't really exist. What is a link in an HTML document, after all? It's just text. It's not a link until it's interpreted and rendered as such by a browser. So one could reasonably argue that there is no legal difference between a link and a simple textual representation of the url (http://slashdot.org). I just wrote both of those, and it's not my fault, nor /.'s, that when you view this using certain software the <a> tag is represented as something you can select to view another document. After all, if you use telnet as your web browser it won't do that.
So I think that any attempts to restrict linking (under U.S. law) are in violation of the First Amendment, because links are just text.
At the end of a day, a link is a redirection and creates traffic to a site. Almost all the web sites I regularly enjoy (including slashdot) were introduced to me because I followed a link from somewhere. These sites that want to charge for a link would see a drop in the amount of new traffic coming to their site.
If you're publishing material you need to follow the rules of the media you're publishing in. Publishers of television programmes can't air their show and then tell the public that they must pay in order to watch it (and then sue people who go ahead and watch it anyway). If you want your TV show to be pay-to-view, then you need to only show it on networks who encrypt their channel and have some kind of charging structure in place. In the same way, everything on the web is free-to-air, unless you put password controls or some kind of database engine that makes linking impossible. Then you can complain if someone links.
It would cost them a very small fraction of a cent for each article stored, especially since back issues are rarely accessed and therefore eat very little bandwidth (which is much more expensive than disk space).
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
It may have been less user friendly, but at least we didn't have to deal with all of this stupid legal shit and every jackass trying to make a buck on the "internet" (i.e. www).
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Listen, if your going to put up a website, then you should EXPECT certain things. Traffic, depending on how good a site is, etc.
Your statement saying that companies should be able to enforce ANY pricing model is down right scarey. Can you really imagine how that would change, for the worst, the internet? The freedom of the internet is about sharing information, not allowing old business models to be forced in a medium that allows the free exchange of information.
I don't think your flat rate or ANY pricing model would work or will ever work. A company or site doing that would be blacklisted (slashdotted?) and no one will visit it.
A better way might be to require a person visiting to login in so that you can atleast get some statistical data about who is coming to the site, and getting an email so then maybe you could perhaps target some ads to them. But a ANY pricing model is just NOT right.........
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It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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It reeks of something rotting. I can maybe understand reprints and copies, but charging for emails and links? Whatsup with that?
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It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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iCopyright.com files suit against Slashdot.org for linking to articles on it's client's sites without paying the proper licensing fees
Don't laugh........it could VERY well happen.......
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It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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So, if I recommend slashdot to others, do I get charged or do I collect? If so from who?
This whole thing is damn silly.
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It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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$50
$50
$50
And, the leagal-sleaze that requires the link-fink fee: here.
Huh! imagine that. I didn't have to enter a credit card number to enable those links! How nice of them...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Remember, people follow links because they want something on your site: the best possible introduction and more valuable than any advertising for attracting new customers.
Charging for them is definitely missing the point ...
If you go to the copyright page of the Albuquerque Journal, there is no mention of a charge for linking.
The Economics of Website Security
Maybe slashdot owes them $50. Could you imagine the wonderful slashdot articles if this was enforceable?
AC writes: "There's an article on NYT somewhere (no link, free registration) that says something (I'm not certain if any level of detail would be derogatory) about Linus and the new Kernel release date"
See what happens when you let lawyers near technology? Now, all we need to do is replace all of their computers with Etch-a-sketches and all will be good online.
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
Revenue streams like this just don't work, even if it were sometimes enforceable.
Look at RAMBUS for example.
Unless you claim the material as your own, deep linking is still quite legal. Otherwise, old-fashioned copyright laws and business regulations will bite you.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
yah like lets all start using gopher and veronica again!
back in the day we didnt have no old school
What, don't they want to have links to them? I thought the whole point was to have people link to you. They should be paying people to advertise them, not the other way round...!
Then again, there are enough idiots who spend large sums of money converting themselves into walking advertisements for Nike, or Tommy Hilfiger (remember their newsgroup spamming outburst some years back?), so maybe some people will be dumb enough to do it.
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
IOW, they will probably change the link locations if they find enough hits coming from hosts who didn't pay, and the people who actually did pay for the priviledge of giving directions will be SOL. I wonder how long they will be making money off this if they have to keep changing links to foil rogue deep-linkers, and how long it will take those paying to realize the stupidity of this when their own links no longer work, and the TOS they agreed to says they can go get bent.
/dev/random > /dev/hda3
Imagine the fun they'll have if a certain number of [unlicensed] deeplinks on their site get slashdotted.
---
cat
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Yes, British Telecom is actually asking 17 big US operators for payment based on this patent, which is valid in the US only and until 2006.
I'm not a patent expert at all, but far from everyone seems to think this patent actually covers hyperlinking.
You now owe the albequerque journal $150.00 because you own the post not /.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
But in a related note do I now owe them $50 or is this ok. http://www.abqjournal.com/news/210972news12-28-00. htm
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I really have to disagree with this comment because it is way too pessimistic... I've been on the Internet since around 1995 and I have yet to see a pay-per-view content system fly; A great case in point would be Napster. BMG is planing on retooling it to be a subscription service... and are they going to have the thousands of users they once had when it moves to a true business model? No. Sure people will pay a monthly fee for it, because you are essentially paying for an all-you-can-download one time fee. But the majority of users attracted to it were attracted to it's being *free.* People won't pay for things they can get for free... and there's no way to circumvent another napster/imesh/gnutella/et cetera breaking down the price barrier. Sure some people will pay for the service, mostly people who wish to be considered legaly using the media which they posess. Furthermore, people generally don't purchase subscriptions to online magazines, newspapers, streaming radio stations, et cetera. It seems to me the only people making money on content over the 'Net are people selling pr0n. ;)
The article states that the $50 is for 'peace of mind' that the article will continue to be available into the future. Search engines like Google cache some of this material. The articles, at least for a time, were freely visible on the net, so does taking a snapshot of them at that instant in time and making it viewable after the articles have been taken down mean that Google is violating the rights of the copyright holder? Google's cache is one of it's handiest features.
Not only is it completely uninforcable, linking has been a common, un-copyrightable practice since the dawn of, well, time. For example, you write a thesis on "Monkey Behaviour." So, you have a bibliography, saying where you did your research, etc. If the iCopyright.com thing is actually applicable to internet content, who says that it can't expand to print media? So, next time that dirt-poor college student writes his thesis, he has to drop a thousand dollars for his resources. Yeah? I don't think so.
I'm not going to say that that sort of behavior is a good thing, but here's a different way to look at it that makes it go down easier: it's human nature, honed through millennia of evolution. Like sharks, or vultures, or jackals, or mosquitoes or seagulls in the wild who all engage in irritating yet unreproachable behavior, hungry businessman swarming to make a buck is something that will never stop. What regulated free market capitalism has done is foster competition so all this exploitative energy leads to low prices overall, and pretty widespread distribution of benefits. The internet has provided many benefits to many people, though some benefits to a small number of people have been lost.
Nice post, I'm feeling the exact same way.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Woo Hoo, big round of applause for that! Yeap its common sense, why of why does common sense vanish when it comes to the internet. Why are there so many idiots on /. that seem to miss this?
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
This is just getting insane, can we just go back to the times when their was only a little comcerical activity on the net? Of course this isn't going to happen as there's money to be made but all these companies KNEW what the net was about BEFORE they decided to get an "online presence". If you don't like it GO, you have a choice, learn to take the rough with the smooth. Please stop trying to bring litagation against what boils down to the free flow of information.
The above is just a general rant and doesn't really reflect this article as much as some others, this has been boiling up for sometime so its good to get it off my chest. As for iCopyright, leeching parasitic scum. This company is Rambus but worse; iCopyright is chasing money from articles they didn't write all in the cause of "protecting their client".
Fine, companies should protect their copyrights and employ third parties to do so if they wish however, how many are aware of this companie's plans to add a linkage tax? Online news sites take note: Your name will get dragged through the mud along with iCopyright's if you use them, by using this agency you are sanctioning their methods.
Ah, yet another flawed business model joins the internet age.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Galambosianism, or how weirdos became mainstream.
the Internet has concluded its broadcast day.
is it just me, or does the web seem to resemble Calvinball more and more every day? "You forgot to pay me for linking! Lose three points!" "Oh yeah? You viewed the source of my web page and used my Javascript: go back to fifth base!" "You didn't surf slashdot three times before checking your email. HOME RUN!!!".
/bluesninja
If anything, I should charge them for the service of providing more traffic to their site. Who thought of this? The fashion design people who thought it was a brilliant idea to charge $30 for a $2 t-shirt with the manufacturer's logo on it?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
you bet your sweet bippe i'm a freeloader posting here.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Simple. If they want to charge people who link to their site, then just don't link. Then nobody will be able to find their site unless they remember the URL. Greed backfires.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This I agree with because ftp's are usually for large files. If huge bandwidth costs with no returns for possible ad dollars are involved, it is definitely fair for them to not let you link directly without permission.
Think about hotlinking gif, jpg, and zip files. Would it be fair for someone to leech off you, give you no credit, and leave you with a huge bill?
On the other hand, html pages should be left alone and allowed for linking.
These morons are trying to turn the internet upside down. There's a very slippery slope if I've ever seen one. If they're allowed to enforce this, search engines will go broke, and the entire spirit of the internet will die. After all, why do we call this thing interNET, or world wide WEB?
Now ask yourself, would you rather this idea die or the internet die? Take your pick.
Keep in mind that when a story online is linked, many people who do not subscribe to that journal or regularly read that content visit the page, and it is doubtful that these readers will click on advertisements. Compare when you last clicked on a Slashdot ad and on a site with a story that somebody linked to. I'm betting you click on ads on sites you reguarly visit far more often. You're basically a freeloader if you don't regularly visit the site, and this is some attempt to get compensation from people who draw freeloaders.
...the brains behind this wizard of an idea. This is almost as clever as PageCreator's TOS. Thanks. I need stories like this to make me feel superior.
"I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I do deny them my essence"
Do they think they are better then anyone else? How can they think people are going to pay to have a link to there site, that is the dumbest thing I have heard of
CS majors, we are the geeks that run it all. Without us things die.
You know the worst thing about this is that there may be a legal precedent about linking to someone else's page. I seem to recall that TicketMaster and someone else had a legal case regarding "deep linking". And if I remember correctly, the judge ruled that someone could not link to a site without the site's permission. So, unfortunately, there may be a legal precedent for charging people to link to your site. I hope that I'm remembering wrong or that the judges have a different interpretation of the law in this case.
--
"I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her."
--New York City Detective
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
-- Stan Dunn
Take for example the link from Slashdot to the Wired news article. The link takes you from Slashdot to Wired, without leaving any trace of Slashdot. The content appears as a Wired news article, with a Wired banner.
This differs in how About.com works (which I really detest). About.com features hundred of links, but they open inside the About.com frameset. This is more comparable to quoting: About.com still has a presence on screen when the new content appears, and worse, appears to own the content the way it's laid out.
There are instances where a link could go to a page without any identifying information, but this I would consider to be the responsibility of the owner to properly brand their own material. I feel what's relevant is the presence of the previous site and any attempt the previous site is making to appear to be the content's owner.
Beware typoes.
I do believe that if I make the content appear like my own, then I'm committing copyright infringement. This can include actual copying of the materail, or cocooning the content in a frameset of my own. (Admittedly, other factors also play into it.)
Beware typoes.
Sears doesn't charge, but aren't there large warehouse clubs like BJ's and Sam's where you have to be a paid member? (Or Radio Shack, where they ask you for an address for any purchase - yick.)
Sites should be able to charge entrance fees (or require a membership), but iCopyright's services would seem pretty useless at that point. I doubt NY Times or WSJ would be signing up any time soon.
Beware typoes.
A link isn't the same as taking a magazine down to Kinko's and making copies. A link is the same as recommending a magazine and telling someone where they can find it.
Beware typoes.
bah,
let 'em charge....it may just clean up some of this commercial, corprate bullshit.
}:kill.process:{
Again, and for the umpteenth time: If your foolish content is worth going after, I write a "browser" which LIES and includes what your dumb script thinks is a valid URL as the referrer. Your dumb script has no way of knowing I'm lying. I get your content. Game over. This is the way the Internet works. Live with it.
Yeah, that's right. Just as, in real life, a private citizen would need to purchase the back issue of the magazine or periodical in order to read it.
If you want the article that badly, get off your ass and visit a library. Publishers aren't obliged freely to provide all of their material on-line for all eternity, in order to benefit the lazy.
hyacinthus.
I definetly think the representative from Gigalaw has a valid point but I must give credit to the people at iCopyright.com credit for coming up with the idea. Why not give credit where credit is due, they do have big companies like The Indianapolis Star as clients.
But then again, I've always been The jealous type.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
However, if you want to avoid deep linking to your site, the best and simplest and least disagreeable way to do so, is to have the script or proxies serving your pages on your site employ a rule to identify http requests with 'illegal' off-site referrers, i.e. deeplinked from the outside, and then just redirect those requests to the main page of the site, or to the parent section, or where-ever you want your visitors to go that makes sense for your business.
I know of a few sites that does this, and nobody should have any objections to the practice since there's no nebulous fee charging or dire threats of legal implications to anyone linking. In the end, the content publishers using this option gets their way, and nobody can deep-link to the individual pages of their site - or rather, people can, but the link doesn't work as intended.
Here you have a model where you could set up a link payment structure on a solid and agreeable foundation... As an interested webmaster seeking a linking agreement with the content owner, you could agree to pay a certain nominal fee for the privilege of having your site and domain included in the http bounce thing's green list of referring sites excluded from getting bounced.
Who could object to this practice? I certainly don't, but that also don't mean that as a webmaster I'd ever pay for such a basic privilege as linking. And as a site visitor I have a hostile reaction to being bounced to places I didn't intend to go. I usually leave such sites and never come back.
(This is also my typical reaction to sites that employs recursive javascript onUnload popup banners ad nauseam - I didn't ask for those windows to show up, and when I CLOSE the window it's because I'm not interested. When the window refuses to DIE, I know never to visit or have any further business with the site spawning the popup window OR any of the sites advertised on the popups. But nevermind.)
Anyway, what I meant to say was, if you DO use this scheme on your site, and most people getting to the site through search engine hits (not on the green list) and gets bounced to the main page of the site - I think instead of the users being 'nice' and exploring your no doubt wonderful site to find the page they already knew they wanted from the search engine link description, they'll just go back to the search engine results page and try the next link on the list.
You're really achieving nothing much but creating obstacles for the users. It is a folly to attempt building levies and dams to guide the link traffic away from their natural flow. It's what the users want, and if you piss your users off by giving them something they don't want, and throwing obstacles in their path, why do you think they'd ever want to come back to your site and have dealings with them?
A far more reasonable approach is to simply leave things OPEN. Quit making obstacles. Turn the hyperlink nature of the web to your advantage, build your business model around it, DON'T try to change the nature of the web to fit your business model. Build your revenue around that incoming traffic, and cherish every link and hit you get, because linking to your site is a GOOD thing. It's quite a compliment to have people voluntarily give you such advertising through link referrals.
Just make sure that each page on your site has enough jump vectors to entice users to further explore your site and all the stuff you want them to see, after they've read the article that they came for in the first place.
The word absurd has just been re-defined.
Well, I think a larger N just widens the bell curve, and somebody has to tether the low end, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be these chuckleheads.
More seriously, this model won't last. First, it's too hard to enforce - even if you could automate combing the weblogs and finding out who the rogue linkers are, they couldn't possibly claim that their dumbass content-control terms had jurisdiction in Estonia. A serious monkey wrencher might exacerbate this by setting up an anonymous re-linker in Finland - the idea being to link to anywhere, from anywhere, with the host's log showing the re-linker's address.
Second, while a real content provider might have revenue streams other than bogus link charges, any company that uses this as the underpinning of a business model is bound to wind up on Fucked Company. People writing web pages will just say, "Gee, that's fucking stupid", and find other content to link to. The era of companies specializing in this form of parasitism will be short indeed.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
The internet was made for communication. To charge someone for them to be able to link to you is nonsense. Let me pose a question...Why do you post anything on a site at all? To be seen, right? A person does not post information for it not to be seen.
Ahhhh!!, what ever happened to the days where big business and the govt kept their lousy fucking hands off of OUR home??? (home=the net)
Big business (where everyone is a "me too") and the govt (making stupid fucking "digital laws and acts") is only hurting the net. It will, in my opinion, lead to the net's demise. We can't let this happen. GEEKS UNITE!
Maybe I should just start charging people for linking to them. Let me see, who has a lot of money? What do you know, I'm gonna be rich!
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
So what happens if you link to all of the articles at the same time?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
If web pages are allowed to start charging search engines to link to them the Internet will surely parish. It's already hard enough to find what you're looking for, imagine if you could only find information from sites that you knew the exact URL for! This is a scary thought.
Should I take the link outta my sig? :)
** http://www.stinkingloser.com **
I mean if people don't want traffic, then hey, no problem, you're off of my list. People should be proud to have their names on tiny little screens all around the world. Is it the art? Well, pay the designer more with the money you make from free linking. Is it the band width? Buy more servers with the money you make from free linking. Not selling enough product? Sell more by linking for free. Why can't people figure this one out?
.
On that note...I guess I'm going to enforce the following rate card: Mentioning my First Name: $50 million, Mentioing my Last Name: $500 million, Mentioning my Full Name: $20 billion, Sending an e-mail with my name: $1 million, Using any letter of the alphabet from my Name: $25 million, Saying my name under your breath: $50 million (add an additional $500 million if an expletive is involved), Thinking of saying my name: $100 million, Using my name in a conversation to a third party: $20 million............ If this looks f******* retarded, then it looks familiar.
70 years from now, when my grandson is a History teacher, I believe that the Internet will be described in his class in exactly these terms:
". . . an Internet user of the year 2000 posted a message, which summed up very concisely what most Internet users of the time were probably feeling:
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the bullshit that 'businessmen' have brought to the internet. I've never seen such greed, selfishness and complete lack of awareness. 95% of them have the ethics of a snake-oil salesman. --
Drop into town, screw everyone over, use up all the resources to push your product, and leave witht he moola, onto the next town/resource that you can extort. "
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Webmasters and Web Sites may not link to files in this archive
(FTP.CDROM.COM) without prior written permission by Digital River, Inc.
If you are interested in linking to files in this archive, please send
an e-mail to cdrom@digitalriver.com for details. Digital River, Inc.
reserves the right to seek compensation for unauthorized use.
This sounds especially bad since they are the primary archive for FreeBSD!
The dot-com graveyard is full of companies that couldn't really afford to do what they were doing for free, but couldn't get people to pay. That's just tough. Would you pay for access to Slashdot? If not, prepare for it to go away (unless its ad revenue sustains it). We'd all miss it, but it wouldn't be our fault that Cmdr. Taco et al gave away free access to it. That was their choice, their plan and we were happy to soak up their precious resources while they lasted.
Or are you a "freeloader" posting here?
...pre-emptively submit the death of iCopyright.com to FuckedCompany. $1.6M in funding? 66 employees? I give them until 3Q2001... maybe 1Q2002, if they're frugal.
"If there are any marketing or advertising people in the audience... kill yourselves."
Jay (=
The whole thing seems silly to me
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Of all the crackpot notions that have been conceived lately this one sure is silly. Now I can understand this concept to a point, you got into a business to make money and this seems like it is a lucrative proposition. The only problem is you're asking referal companies (read web portal) to give you money for the privilage of linking to the content on your precious web server. If you make it an exclusive thing vis a vis only allowing deep hits from paying referal sites (in the case of a deep link) you're effectively reducing your traffic to a fraction of what it would be otherwise. Referal companies like Yahoo! don't make alot of money per page as it is and then you go and ask them to give a portion of that to you. Right. A better solution would be to put more targetted advertising on your deep linked page. Someone links from a competitor and you run an ad of how much better your Star Bellied sneeches are compared to their Plain Bellied sneeches; if someone comes from yahoo's business section you run a Datak ad or some such. This method allows you to charge more money because you've giving the ads better placement. Man next thing you know some jackass will try to collect money from everyone using .gif files.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. To ask about linking rights, contact: webmaster@npr.org.
I asked about my "rights", but haven't seen a response yet
That's a bit of a self-centered outlook, isn't it?
Great, you and your other top 0.5% cohorts get around the precious content protection. Good for you. Do you think that 0.5% represents any obstacle at all to those media companies who want to restrict access?
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
It seems to me that the people pushing for this sort of system not only don't understand the technology, the also seem not to understand how people function. Firstly, this is like telling everybody who subscribes to a newspaper (including libraries...) that they have to pay extra if they tell a friend to go look at an article on page 5. It's neither enforcable, or logical. Everybody who is talking about how new technologies allow pay-as-you-go metered access to everything are failing to realize that older technologies allowed that too, but nobody bought them, so they faded away. People will pay for entertainment, but not for information. Businesses will pay for the minimum set of things they have to, but if given a less expensive option, they will take it.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
I've said it here before... If you don't want it on the web don't put it there!!!!
Common sense. The last time I had to point out this rediculously simple concept was about portscanning. If you don't want your box port scanned don't put it on the net. If you don't want your website hit or linked to then don't put it on the net.
As far as I knew the internet was pretty much "public". If you only want certain people to get to your site there are many other ways.
The whole beauty of the web was the links (yes i know about gopher). That's what the big draw was and is.
Oh, I could, but there would be a definte coolness factor in linking from my vanity page to press coverage about stuff I've done. (Especially when one article has a big photo of me.) It would also be neat to link to coverage about my family and friends. It would probably even drive a few hits their way, making them more than a buck fifty they want to charge to retrieve the stories - certainly it would make them more then the non-link is making them now.
It just shows that many "old-media" companies are completely clueless when it comes to how the web works.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It doesn't make sense to charge for a link to a free, public page. This would reduce links to the site and reduce ad revenue. I used to work for a banner ad software company, RealMedia, Inc. Companies don't charge by just click-through. It is now believed that just seeing the ads has an effect and thus should be charged for. Links increase page views, and page views increase ad revenue. This scheme will only backfire and reduce ad revenue as sites decide not to link when threatened. Since they don't link, there will not be any link revenue to compensate. This is just a dumb idea.
-- soldack
"I want to put up a web site but I don't want any traffic on it." What!? If you don't want traffic, make the site secure. Simple. Your argument could be applied to almost anything. If a tv show uses a beverage, which causes people to go out and buy the beverage, which causes the beverage company to spend more money making the beverage, should they sue the tv show? If you business model is such that growth means negative earnings growth, then you shouldn't be in business.
-- soldack
$$$$
.com banner advertising? I really don't understand who would back these plans. What VC actually funded this? You would think that with the .com shakeout VCs would be more carefull about where they put their money. I guess not. Next they will charge you for linking to a site that links to their site. Then search engines will have to pay infinite amounts of money...
Which is worse...that they are trying to charge for linking to a public page, that there is a company whose whole business revolves around this, or that other companies are actually paying for it? It seems that the larger the net gets, the lower the average IQ of a net business gets. I guess they figure link revenue can make up for lost
$$$$
-- soldack
Every time someone hits a website, said website has to expend some resources. They have to send the information down the wire to your computer. This is not free.
If they don't want people to read their material, then why bother with the web at all?
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Wow, looks like the one person who still finds that funny had moderation points.
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
.
These guys are in violation of my patent!.
:)Someone you trust is one of us.
Actually, most parents keep an eye on 7-year-old children who go outside, or go with them, depending on the environment. (If you intentionally let a 7-year-old child wander around unsupervised in a potentiall harmful environment, that's called *neglect* and it's illegal. Everybody knows 7-year-old children can't protect themselves. If you don't have time to protect kids, then don't screw, or use protection -- shut up and stop complaining because _you_ made a mistake.)
So if you don't want traffic, then maybe you should get your site a "parent": set up a firewall - block out any IP's you don't want to access your site, or block by Referer. It *really is* that simple!
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I tried giving the local baby bell (Qwest) hell for wanting to actually charge me to have my number unlisted. I personally think numbers should be unlisted by default.
Then again, this is the same company that sells your brand-new number to telemarketers and has the balls to launch a telemarketer-blocking service for like $10/month.
If they really wanted to, they could block people by who refered them, since it's in the logs.
--
Free Mac Mini
Feel free to link to my web site anytime: http://www.christianfreak.net
Never knock on Death's door:
The Anti-Blog
I already have it patented.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
They seem to be a company that will let you obtain a reuse license. Check Here for an article that has this thing active, and at the bottom there is a link to the icopyright.com site.
This smells fishy......
--
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Hey if they want to charge for linking to thier content let them. In the end the only ones they will hurt are themselves. Search engines and indexes won't list them if they have to pay for including them in searches. Eventually the sites that charge for the link will cause thier own extinction. If anything, they should pay those who link to them for generating the additional traffic, page views, banner exposures etc.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
reaction of the "suits" to other people utilizing their content to build websites. For instance, I run a website called Insidespaces.com It is a home-repair/improvement website. We've spent an enormous amount of time/money building content. In this market segment (and probably many others), there are many websites that are just a collection of links surrounded by a collection of sponsorship/affilliate logos and programs. Many frame the linked content in and essentially build their sites from other people's hard work. "OH OH!!, you get the traffic!!", you say. It's worthless traffic. In order to get a good content site going you *do* need traffic but repeat traffic is crucial to retail sales and other revenue streams. If the people looking at your content are never exposed to these opportunities, that piddling little bit of traffic doesn't much help. Therefore, I can see where managers that don't deal with the nitty-gritty of the web would sign up for stuff like this but it *is* crazy. For the most part, it's not even worth bitching about unless people are stealing your stuff lock stock and barrel.
Link to Albuquerque Journal -- $50.
Slashdot effect from link to icopyright server -- priceless.
woof.
What kid ever said, "When I grow up, I want to be the guy who sits next to the pilot"?
Of "throw it on the wall, see what sticks" policies in the "New Economy". So what if it's totally unenforcable and utterly against the whole concept of the internet in general? If this doesn't work, they just go back to the way things were. If it does, they're "innvovators".
The ironic thing is, does anybody really care about the content of the Albuquerque Jornal? No offense intended to those of you in New Mexico, but this is hardly one of my major sources of news.
there is breakforce and ignorance in this.
You know anyone who would be interested in information at a cost when someone will likely steal it and post it for free... If we can't get a handle on mp3's how will we get one on vaporwrite?
flinging poop since 1969
"Note: linked-to content is not guaranteed to be hosted by the Web site owner for any specific length of time;"
:^)
IOW, they will probably change the link locations if they find enough hits coming from hosts who didn't pay, and the people who actually did pay for the priviledge of giving directions will be SOL. I wonder how long they will be making money off this if they have to keep changing links to foil rogue deep-linkers, and how long it will take those paying to realize the stupidity of this when their own links no longer work, and the TOS they agreed to says they can go get bent.
So...anyone have some links for me? I feel like researching some
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
They use technical means to prevent deep linking. Can't the browser just tell it the refering page is the root domain? ie say the you were referred by www.fubar.com and not slashdot. Seems easy enough. Or maybe a right-click option "Open with alternate referring link."
Anyone want to try it out? there's no reason our browsers have to play the game any nicer than their servers do...
Saying that someone is "freeloading" when they follow a link to a story is ridiculous. How on earth would a site gain regular readers if they refused to allow occasional readers to discover the site?
Beware typoes.
That's easy to defend from. Just add a Javascript frame-buster which automatically pops you out of the other person's frames.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Note, a look for "decss source code" brings back as the FIRST LINK the previous link. Good job RIAA, keep up the good work.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Of course it's unenforceable. But until I see the Journal, or any other publisher, going after linkers who don't pay, I'm not gonna complain. Heck, I probably won't say a word even then, 'cause the courts will slap down that for me.
I move to consider this nothing more than a step toward the voluntary payment system for Internet content that some have advocated.
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
Hey fellas did you read that small print? The one that says:
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. Slashdot is not responsible for what they say.
According to that, all of you people who were stupid (or brave) enough to make links can be held legally reponsible and thus it would be ya'll who would have to pay that fine of $50.00. Considering that a really good lawyer could force slashdot to hand over the information regarding your account (i.e. your name) then Albuquerque Journal could charge ya'll with the fine. Of course, if ya'll resist then I suppose Albuquerque Journal could go further and actually bring charges against ya'll. Think of the combine cost of lawyer fees, court fees, and the original fine. But then again ya'll could get a judge to throw out the 'hole entire thing as a "frivous case".
Project: To Take Over The World
Project: To Take Over The World
Plan: To Rule The World
If you read the description, they don't charge for links. If you register a link, they guarantee that the content stays at that linked site for some time. Most sites have lots of dead links. If you don't want the link to go dead you can pay to guarantee that. If you don't care, just link to them and take your chances. Companies don't like dead links on their websites (especially to articles that say nice things about them) so they are willing to pay to make sure the article stays in place. Simply put - you can link to whatever URL you want. It is just a question of whether there is something at the other end.
Given the history of competition vs collaboration, I can sadly predict that the internet will be dismantled by 2005 by the same people who want you to pay for even having seen "Gone with the Wind" and for everytime you think of seeing last years superbowl. Notice how its no longer the"inter" net. Its the "net.
Face it, the people who stupidly shout into the night and charge for what they're shouting have absolutely no incentive for shutting up.
They'll shout at the politicians who'll screw us all over for a dollar so they can get run to try to get re-elected.
I have seen the future and its all reruns (pure gravy for the network who charge for every site that store 'em,) delivered from sites which charge a fee for every download. You will be able to watch "Gilligan's Island," for a price of course, until the alternative becomes attractive.
The internet, the grand experiment, is going to Hell. Venality and cupidity ally with stupidity to blow down the walls of Jerico and to smear the tracks to the New Jerusalem.
Soddom wins. Replay at 11:15, 12:15, 1:15 etc. and over the 'net when ever you pay to want to watch yesterday's news.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Of course so far this is totally unenforcable, since it would render search engines worthless
I'm not sure what CmdrTaco meant to say, but the above makes no sense. Whether linkfees make search engines worthless or not has nothing to do with whether they are enforcable.
As for enforcing a linkfee policy, that's easy. A small script on the server checks the referrer URL against a list of valid 'subscriber' URLs and pushes up content or an error message depending on the result. This is trivial.
The idea seems disgusting en-masse, but I could see several areas where referrer-verifying would be a valid technology. Some sites already use it to prevent deep-linking to content from an external site, and it's no huge leap to see that some sites wold be willing to grant deep-linking rights for a fee.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I don't understand "news organizations" that try to charge for back articles. The San Jose Mercury, for instance, puts all of its older (by a few weeks) articles into a $1.50/article "service." It's like they don't want people to use them for research; as if they don't want to keep selling those banner ads; and don't want to used for or featured in research.
Totally clueless.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Oh this is ridiculous. The article quotes someone as saying 'Such links have been common online for years' or something like that, but the fact is they've been about a lot longer. You can't charge someone if they give a reference to another article in, for example, a scientific journal, and this is no different. The reason they give the name and publisher of an article is because they don't have a way to directly allow you to see the article quickly.
But presumably linking is different, because you just click, and there the article is. So can you just quote the reference (name and publisher - i.e. domain), or the URL, so long as it's not a hyperlink? I can't see how making people copy and paste protects their articles, it just makes fewer people read them!
Presumably names and publishers of articles are taken to be public domain, because you can't copyright a book title and publisher in such a way to prevent anyone referring to it (or selling it!) without your permission. And anyway, most copyright acts (certainly the UK one) specifically allows limited quotation...
Oh this is too stupid for words... So I've said rather too many!
This is a fair use issue. Is the linker unfairly taking credit for work not his own? For instance, if I say, read this great article I wrote and then link to Commander Taco's essay on honeybuns, then I may be stealing Commander Taco's estimable work as my own.
There was a case several years ago in which, as I recall, Ticketmaster complained that Microsoft was burying Ticketmaster content pages deep in the Microsoft site.
Ticketmaster claimed that its content was losing its identity buried deep in a Microsoft web application, and that furthermore Ticketmaster wanted people to navigate to the content by first visiting the main Ticketmaster web page.
I don't remember how the case turned out, but Ticketmaster's case had some merit. One criteria might be whether the linked to material is clearly identified as external, and the owner of the material is identified in the text of the hyperlink.
Legally, a hyperlink is probably similar to a quote. I can usually quote David Letterman without his permission and not violate his copyright, but there are certain circumstances where I cannot quote him without paying him.
It is possible that occasionally some types of links are in fact a copyright infringement.
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
It's not only possible, but easy to enforce this by dynamically checking the referer and deciding if it is a paying partner. If you are that worried about deep linking, then your robots.txt file will exclude that content anyways (if you are link most sites, you will let the robot index the site, and then not allow regular users in. You'd be surprised what you can get into by setting your user agent to "Googlebot/2.1" or even better "Mercator-2.0" since some sites won't let Google on because of the view cache feature).
-no broken link
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the bullshit that 'businessmen' have brought to the internet. I've never seen such greed, selfishness and complete lack of awareness. 95% of them have the ethics of a snake-oil salesman. -- Drop into town, screw everyone over, use up all the resources to push your product, and leave witht he moola, onto the next town/resource that you can extort.
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seumas.com
What concerns me is this latest example of a blind grab for money in the light of questionable legalities. The Internet has become nothing more than another medium for questionable get-rich-quick schemes, many of which, unfortunately, are working and making lots of money for someone.
Hey, can I charge Switchboard for listing my phone number? Mapquest for listing my address?
Let them charge to their heart's content.
Just don't link to them. Then we'll have a de facto partition of the net into a commercial net and a non-commercial net (you know, like the one we had a couple of years ago).
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
reminds me of a funny story I heard in the early days of the big internet boom. A guy I knew at ZDNet went to a meeting with one of the search-engine-except-we're-a-portal-now companies and they went through a whole entire meeting with a half dozen people from each side discussing and negotiating, traffic, price, etc. Only at the very end of the meeting did they discover that each side of the table expected the other side to pay them :)
- When you put up a link, it's as if you are including part of their web site in yours.
No, it's not "as if you are including part of their web site in yours." It's not including anything on their website unless you actually copy part of their website to add context to the link. This copying may already be permissable under "Fair Use" provisions in US copyright law, as well.Putting up a publically-accessable web page is like leaving an infinite supply of leaflets in a stack somewhere. You may make money by putting ads on the leaflets. If I tell someone "hey, there's a leaflet about Foo and you can find it in a pile on the corner of Bar Lane and Baz Avenue," I owe you nothing. In fact, if you gain revenue by distributing leaflets, I've done you a favor.
If the leaflets are for "paying customers only" it's your job to make those customers pay -- not mine.
Of course slashdot posted this article -- they have a vested interest in seeing this scheme fail.
:-)
Why?
Because they now owe the albequerque journal $150.00
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
From their FAQ:
Q: Does iCopyright.com try to police how people are using copyrighted content?
A: No. iCopyright.com operates on an honor system. We serve the needs and interests of publishers, content owners, and customers by providing a way for them to do business in a legal, friction-free manner.
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