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.
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.
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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.
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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.
Next, you'll have companies filing lawsuits against Andover because of the Slashdot effect
And if they do - they'll have to pay me royalties, seeing as how I've patented the 'Slashdot Effect' and will from this point on enforce each instance of it.
Now if only I could Slashdot Amazon's 'one-click' system.
-ct
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......
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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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If they are concerned about their content, perhaps requiring someone to LOGIN or CREATE an account might be the answer. Like what the New York Times does......
--
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
This argument is pretty much invalid. A 'link' in and of itself is not content. It is the same thing as publishing a phone number or printing an address.
All political crap aside, the web was built around the idea of 'free information exchange'. Thus, hyperlinks have no built in controls. (And I'll personally beat the ass of the first person who suggests a new type of link). Perhaps people who want to charge for their web content should do it in a semi-private place, such as AOL's user-only pages.
Now wouldn't that be incredibly cool? If all the big-time corporations took their petty little squabbles over intellectual property and 'web-patents', etc... to reside soley on AOL and MSN, it would leave the 'real' web free for the rest of us who care about personal freedoms and the exchange of information.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
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.
________________________________________
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.
---
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).
--
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 :)
I have decided to charge the phone company money to list my name and number in the phone book. I have also decided to charge anyone who wants to print my address in any directory or listing. Furthermore, footnotes that use the titles of books I've written must pay a $50 fee for mentioning my book and probably an additional license fee for verbatim quotes of any size, above and beyond the right to mention my book.
There are technological means to prevent anyone anywhere from accessing any page within your web site directory hierarchy without going through the front page or any other hoop you want them to jump through. So they should be used, if an innaccessible site is the desired result. Check the NY Times for a great example of this.
I do not have a signature
- 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
--
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.
--
Free Mac Mini