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Charging Cash For Links

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the its-back-again dept.

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.

10 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Facts. by Seumas · · Score: 4
    Facts cannot be copyrighted or owned. Publishing a URL is no different than publishing directions to a gas station, a list of phone numbers, book titles and stores that they can be bought in or reviews of meals at restaurants.

    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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  2. Read the article.... by sargon · · Score: 4
    The Albuquerque News was unaware of the $50 fee, as it had contracted the service out to someone else. It is this someone else (iCopyright) who is charging the fee. The Albuquerque News isn't sure if iCopyright's license is even enforceable.

    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.

  3. Why just URLs? by geophile · · Score: 4

    Hey, can I charge Switchboard for listing my phone number? Mapquest for listing my address?

  4. OK... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4

    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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  5. Re:Pardon me, but that's not "generous." by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 4
    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."
    The Baltimore Sun does the same thing, which pisses me off because I'd like to link to two articles that quoted me (one about the first UMCP robotics competition, one about OLGA). What, I give you some of mine time to help you prepare an article and you want to charge me a buck fifty to access it? Well, fsck you too.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

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  6. the more things change... by G+Neric · · Score: 4

    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 :)

  7. Re:You've got it all wrong. by ichimunki · · Score: 4

    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.

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  8. What WWW are you using? by the+red+pen · · Score: 5
    • 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.

  9. Vested interest? by MostlyHarmless · · Score: 5

    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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  10. iCopyright by Sc00ter · · Score: 5
    They use the services of iCopyright

    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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