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.

Comments

What WWW are you using?

[the red pen]

• 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.

Vested interest?

[MostlyHarmless]

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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iCopyright

[Sc00ter]

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