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Another Publisher Challenges Legality of Links
NewtonsLaw writes: "It seems that the legality of hypertext linkiing has once a gain been called into question according to
this story running on Wired.com.
As the former online publisher of 7am.com, I was once threatened by the Nando Times in a similar manner when I was linking to their stories.
Local TV broadcaster TVNZ also made all sorts of noise about the illegality of linking to their content
back in 1966 but have since come to their senses.
Over the years I've had similar bitchy complaints from a number of online publishers who simply haven't worked out that links from other sites are something to be encouraged because the drive traffic and boost search-engine ratings.
A great resource for those interested in the history, opinions and law on the matter of the legality of linking is the
Link Controversy page created and maintained by Stefan Bechtold.
Most publishers eventually realize that trying to block linking through the courts is a really dumb thing to do -- but there's always someone who simply doesn't get it."
about the illegality of linking to their content back in 1966 but have since
1966? Excellent prior art for the BT patent!!
'Course, back then we didn't have no fancy new-fangled Pee Cees ta link with. We had ta write our "web pages" on paper, and instead of a link, we wrote down driving directions for how to find the specified document. Porn 'taint no fun when ya gotta drive 250 miles o' back country roads ta find it. I tell ya, the Interweb was different back then... we had ta use REAL superhighways instead o' this Information Superhighway.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
There are sites out there that block outside linking, they figure out that you're being redirected and send you to a nice outside linking not allowed page.
Why can't these fools just do that.
Free Mac Mini
I find this 'you're not allowed to link to me' mentallity hilarious. As we all know a link is no more than electronic 'word of mouth' or a sign post. The arrogance that goes along with "you're not allowed to tell people where our public content" is beyond me.. and let's face it, anything on the web IS for public viewing.
It may be copyrighted, but that's not the same as 'no public access'.
The article makes reference to "deep links". If sites are so worried about that, why don't they just do what the NYTimes does and require that people register to be able to read specific pages? Anyway, lots of sites, /. included, are encouraging people to link/import to headline pages by using the Netscape .rdf files. I could understand sites getting narked at people who, say, directly used <img src> to access images on their site, but hyperlinks... what's wrong with that?
It takes about 2 seconds for them to configure their webserver to check Referrer headers and deny deep link requests from another site. Either they are so stupid that they don't deserve to own a website at all, or they are so evil that they'd rather order everyone else in the world around instead of simply fixing their own problems. Either way, it would not be a pity if some outraged activist took a pair of wire cutters to their Internet connection.
I laughed when I saw 1966. It's a typo, the article is from 1996. Duh.
Anyway, I'm reminded of something from the currently ongoing bnetd fiasco: The EFF linked to a Penny Arcade comic on the subject. Penny Arcade doesn't agree with the EFF and said, "Instead of linking to the comic, please link to the rant." One guy from the EFF said, "OK" and removed the link, then an hour later the link was back and an email arrived saying "Linking's perfectly legal, we'll do as we like." So PA changed the target of the URL to some messed up thing involving dogs and some old guy. Very amusing.
Moral: if you don't want someone linking to you, don't raise a fuss, just mess with your referrer permissions and all.
[o]_O
I just don't get it. IANAL, BMMI (but my mom is), and it just doens't make sense. This information is posted in the public domain, ok? Now, as long as you give credit it should be fine. An analogy is this: when you are quoting from a book do you have to include the whole fscking book in your quote? No, you don't. As long as you give credit it is fine. The theory being if it is interesting enough they just might buy the book - the same thing should apply to webpages. These people should be jumping for joy they are being linked to especially because they derive numerous benefits - including a higher google rank =). My god, if you can quote sections of newspapers why can't you link to them? Argh. Oh well stupid people shouldn't breed...
.. Hilary Rosen. I dunno. Coincidence? I think not.
One last odd tidbit:
Holger Rosendal, spokesman for the Danish Newspaper Publishers' Association (DNPA)
Holger Rosendal
If they're so paranoid about deep-linking, fix your webserver to check the referrer property of the HTTP request, and direct them to the main page if it wasn't an internal link.
This is TRIVIAL to do on most webservers through cgi scripts... however you now have to deliver all your content through CGI (or SSI, or PHP, or ASP, or whatever), which is pretty common on websites these days anyways.
Stop bitchin if you can fix your own problem with minimal effort.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
What if I said "My political opponent said somthing alarming on page 56 of his new book." Does "the user ... experience something different from what [he] intended" and if so am I therefore not allowed to refer to pages of his book, only to say the book name and tell the audience to find the quote themselves?
Sound pretty rediculous when put in terms of a physical medium. Not to mention my 1st amendment right to say "such and shuch information can be found at this and that location."
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
It depends on how nasty you want to be.
Fight Spammers!
You should see how confused a webeditor gets when you email them asking for permission to list them on your news site.
Why are you even asking? It's your website! they say. Some people don't even realise the implications of their own usage-agreements
"Dear sir, I've written a news article praising your site, but due to your terms and conditions, I've removed all links to your site, thus not allowing you to capitalise on this publicity. I have also taken the liberty of obscuring your website name so as not to fall afoul of trademark laws. If and when you see fit to change your website disclaimer, you're welcome to a link"
That depends. Is the link to the page that has the article with the original web site's "home" button and advertisements on it? (ok) Or is the links to the article's .jpg where people don't ever realise that the content isn't coming from the site that did the linking? (Not ok)
This (Like all other issues) is not black and white. Sometimes it's ok and should be fine, other times it's clearly not ok. But that descision is made on a case by case basis. Not by making armchair philosophical generalities.
Web site should of course do what they can to prevent deep linking if they feel it's aiding their competitors at their expense. But when the limit of technology to do so its reached, then people may have to go to court.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
hence the differentiation between links and deep links, whatever that is..
My assumed definitions:
Link - Meta request to access content from a discrete source that is ment to be accessed from any source.
Deep Link - Meta request to access content from a discrete source that is ment to be accessed only from a link listed in a content source authorized by their owner.
Now, define the difference on the web, and I will be impressed. Anyone can call any page a deep link if they so deam it, and this is the problem with the dual definition.
Bye!
If you host an http server on the internet, you are inviting people to look around. The nature of the web is that a web page is open unless proven otherwise. It is like a store with no locks on the door. If it is locked then I won't go in. If the door is wide open, I will go in.
If someone puts a big sign up to tell me that they don't want me to go in and I go in anyway, then I am doing something wrong, but not until.
Bye!
I can't believe that none of you got the joke/irony here. Calling someone collect means that they get to choose whether to pay to talk to you. Requesting a page from a web server means that the web server gets to choose whether to give you the page (possibly based on your referrer, etc). It is exactly like calling collect - the choice is entirely up to the responder, not the requester.
Basically aozilla agrees with everyone else, he/she just didn't include the smiley so that you could get the joke. So here it is:
:)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
What a very obvious troll.
There are so many ways of refuting your argument I don't know where to start.
How about the masterpieces that have arisen through derivative works? Most of Shakespeare's work, for example.
Then there's the argument that the Internet is a public place, and if people didn't want their material viewed they should not have put it online.
Then there's the technical argument of how they could have prevented deep-linking through the refferer values.
What else... how about people's legal rights? The first sale doctrine, for example.
Shall we even talk about how there is nothing immoral whatsoever in a straightforward link?
I think that's enough for now.
well shit, how do i determine if i'm doing something for profit or not?
I mean, on the whole scheme of things, everything I do contributes to my life, and I hope I get something out of it (ie make a profit)
Need a Catering Connection
The nature of the web is that a web page is open unless proven otherwise. It is like a store with no locks on the door. If it is locked then I won't go in. If the door is wide open, I will go in.
My website is not a store. It is more like my house. By accessing it you are trespassing on my private property. It doesn't matter whether or not I locked the doors.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
This story makes these guys look like total assholes. What the fuck.
If someone deep links to one of my pages that somehow screwed up navigation, and I asked them to redo the link elsewhere, I would expect them to either comply or remove the link.
Sometimes it isn't what you HAVE to do, but what is polite. Of course one can do it with referrers, but why can't people be nice regardless.
Deep linking to an image is REALLY poor... <IMG SRC> directly to an image on my server is REALLY rude. Not only do you effectively steal bandwidth and copyrighted work (blah blah blah, letting anonymous access, etc., blah blah blah) you REALLY fuck up our ability to understand what is going on on our sites.
Alex
I can't believe that none of you got the joke/irony here.
I can't either.
Calling someone collect means that they get to choose whether to pay to talk to you.
True...
Requesting a page from a web server means that the web server gets to choose whether to give you the page (possibly based on your referrer, etc).
True...
It is exactly like calling collect - the choice is entirely up to the responder, not the requester.
It's also exactly like... Receiving spam!!!
Basically aozilla agrees with everyone else, he/she just didn't include the smiley so that you could get the joke.
Yes, I do agree with everyone else that we shouldn't have laws against accessing websites or making collect calls.
Or spam!
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Yes, I do agree with everyone else that we shouldn't have laws against accessing websites or making collect calls. Or spam!
What about DDOS (distributed denial of service)? Should 13-year-olds have the right to flood you off the network by hammering your connection with thousands of well-formed HTTP requests?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Some of the danish newspapers are against sites that leech off them, and claim that what they leech is their own and sell the content to other people.
Imagine Slashdot copying every story they link to, and claiming that it's their own story, and charging you 10 cents for their service.
The newspapers don't mind what Slashdot does (well, except slashdotting them of course), because they're still getting the exposure they want.
Well - some of the newspapers that is. Some of them want you to link like this:
"Open a new page and type in http://www.cnn.com
Click on the "U.S." link in the left hand menu.
Click on the "U.S.: Friendly fire pilot reported being fired upon" link in the top right hand corner, right under the picture of a jet fighter.
If it's not there, tough luck."
Others are quite cool with just linking like this:
CNN.com reports - U.S.: Friendly fire pilot reported being fired upon
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
This is not a Fugazi
Why do you have a website again?
Same reason I have an email account. So people who I choose to let use it can use it.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
It's not really that hard to prevent people from doing it. Why try to stop an individual when Google's going to find it anyway?
If you don't want to have pages directly linked to, you have a few very simple options:
1.) You can identify a search engine spider from it's logs, and set up your site to present it with different content. If you're using PHP, for example, all you have to do is create an if/then statement that basically says "if it's google, send them no data. Anything else, let them on through." It's not very hard to write this type of script in PHP. It'd take me minutes to do.
2.) Frames setup: There are some sites there that use a frames setup where by default a bookmark set in any portion of the site will only be established to the portal into it. It's easy to get around, but you could get your message known.
3.) You can trap the right mouse button so that an error box comes up that says 'Please do not link to this page, send them to the home page instead.' Being polite about it, like that, would be useful in preventing somebody from doing something you don't want them to do.
4.) If you really really want to prevent somebody from deep linking, you could provide a registration page so that somebody with a valid username/password can get to it. Kind of like NYTimes.
As you can see, there are steps you can take before you get the lawyers out. Try those first, being polite to the user and letting them know what you do/don't want is far more effective than challenging their rights.
"Derp de derp."
In other words, the hypocracy lies in the nature of the site you link to, coupled with the fact that your link to said site is tacked on to the end of a post where you compare a website to an unlocked house, and its content to be the private property of the owner.
This is not a Fugazi
We have no problem with people linking to our site.
What we DO take issue with is individuals and companies stealing our content by linking directly to it and representing it as their own.
This is most rampant with graphics. We try to provide high-quality images about the products we review and the items we write about. Everybody likes big and clear pictures.
Many of these have to be converted from massive TIFF files into Web-sized JPEGs or GIFs. It may not seem like a big deal, but it takes someone's time and effort to optimize every image and fit it within our internal site guidelines to make it as accessible as possible to Web surfers at large. That adds up to a lot of time and effort.
There are those companies who steal our content outright without any attribution whatsoever. A friend was talking to one of his colleagues, who told him that his previous employer regularly visited our site specifically to steal our graphics. (That site has since gone out of business).
And there are those offenders who link directly to our content on their sites -- again without attribution -- causing us to bear the bandwidth costs of transmitting hundreds of megabytes worth of data without any credit, benefit or return to us.
We have found our content abused on major sites (household names), without any response from the Web staff of those companies when we try to contact them about it.
Most of our content is available for syndication. If you like it and want to use it, ASK.
As a footnote, we are considering acquiring and implementing some form of digital rights management, which is something we don't want to do. However, if we continue to see this kind of content theft, then we need to get it under control before the costs reach a point where we are forced to shut down our site.
One thing I'm curious about is what would the general consensus be on someone who inlines an image on their page that comes from your webspace?
I have a lot of pictures which I've taken myself, and lately I've discovered that they're showing up on other peoples pages, directly inlined from my own.
Myself, I dislike this, as I end up having to pay the bandwidth for someone elses webpage.
I can't think of a good refutation to the following analogy:
Your right to swing your arms ends at my face; Your right to link ends at my webpage.
To the average person, an argument such as this would probably seem entirely reasonable. Why isn't it?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Last time I checked, receiving spam wasn't something that I had a choice about.
Neither is receiving hits to my website.
I suppose you could say that my ISP's mail server had the choice not to accept the message, but there's not really a standard for making that decision, at least in the same way that a web server can check referrers to make a decision about serving a page.
Not all browsers send referrers, and some proxies filter them. Besides, the user can always copy the link address and then paste it. Or what if I want to allow links from free websites, but not from commercial ones?
The thing with spam is that it often masquerades as a real message, so you pretty much have to download it to find out that it's spam.
Links from free websites often masquerade as links from commercial ones.
Or else just ignore mail from anyone you don't know, which isn't always a viable option.
Or else just ignore links from any referer you don't know, which isn't always a viable option.
Spam uses fraud (often including forged headers and poorly-secured third-party servers) to work; essentially removing the choice of whether or not to get spam from the reach of most people.
Spam doesn't always use fraud. It rarely involves forged headers, and even less often involves open relays.
If the choice of whether or not to get spam were as simple as the choice whether or not to accept a collect call, don't you think most people would choose not to get spam?
It already is. "You received mail from spammer@spam.spam, would you like to download it?" Or alternatively, at the server level, simply disconnect when you receive the MSG FROM line. Or don't accept the incomming connection in the first place!
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
These jag-offs want the ease of linking, but don't want others to link to them. It's like putting up a sign on a public street, and then telling people not to give each other directions to reach the sign that don't pass the other signs posted. There are numerous ways to make it so that content needs to be accessed sequentially, and the onus is on the owner of the content to not simply put the stuff out in the open!
I wonder if authors of regular books bitch about readers who read then last chapter first. What legal right does the author have to dictate how the work is used, as long as it isn't used commercially or taken credit for?
BlackGriffen
Comon, none of this requires legislation!
There are always technical solutions, too.. why not generate a session key on the home page and require it to be part of the request for any other pages? That'll stop that pesky Google too.. It will probably stop many users from browsing your site, but that's what they want to prevent, right?
They are free to use other protocols. May I suggest a raw telnet BBS? That way they can have people log in, enter their e-mail, sell their firstborn children, before they are allowed to access the precious content. Putting a page on the web (including internal hyperlinks of course), and then getting pissed when someone 'deep links' to that page, is like putting numbers on your door and getting pissed when someone sends you mail.
Also, who said anything about legislation? I think you've heard one too many CBDTPA arguments and it's spilling over into your other thoughts... :)
This from the guy that syndicates my coments without my permission!!!
How's this? Find out the most rampant abusers from the logs, and anytime a referral comes in from there, hit 'em with the goatse.cx guy.
Last post!
I make them for Slashdot's readers and OSND, not for you!
./ OSDN says.
Answer to me I could care less what
Get it?
ok then your infringing on my copyright! Could you as me next time before STEALING my comments for your own fame?
Thanks again
I mean, how fucking hard is it to block pages with forign refers? Not very hard at all, actualy.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You can also check the refer to make sure it's comming from the right place. If it's not there, then deny access. Still not difficult to pull off.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If your problem is people doing then disallow nonlocal referrs on .jpg files.
.html file, that should be a *good thing*.
If the problem is people coming to your website, downloading the images, and posting them on their website, make sure that the image comment (most image files have an editable comment field) contains "Copyright © 2002 Your Site, Inc." and sue them for copyright infringment.
In no case do you need to sue someone for linking to your site. If they're linking to an
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Then bypassing the password is a criminal violation of federal law.
Fight Spammers!
Is it really so hard to understand that an attack on "linking" is an attack on the very fabric of the Web? The very thing that made it popular to begin with? If you discourage linking, then the Web is NOTHING. There's a reason it's analgous to a spider web. If you remove the strands that connect to form the web, well, you don't have one anymore. I cannot believe that such intelligent people fail to understand something so trivial.
Why bother.
I liked this quote:
""When someone provides a link without my permission, which grants a user access to a part of my website without going first to my site's home page, the user may experience something different from what I intended when I established my website,""
In further news a new police force has been formed to arrest all book buyers who read the last three pages of a book first. After all, by placing these pages at the back of the book the author intended them to be read last.
This is complete horse crap. Sure someone may have gone to great lengths to design an "experience" at their web site, but hey, lots of people aren't out there for an experience. They're out there for information.
I suppose if they really wanted to site admins could add a plug-in to look at the HTTP-Referrer link and redirect to the front page if people don't link from within the site, but then we might as well throw out bookmarks.
Ever since people started to think that Digital Rights Minimilization was legal things have been going down hill in a hurry.
I guess we might as well shutter Google right now. It's a regular deep link pimp daddy.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Sorry, but the internet existed long before your company did.
Now, because you and your company came along -- and a bunch of others like you and your company -- and you've decided that you don't like the way things are done on the net -- the way they've always been done on the net, the way that was essential to the net's success -- you want to punish all of US and destroy the internet WE'VE worked so hard to create.
Corporations are ruining the internet with their corporatization, spam, pop-ups, pop-unders, banner ads (yes, that includes slashdot -- there's a reason I block these fucking ads), promotional materials, and high-glitter low content web-pages.
Even "respectable" sites like the Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) are sickening in their lack of ethics. I pay money to get access to the Wall Street Journal online. And for paying that good money to them, what do I get? ADS. Fucking ads. I have to use an ad-blocking hosts file for wsj.com, a site which I PAY TO HAVE FULL ACCESS TO!!!!
People act like companies have brought the internet to life. No, companies are to the internet as street-trash whores are to city-dwellers: sure, they're fun for a while; but then you get sick.
Corporate websites are a plague to the internet, a plague that comes in a candy-coated package. Companies are like the white man that came over to America and pretended to be nice-nice to the Native Americans while offering them virus-loaded blankets and "firewater".
We need to resist this corporatization of the net.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Anyways, I'm glad someone gets the point. It's not the actual link to Alterslash that I had found amusing. It was the apparent show of support for a site that effectively screen-scrapes Slashdot and repackages the content, and the fact that it was tacked on to a comment espousing a seemingly contradictory philosophy.
Stealing and repackaging someone else's content is the issue here, and is much worse than merely linking to someone else's page without credit. The link in the
This is not a Fugazi
Seems to me that if folks dis-allow "deep linking" as policy, then the Internet powers-that-be should help them out by removing such addresses from the DNS registery to help them avoid this terrible deep linking problem.
This way they won't have to worry about anyone voiding their copyright.
As one other poster (at least) said - if you put content out there that isn't password protected, then IT'S PUBLIC INFORMATION. That is the whole IDEA of the internet in the first place.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Most of our content is available for syndication. If you like it and want to use it, ASK.
You're posting your content on a free, publically accessable network. Although I may not copy it and claim it as my own, I may make hyperlinks to any and all content that is deemed "public" (this includes your images). If you feel that I should not be able to [img src="YourHighRezImage"], don't make YourHighRezImage publically accessable to all websites. There are a number of ways to make content (images/binary or HTML/text) viewable to people visiting your site while disabling the ability to directly link to it.
The web is a web of hyperlinks linking to publically available information. It may be a common courtesy to ask to link to your content, but if it's on a public network I should not legally have to. Repeat after me, "Hyperlinking is NOT theft"!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
(How thin can we stretch this "argument by analogy" crap?)
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
If you're so pissed off about companies "stealing" your images then why don't you just watermark your url into them ?
Or check the referrer, as everybody has pointed out about a billion times.
How some dumb post like this, especially when it happens to be a commercial entitiy whining about people "stealing" from them got modded up is totally beyond me.
In fact I bet you got your employees to mod you up, didn't you ?
graspee
I suggest that most of you go back and read what I wrote. It's clear that some didn't even bother to read a word of what I said.
Again, We have no problem with people linking to our site .
Nowhere did I say that I am in favor of any legislation that outlaws deep linking.
BACKOV: Ignoring the condescension, your reply assumes that the natural tendency of people is to steal and the problem will get worse. What is necessary is education about the value of other people's work.
ANONYMOUS COWARD: Ha Ha Ha! Good one! =)
SPITZAK: We don't want to break everyone's LINKS to us. We want to prevent people from taking our work and representing it as their own -- also known as plagiarism -- and profiting from it without any recognition or recompense.
CAPTAINSUPERBOY: You appear to be one of the few who read and understand what I said.
J09824: You, too have missed the point. First, we are not 'in business' in the sense that you mean. We are a group of individuals from various professional backgrounds who contribute to Geartest.com in addition to our regular jobs. How many of your favorite sites have disappeared because they could no longer afford to pay the bandwidth costs? We aren't looking to get rich from our site, just to help people make informed decisions and hopefully break-even while doing it. If you want to know more look here or visit the site. If you can come up with another suggestion among the 'zillions' that you think are out there, we'd be glad to hear them. None of the ones you offered are practical for a whole host of reasons I'm not going to go into here, the least of which are privacy and usability issues. By the way, we don't have any 'web hackers'. If you're interested in helping out let us know.
Finally, your stereotypical, reactionary name-calling and accusations don't help anyone. The actions of your legislators is your responsibility. If you are too apathetic to make your views known to those people who are pursuing legislation against yor interests, you have nobody else to blame but yourself for any consequences.
PHXBLUE: Thanks for your suggestions. They are already on a list of options being considered as we're planning and working on our 3rd-iteration site design.
DAHGHOSTFACEDFIDDLAH: Hilarious! =) We'll put that one down as a back-up plan!
CHANDON SELDON: Again, see the above comments on linking. We'd rather not spend our time in the courts over what we consider to be a fun project. Hopefully it won't come to that. I agree with you that LINKING to our .html files is a good thing. TAKING our content (writing, images, etc.) without permission and without crediting us isn't.
DH003I: you want to punish all of US and destroy the internet WE'VE worked so hard to create.
Please enlighten everyone exactly what it is that you created. I suppose you are the REAL creator of the Internet and not Al Gore.
As for your outrage about corporatism, does your hypocrisy know no bounds? You vote with your dollars. If you don't like the WSJ service then don't pay for it. Why support an organization that is so obviously against your stated interests? Your protests sound hollow.
And next time you can leave your manifesto at home. Just don't forget to adjust your tin foil hat on your way out.
TSHAK: Thanks for your considered opinion. We are going to have to agree to disagree on this. Please clarify what you mean when you say 'free'. You say that others should not be able to copy and claim our work as their own. But if they directly link to an image and embed it in their pages without even a mention of where it came from, ignoring our requests to remove it when we ask, then they are de facto claiming our work as their own. Repeat after me, 'Taking content and representing it as your own is theft!' (Or you can call it plagiarism if you like).
HERBIEROBINSON: The distinction you make is an important one. See above re: litigation.
GRASPEE_LEMOOR: I'd rather not spend my time chasing down referrers when our page-views are consistently in the 5-figure range and on their way to 100,000+ territory.
On the remainder of your post, because you are so obviously responding from a place of ignorance -- especially with regard to commercial entities and a supposed conspiracy of 'employees' modding the post up (you might want to check your tin foil hat too) -- I'm just going to refer you to what I've written above.
Thanks to all for an interesting discussion!
Damn right! Corporations are a disease of the Internet. In e-mail, people get more spam and viruses than any other kind of message. On the web, the ads take longer to download than the content. Cookies and spyware are being secretly loaded onto thousands of machines. We made the Internet, and the corporations are trying to kill it for profit.
It doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to live in the world they would like to create. All we need are the right skills and the determination to use them. Let's make it happen!
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
Thats like saying, "I have a house so that people I choose to let look at it from the public road can look at it." You'd better put a tarp over it (password) if you expect to be able to choose who looks at it. I'd question whether its really a "web" site at all, then. Its more like a VPN.
In a way I kind of agree with you, but the moe I think about it, tough shit. You have no right to make money on the internet. If you can good for you, but we don't have to make it easy. Furthermore, it's pretty simple, if you play with fire, expect to get burned occasionally. I'm not saying I agree with anyone copying your text and placing it on their site as their own, but I can't say that I really care either. Corporate rights on the internet are not a big concern of mine, and never will be.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Then the burden is on YOU to take care of access rights, especially in a public place.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
:)
hawk
hawk
What were you doing publishing it someplace publicly accessible if that wasn't your intention?
If there is nothing to link to on your server, or you don't run a web server on your machine, not much bandwidth will be consumed. If you need it for some internal use, setup a VPN or otherwise block unauthorized access.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
*And when I go to the news stand and purchase a copie of the Wall Street Journal, what do I find covering a lot of the pages? Ads.
You are paying for access to the stories, not for a site with no ads.*
Yes, exactly, I'm paying for full access to those stories. So since I'm already supporting THEIR business by paying them good money, why should I have to endure bandwidth hogging ads which consume more of my bandwidth than the actual information? I'm not paying them money so I have to waste my time downloading extra, irrelevant crap.
Pages that use ads say, "we have to use them to maintain a profit, to stay afloat". That's a rationalization, but at least its rational. After all, its not like any intelligent person actually buys something becase of an ad. But, when we PAY to access the site, they shouldn't bombard us with ads, since we're giving them hard money, and a good deal of it.
What's even worse is that wsj.com actually charges its paying subscribers extra money (over what they would otherwise) so they can continue to support their ads system.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
So, according to you, we should just let them win? We should let our internet become the tool of corporatization and exploitation?
"Innocent banner ads"? There is no such thing, as far as I've seen. Even ads on slashdot are a far cry from useful. Most ads are flashing banners, "Get Connected!" or rubbish like that.
Sorry, until ads start being non-graphic, informative, and TRUE, I'm going to block them out. I pay good money for my internet connection. 50% of what I download should NOT be ads.
The only ads systems that are acceptable are the one's used by google -- text based, and usually specifically targetted.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Yes, I can check on the referrer field. Ya know, that still creates a problem if someone's browser doesn't properly report a referrer field, etc.
I'm not even talking frames, what if I were to structure two particular pages as a series to tell a story. Perhaps a before and after that it is important that users see in that story. That, for example, was the example given on useit.com.
I can tell the robots to stay out, and I think that being able to ask people not to fuck with me site is reasonable.
Your argument is that I should risk alienating a legit user whose browser is screwy on the referrer field because another webmaster is being an asshole. That's fucking bullshit.
I do far more complicated parsing of requests than you understand.
I really don't understand why everyone on Slashdot seems to advocate being an asshole. Do any of you have friends? I certainly wouldn't be friends with someone that steals stuff from my house while I'm in the bathroom then tells me that I shouldn't have let people rummage around my house without watching them. And the Slashdot attitude seems to suggest that.
Alex