Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
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
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.
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!
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?
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?
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.
Then maybe you should use mod_rewrite with a simple rule:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://your.host/ [NC] /cgi-bin/old-warn?page=$1 [R]
RewriteRule ^/old-stuff/(.*)$
and put there a simple old-warn script displaying "This stuff is old. What do you want? [New] [Old] [Index] [Home] [Whatever]". Or why not include this warning on the old pages in the first place? Or why not to just put "Last modified XXXX-XX-XX, if there's a newer version, it's here." on every page which can be outdated in the future?
Linking is just telling people about your URI. If you don't want them to know about it, don't make it public, you don't have to serve anything if you don't want to. If you want those people to see something before they get what they are looking for, I don't know what's stopping you. The beauty of computers, including web servers, is that they do what you tell them to do.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
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.
I think the answer is that there is no law against stupidity and laziness. Much easier to pay your attack-dog team of lawyers to file stupid lawsuits.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
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
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."