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"Deep Linking" Controversy Renewed in Texas

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the god-i-thought-this-was-over-with dept.

DaDigz writes "Wired News is reporting on a cease and desist letter sent to an independant news site by Belo, corporate parent of The Dallas Morning News, forbidding them from linking to individual stories within the site. They claim that the author can only link to the site's homepage, and attempting to link to stories within the site violates their copyright." Next week Time Magazine will require you to read pages 1-36 before reading the article you want on page 37. Don't complain, it's their copyright ;)

6 of 436 comments (clear)

  1. Does this mean the end of google? by eaddict · · Score: 4, Redundant

    Don't all the search engines 'deep link'? I guess the new search engines will only point to home pages. What a crock!

    --
    "If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
  2. HTTP_REFERER by Ruis · · Score: 0, Redundant

    This is stupid. Instead of wasting time and money going through the legal system, how hard is it to just check the HTTP_REFERER and anything that doesn't come from your own site, send back a location: header and forward them to your own homepage?

  3. Re:obligitory by jeffy124 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    crap i did it again

    --
    The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
  4. Referer Headers by Krieger · · Score: 1, Redundant

    What I don't understand is, if these companies are so dead set on not allowing deep linking, why they don't just use Referer Headers to block the links. I'm sure it would hammer their servers, but they could set it up such that anything that doesn't come from their website is automatically forbidden.

    I think they would lose a lot of business this way, but it would be a lot more legal and significantly less shaky then attempting to challenge people's right's to link to articles.

  5. Re:What about Google, Altavista, Lycos, etc... by afidel · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Simple, for spiders you just tell them not to go into the contents areas by using robots.txt, now there is an equally easy solution for humans, it's called http-referer, if you use it along with mod_rewrite you can easily forward people to your homepage or add some extra ad's to people who haven't come from your homepage/other parts of the site.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  6. uhh.. referer code? by Lord+Bitman · · Score: 0, Redundant

    isnt blocking outside links a pretty standard and really easy practice? Why dont they just block outside links from the server config?

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    -- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All