Blogspace vs. NPR

jonkl writes "National Public Radio's linking policy at npr.org has caused a fuss within the blog community that's hot and getting hotter. The policy's simply stated in two sentences: 'Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. If you would like to link to NPR from your Web site, please fill out the link permission request form.' This is buried, of course, in a page linked to the site's footer, but somebody noticed and mentioned it to Howard Rheingold, who passed it on to Cory Doctorow of boingboing.net. Cory wrote scathing commentary, calling the policy 'brutally stupid,' even 'fatally stupid.' The outrage is spreading; this has to be a rough day for the NPR ombudsman who's deluged with email by now... ~24 hours after Cory's report." Reminds of the KPMG policy.

Comments

linking?

[Principito]

Did we (slashdot) ask permission to link

Why oh why?

[jhaberman]

I just can't wrap my brain around something like this. What is the point of being on the web if you don't want people to visit your site? Provided, you actually want people to visit your site, don't you want to get your information out to as many as possible? (bandwidth issues not withstanding) Ergo, wouldn't you want every possible site that might be interested to link to your content?

Tough to think there is something you could refer to as "old fashioned" in regards to the web, but I can't find another way to describe it...

Jason

Re:Why oh why?

[hagardtroll]

Why don't this just do away with their domain name npr.org and have everyone visit them with via their IP address instead. No use making it easy for anyone.

Ah, and we'll make it better

[bsdfish]

So we'll /. NPR and thus demonstrate to them that linking really *is* harmless, right?

Links on NPR

[Target Drone]

From the NPR linking policy: It is important to note that npr.org contains links to other sites

What do you wanna bet that NPR doesn't bother checking another sites linking policy before they link to it.

Kinda Odd

[godoto]

With all that legal linking nonsense, it's funny that they don't even have a robots.txt file on their site.

Freedom of Speech

[tswinzig]

This is clearly a case of freedom of speech. Let's see NPR try to bring charges against someone for linking to their site. It'll be laughed out of court. It's a basic right for someone to be able to publish publically available information, such as a universal resource locator.

Just ask 2600.

whoops

Well, part of the reason...

[melquiades]

I used to work for a regional public radio network's web shop, and we had some contact with NPR. They are a fairly slow-moving, bureaucratic organization -- partly because they are controversial and always under attack, and partly because their board of directors is made up of their several hundred member stations. For both these reasons, they tend to be a bit overprotective.

However, they're not completely backwards or out of touch with the web -- not by a long shot. They were online before most companies realized it was important, and were one of the first major media outlets to start giving all their content away -- free! -- online.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the stupid policy in question was penned by some lawyer in the early days of the web, when the answers to these questions were a lot less clear.

Hopefully this exposure will wake them up, and get their policy re-grounded in reality.

Wondering why NPR might do this?

[aengblom]

STOP! THINK! Why would NPR do this?

The reason is that NPR hosts high-bandwidth audio material and the website archives many of the shows. NPR doesn't care if you link to a text article, but if I create

www.bestofnpr.com

and then offer DIRECT links to the .ra files than NPR's got a problem. I can make money off of NPR's work and cost them a fortune.

You may agree or disagree with the policy, but at least understand that NPR has some pretty legetimate fears. Personally, though, I don't see this as a legitamate solution, but it's understandable.

Re:Wondering why NPR might do this?

[thing12]

Yes - exactly. If anyone actually took the time to look at the Link Permission Request page they might see that what they are really referring to when they say links is links to the audio content. They're example text: (e.g., "Listen to NPR's David Kestenbaum's report on the Space Shuttle, originally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered® April 4, 2002").

They did go about this all wrong by using very broad wording. I can't imagine that they don't want people linking to their html pages freely (e.g. http://news.npr.org/). It seems like everybody here is flying off the handle over what really is nothing. The linking policy has an intent, and I'm certain that the wording of it will be changed - within a week at most - to match that intent.

watchingyou?

[sys49152]

For no good reason I viewed the source of the permission form. Ironically, the form's action tag is: http://iris.npr.org/cgi-bin/watchingyou.pl

Not only that, but the high-tech folks at NPR use this form to generate an email. The recipients are listed in a hidden field on the form. So if you want to give the ombudsman a break, you can send your thoughts directly to the people who evaluate the link requests: jrichards@npr.org, bmelzer@npr.org, nprhelp@npr.org, tholzman@npr.org.

Link me, but don't frame me.

[TheFlu]

I have no problems with linking to my site from anywhere, but when other sites frame my site and try to present my information as their own, I don't particularly enjoy that. Here's how you can prevent "framing":

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
if (self.location.href != top.location.href) {
top.location.href = self.location.href;
}
// -->
</script>

Re:Link me, but don't frame me.

[Reziac]

Side effect: anti-framing scripts will sometimes crash browsers (even with javascript disabled!) on YOUR site, preventing them from reading YOUR content entirely.

Better might be to plainly label each of your pages, so even if they wind up framed elsewhere, it's obvious whose material it is.