Slashdot Mirror
Restrictive Linking Policies & The Net
Masem writes "News.com reports on a new site set up by Prof. David Sorkin of the John Marshall Law School that points out web sites with restrictive linking policies, entitled Don't Link To Us. Sorkin set up the site as a way to enlighten net users on the impact of such policies in the aftermath of past and pending court cases over deep linking policies. An owner of one site on the list, law.com, was suprised to discover that their site has a restrictive linking policy, and already plans to implement changes to it."
law.com
Fleur de Sel
Thats really beautiful: a list of people who don't want to be linked to, and each entry is a working link to them. I wonder how many letters they get saying "Please do not link to us from your Do not link to us page"?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
There is a simple way to keep people from linking to your site, just find your webserver, and unplug the network connection. And next week, we talk about people who hang signs in their window, but don't want people looking at them.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The website has a number of links to places who prohibit or require permission for linking. Is the irony of this intended?
Law.com was surprised that their website had a policy that they and their lawyers had ccoked up restricting linking? Why were they surprised? Did this policy get published by little policy fairies in the middle of the night without law.com's knowledge or consent.
Puhlease!
Perhaps their appearance in Don't Link to Us! will help encourage some of these sites to move forward into the 20th century.
I wonder if they really meant the 21st century, or are just really insulting those sites.
I honestly hope not, becuse the site seems to be doing some good in hitting people with the clue stick.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
they allso link...
I was just wondering what the legal definition of a "link" is. Is it just a or what if you just published the url without having an actual link to it?
First if you don't want people linking to your site at all, you are just an idiot and shouldn't be allowed to have a website at all.
r y-URL-For.
But secondly, and this is usually mentioned when this comes up, but I'll say it again.
If you don't want people deep linking into your site, put some sort of CGI in place. Either with refer checking, cookies, or a server side stateful mechinism that tracks a visitors progress through the site. The first two can be defeated if someone really wants in, but will stop most linking.
But this is just stupid anyway. If people weren't ment to link between sites it would have been called the World Wide Line, or the World Wide Collection-of-Sites-that-You-Have-to-Remember-Eve
And oh yes,
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
is why they're trying legal (as in using the law) approaches to technical problems, something that normally cannot be done. Technical problems need technical solutions.
In this case - checking referrer tags in http requests and blocking them as appropriate instead of litigating the defendant into removing a link.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
This is almost as good as going against someone who buys their ink by the barrel.
Lets see, 1 law professor, 20 students needed project for class. Hmmmm.....
Fight Spammers!
Funny, their actually policy is beautifully ironic:
"Don't Link to Us! links to sites that attempt to impose substantial restrictions on other sites that link to them. The Linking Policy for Don't Link to Us! precludes us from requesting permission to link to a site, and compels us to link directly to the targeted page (i.e., a "deep link") rather than to a site's home page. "
Operator, give me the number for 911!
What i don't understand is how people can get up-in-arms when organizations attempt to prevent people from linking to their site, yet at the same time lament the increase of spam in their inboxes.
It seems to me that three of the linchpins of the arguments for, say, making spam illegal are 1) the email was unsolicited, 2) the spam potentially interferes with "legitimate" emails, and 3) the downloading of spam can force the recipient to incur costs he did not intend to.
These arguments can be made for unsolicited/unapproved deep-or-otherwise- linking. Often links to websites - and the manner in which they are linked - imply a relationship or endorsement of a website that an organization might not accept. Unauthorized links to websites can interfere with normal traffic to that website, at times bringing such services down, - as surely users of Slashdot know. And moreover, unauthorized links - again, as from Slashdot - can force users to incur not-insubstantial bandwidth costs.
So from this analysis, if making spam illegal is a desirable goal - and it seems to be from the cheers here whenever charges are pressed against spammers - then I think it's difficult to simultaneously rationalize and argument against companies' attempts to control linkage to their sites.
TOO LATE
I hope all these nancies who publish stuff on the web but don't want it linked to have set-up robots.txt appropriately.
There isn't much difference between a website linking to you, and a result page of a search engine.
For the unitiated, robots.txt is a text file you can place in the root directory of your web site that advises search engines not to index various parts of your site. More info at http://www.robotstxt.org/
Don't Link to Us! links to sites that attempt to impose substantial restrictions on other sites that link to them. The Linking Policy for Don't Link to Us! precludes us from requesting permission to link to a site, and compels us to link directly to the targeted page (i.e., a "deep link") rather than to a site's home page. Descriptions of sites' linking policies generally are accurate (though often not complete) at the time they are posted here but are likely to change over time. On occasion a web site will modify its linking policy in response to public ridicule. Perhaps their appearance in Don't Link to Us! will help encourage some of these sites to move forward into the 20th century.
Rock on, dude.
--Jim
Where as the root of your problems has to do with the incredibly miniscule size of your genetalia and brain.
The famous website The Register prohibits linking to its stories... Seems to be only from their own ISP, but I have no time to investigate further.
Link to the Kuro5hin article
Deep linking is one of those "it doesn't matter" issues. Is it legal to stop people from posting deep links? Can it be legally enforced? Who cares? 30 seconds with the web server configuration and the entire problem is solved forever. It would be like suing google for posting links to the site, without even going to the effort of adding a robots.txt file.
I get the feeling that its not the IT departments of these companies that are making these demands. I can't imagine that they would be so hopelessly inept as to propose such solutions to problems that can be easily solved without ever talking to a lawyer.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
ASCAP! The mafia that controls music. There's a great story at wired about travelfinder.com's links to radio stations.
ASCAP wanted them to fork over royalty fees even though the music wasn't archived on their site! The links were clearly denoted as external.
Then again this isn't suprising behavior considering that ASCAP tried to strongarm the girl scouts into paying royalties for songs sung around the campfire.
The way I see it, this is big companies making their sites more user unfriendly - if I was Law.com or whatever, I'd be pleased that people were referencing material on my site directly, it brings focus to the material by allowing easier access for those people that are actually interested in it, rather than have them wander around like an idiot on a badly designed corporate site... like Law.com...
another site besides Slashdot? I would encourage all to post links to everything you find that you cannot link to in this thread.
FYI: These guys have a lot of trademarks: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. And if you use one of them you'll get sued. Later,
Requiring people to get permission before citing sources in bibliographies?
They're ignoring the fact that links to the site have a great impact on the stature of a site relative to search engines.
Links HELP get the site noticed.
The opposite of progress is congress
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
I'm not surprised that law.com would have such a policy, then claim they knew nothing about it. There's a lot of incompetency going on over there. Even their web page itself sucks with crappy HTML. They probably have a couple of high schools kids who want to show off their Javascript leetness doing the site.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
<clip from the site>
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Note: This site exceeded its bandwidth allocation, and so I'm in the process of moving it to a new hosting service. Hopefully it will be back online at www.dontlink.com by tomorrow. (I don't recommend linking to the temporary version at www.but4.com/linking, since it will disappear once the site is back up at dontlink.com.)
Update (Aug. 15): I think dontlink.com is now back online. Thanks for your patience! DES permalink
</clip from the site>
what are the odds there will be another one of these for today?
This article completely ignores the reasons that some sites - such as the American Cancer Society - have restrictive linking policies:
How easy is it to imagine setting up a site that displays "official" information from the American Cancer Society - with a "Donate Now!" button linking to my bank in Bermuda.
No, this will not stop a scammer from trying, but it gives the real site owner slightly more legal leverage to do something about it.
Am I thick? Or is this tragically stupid?
... wha!?
Other sites, such as the American Cancer Society, say restrictions on deep linking are in the best interests of people seeking information.
"Our policy is nothing out of the ordinary," American Cancer Society spokesman David Sampson said. "We like people to go through the main page so they find out about the right cancer, and they see the broad range of information we have here. Our aim is to support people as advocates, lead them to support groups, which if people go to a page on a new medicine, they don't see."
Uh.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
don't use e-mail.
Best Slashdot Co
Yet they don't have a robots.txt, and here's the google cache. So when do they sue google?
The point isn't to send the people away who, through no fault of their own, don't arrive by the front door. The point is to convert them to your own customers.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I think it is the flash that could be misconstrued as a weapon.
Why would anyone not want someone to deep link to their website? If their info is that precious, then why put it it there in the first place?
/.
Any kind of linking we can get is good, except
Turns out that Slashdot already did a story about this. Sorry for not including the link.
I checked through some of the links to try to find out why some of these sites don't want to be linked to. On thing that came out is that there is a mass of confused thinking and motivation out there. So don't expect a clean solution to this problem. A solution which will satisfy one set of paranoid suits will not satisfy the others.
One of the reasons is that they fear that the appearans of a link from you to them implies some sort of reciprocal approval i.e. that they know of and might be assumed to approve of you. Now, to anyone here, this is absolutely dumb, but corporate zecks and AOLers might not know better.
So here is an idea of how to deal with them. When they post court papers (which are surely public documents), post a reciprocal set of papers requiring them to remove your name, addresss, URL etc. from their papers because they imply they you endorse them etc. Use wording as close as possible to theirs and petition that your case be heard first.
One of two things happen: either the court is sensible and throws out your petition as riduculous, in which case you return with that rejection as a precedent, set in the same court, to justify your linking. Or the court grants your loony case, in which case (by the court's own loguic) they have to withdraw their case against you.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I saw aliens, just last night. They came down in their silver spaceship and landing five feet in front of me. I fucking swear!
Sadly, I could not remember your useful guide. I now have third degree burns on my hands, possible radiation poisoning, and I'm pretty sure my attempt to hug one of them was the trigger for the anal probing they gave me...
Is there any chance you will be publishing your useful guide in a handy pocket reference format, should such an alien encounter happen to occur in the future?
Are they some scheme for relative immortality of Mr. King? Spread word of his demise to the point that when it finally happens nobody will believe it?
Oh, wait.. if Mr. King really did pass on then there would be actual stories in actual news media (rather than silly anonymous postings like this one. Yes, I know..) outlets.
If somebody links to you in a derogatory -- but not libelous -- way, that's a bummer, but it's legal. Hey, you can always do the same back to them. :-)
What about this...
The policy if this site is that any site linked to by this site must not under any circumstances capture referring URL information. Any capture and/or use of this information is a violation of our policy and will be prosecuted using the strongest methods available.
even better: they could deep-link.
dontlink already links directly to sites' linking policies.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Web pages let you link to other web pages. That's basically how the Internet works. If you don't like it, use some other medium. Build your own Internet that doesn't let you link to other web pages.
If you want to prevent deep links, here's two suggestions:
1. Don't use HTML. Maybe the American Cancer Society can build an elaborate Shockwave web presence.
2. Don't have links. Maybe law.com can just put all of their content on one huge webpage.
each one of these sites an email telling them I have linked to their sites and I don't care if they don't like it, and I have created links on my webpage to all of their sites. I would give you guys a link to my website, but I don't allow other people to link to it.
A list of mirrors of dontlink.com appears here.
/. account)
- David Sorkin
(please forgive the "anonymous" posting; I haven't set up a
If you don't want to be linked to, don't put your stuff on the web.
And use open standards, too, dammit!
The web was built for the free sharing of information for the good of all. If you're to damn greedy to share, get the fuck out.
Stupid motherfuckers don't understand that's what the web's all about.
This past week on Vegan.com, we've run a "Don't Link to Huntington" article. Huntington prohibits linking to their site, which is reason enough in my eyes to link to them. They are one of the biggest vivisectors in the United States, and they want it both ways. They want to use a website to peddle their animal testing services to companies, while preventing animal rights groups from pointing to Huntingon.com in order to show the public what is done to animals for the sake of making a buck.
But here's where the story takes an interesting turn. As I said, we posted our link on Vegan.com a few days ago. I was expecting I might receive a nasty letter from their lawyers telling me to desist. Sheesh, in fact you could say I was hoping to get a notice from their lawyers, so I could tell them to go cram it. But nothing.
Instead, here's what they have apparently done. I just went to Vegan.com, and the links to Huntington's page now come up as refused if you click on them. Meanwhile, you can still manually type Huntington.com into your browser, and the site will come up. So I suspect they have put a block in place, refusing all links from Vegan.com. Try it and see for yourself
But of course, refusing links is not the worst thing these scumbags do, given the horrifying acts they perform every day on animals. But there's no point in starting a rant about that.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Another great suggestion. I will do the necessary updates as requested. Unfortunately I have to post my warnings as AC because my account (roadkill999) keeps getting banned :( One day my guide will be useful and all those arrogant moderators will wish they had been nicer to me
Good point. So it's best to disable the flash, and to use a high speed film. Anyway, flash doesn't work for its intended purpose past about 8 feet or so. It always makes me laugh to see people in a stadium shooting flash pictures. Unless you are smack in front of your subject, flash won't do a damn bit of good.
I agree that the polices mentioned seem daft and unenforcable. However it seems to me that if companies wish to implement restrictive linking policies, then they shuld be able to do this in a more automated way. One approach could be an Apache module which implemented policies on linking, based on the referrer field. I guess many people would probably want this type of facility to stop people linking directly to images on your Web site (e.g. stealing your identity by taking your logo). We're likely to see more need as technologies such as XLink and XPpointer take off - I want to link to your page, but I don't want the logo or the copyright statement at the bottom of the page!. Brian Kelly
If people don't want other sites linking to their sites, make THEM take care of this matter! In their web server config, check to see if the HTTP_REFERER variable is either their domain, a site that they have granted permission to link to their site, or empty. If it is, let people into the site ... otherwise give them an error page (404 - You ae not allowed to link to my site because we are mean that way)
How rediculous! I can understand people wanting others to be curtius and not deep link ... but not being allowed to link to ANY of their pages ... gimme a break. People like that shouldn't be allowed to register a domian name. And besides, they CAN stop deep linking .... they're just too lazy! If it bugs you, DO SOMETHING!!!!
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
I work at one of the companies mentioned in the "Don't link to Us!" web site and I wasn't aware of the policy. Methinks I may have to post a message on one of the group message boards asking about this policy :) I don't have any job security anyway (I'm a contractor) so who cares?
No off course not. Your analogy is flawed.
You meant: "Requiring people to get permission before citing the relevant pagenumbers in sources in bibliographies."
I would think that was a bad Idea right becuase of a search engine like Google the site would no longer have links to it so it would be less important according to google. Am I right about that?
I'd recommend a digital camera because they seem to usually pick up more than a classic camera would, even when the lighting isn't substantial.
<a src="http://www.geocities.com/bruthasj">bruthasj</ a> doesn't not have a copy of your webpage. It give instructions on how to see the information from your web page, just like a bibliography points to source data for an article.
A robotic text reading robot librarian could be like a browser. It could recognize bibliographical entries and fetch the book for you. This isn't a source issue, it is a browser issue. Law.com should sue MS for writing IE because it automatically gets data from law.com.
Joe Batt Solid Design
Did you see the Simpsons where Homer catches Apu cheating on his wife in the Kwik-E-Mart, and slowly backs away out of the store, all the way home, up the stairs, and into bed, goes to sleep and dreams about backing away?
Fucking hilarious.
Well, there is a simple solution... if you run a web site and don't want links to yours, use Apache and install mod_rewrite. Then it's a simple matter of defining rewrite rules in your base .htaccess file that check the HTTP_REFERER value - if your own domain (or any authorized domain you wish to define) is not in your list, the user can either be redirected to your home page (stop deep linking only) or to a "don't link to us" page, or direct to a 403:
/image_directory.* [NC] .*\.jpg /graphics/linked.gif
Hree's my favorite - created for a friend who didn't want folks including her images in their siges by link:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://foo\.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}
RewriteRule
This one should just give the bugger a 403 if they link directly to anything on your site - might have to add exclusionary logic for the home page to avoid locking everyone out.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://foo\.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [F]
The Digital Sorceress
Was this written by Alex Chiu?
(now Senator) Maria Cantwell's campaign against (then Senator) Slade Gorton.
Her campaign found this absolutely goofy ass picture on Slade's website. So they deep linked to the picture on the front page as part of some bit about Slade's environmental record.
When Slade's campaign first noticed it, his campaign manager first claimed copyright violation and then claimed Maria's people had hacked Slade's website.
Eventually, the technical people at Slade's campaign caught on and replaced the goofy image with an "Elect Slade Gorton" type graphic that invited people to go to his official website.
Maria's campaign removed the deep link and that was the end of the matter.
Since the interweb has absolutely no relation to reality, how could any sane entity consider any of it legally binding?!!
The World Wide Web -- "For amusement purposes only"
Just like I have to pay the phone company not to be listed ("linked-to") in the white pages!
Aren't Netscape bookmarks just hyperlinks stored in a file called bookmark.htm? Does this mean we have to obtain permission to create a bookmark to any of these sites?
What is 'linking'? The act of creating an 'a href' tag? The posting of that tag on a publicly accessible site? The act of clicking on a 'link'?
I can AIM 'www.logicreate.com' to someone - I've not 'made' a link. AOL's AIM client makes it into a link. Same for most email clients. The person who wrote http://www.phphelpdesk.com in an email didn't 'make' a link - the email software I chose to use created it for me.
So, it seems that instead of 'linking', there needs to be a clearer definition. 'Don't visit us without our express written permission' might be clearer.
I'm interested to know how many of these same companies with these stupid 'linking policies' have links on their intranets to common websites that also have stupid 'linking policies'.
creation science book
I've seen a lot of emotion-filled comments and speculation about this topic, but let's try and consider this seriously for a second.
I'm not going to address the technical side of this - we all know how easy it is to prevent linking, or whatever. We also know, if you have static HTML pages, there's no way to prevent someone from linking to them.
Why, exactly, is any website _required_ to permit another page to link to it? I have yet to see a _real_ answer to this question. ("Because they should" is not a real answer, neither is "because they can't stop you".)
Suppose, for a second, that I run Joe's Widget Company. I sell widgets. Jack Sixpack has this great idea for a gadget which uses my widgets. He advertises this on his site, and provides a link back to my site. Suddenly, however, Jack's gadgets go horribly wrong and cause people bodily harm. People will think that I endorsed his use of my widgets. (People _will_ think that, regardless of how stupid it may seem). Sure, I could put a disclaimer on my site, saying "I do not endorse Jack's use of my widgets", but that assumes I know about it. Why should I have to search the web every week or so to find a new link to my site, check out the linking site, and see if I need to post a disclaimer? That takes time and time is money.
And in today's litigation-happy society, one needs to cover one's ass more than ever. If you know exactly who links to your site, you have a defense against any false endorsements, or incorrect statements or whatever. If a linking site suddely changes what they have to say about you, you tell them not to link to you anymore. Sure, they may do it anyway, but at least you can say "Sorry, your Honor, but we told them to remove that link."
Certainly attempting to use legal methods to enforce linking policies won't work. However, there's nothing wrong with asking people who desire to link to a site to fill out a form or email the webmaster. It's common courtesy. It also provides a paper trail if commercial activity is involved.
And then there's the bandwidth factor. Say I have this really cool Lego Mindstorms project that I want people to see. I put up some pictures on my web page and point some friends at it. Then it gets picked up by Slashdot, where thousands of people all attempt to view it at the same time, which uses up my monthly bandwidth allocation in exactly 2 minutes, and causes my computer to melt. That's quite unfortunate for me. I think I should have been asked beforehand, and then given the opportunity to maybe find some mirrors, or let Google cache it , or something.
This, of course, is where people might say "Don't post stuff on the web if you don't expect people to look at it." or "Get a connection that allows you more bandwidth." Any intelligent person knows that these are not acceptable answers for the average user. If I post something on a page, I expect a few people to look at it, but I don't expect (nor should I have to) a million people to attempt to view the page all at the same time, without prior warning.
All this "Fuck you, I'll link to whatever I want" attitude is lame and counter-productive. It will only serve to discourage people from posting cool things on computers that have slow connections or limited bandwidth. Sure, if it's something like cnn.com, or C|NET, or the New York Times, we know their servers can take a lot of hits. But if it's some guy who posted a cool case mod on his computer connected by MediaOne or whatever, then give him a break, and send him a quick e-mail before you link to it. It's just common courtesy. But then again, common courtesy seems to be non-existant these days.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
At least this case of deeping linking threat turned out better. But they still have problems with pinheads running the place at Belo, as the policy is still there for their flagship newspaper.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Email them requesting permission to link to their site, including an actual link to the page you want to link to in the email.
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
hi, welcome to my comment. if you are reading this comment, then you must have web surfed through slashdot to get to it. web surfing is a strange, complex, newfangled technical concept that you may not understand, because i certainly don't understand it myself. that's why i publish my comments to this weird web surfing place to begin with. see?
;-P
the point is i don't allow people to web surf to my comments. i only explicitly allow people to view my comments who contact me first. that is why i post comments on slashdot in the first place. do you get it?! good, because i don't. but i have the right to dictate to you how it works even though i don't understand it. ok?! ok?!
now that you have read this comment, please email me and get permission first before you read this comment in the first place! understand?! no???!!! DO I HAVE TO SUE YOU NOW?!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
All UFO spotters should stop by Art Bell's website: www.artbell.com. Art Bell is an excellent resource for those investigating UFOs. His radio show is heard every night in North America after midnight. Tune across your AM radio dial and you will be sure to find the fascinating world of Art Bell. Art Bell is where UFO research begins.
Q: Which of these scenarios results in higher bandwidth costs?
A. A mandated link to the home page, where a user then has to mill about the site, trying to find the page they're looking for
B. A (deep) link to the exact page containing the information of interest
This makes me wonder if something else is going on here. Is it possible that sites with policies against deep linking experience more overall traffic?
Policies against deep linking (though I'm sure there are exceptions), constitute poor implemention of a web site. In other words, if I can't link to any of the pages individually - or visit the site through such links - it's probably not worth my time in the first place. The link, after all, is one of the primary elements that distinguishes the web from other types of media.
Look at the bottom... ..."The Linking Policy for Don't Link to Us! precludes us from requesting permission to link to a site, and compels us to link directly to the targeted page (i.e., a "deep link") rather than to a site's home page. "...
Sure, there are technical solutions to unwanted (by the author) copying, security and so on. But let's say there is a guy who wants to sell t-shirts and offer his MP3 files on an unpatched IIS NT4.0 server. Let's say his front page has a sign saying that he can make the thing more secure, but then he'll have to charge (more) money to pay IT consultants and hosting services. Shouldn't we try to respect his wish and just link to the poor guy's front page?
Unlike most I dont think there should be laws against spam: instead why not fix spam in a technical manner.
One simple solution would be only to accept mail from joe@XYZ.com only from XYZ.com's mailserver.
Second would be to make it cost-innefective for the spammer: if your mail program required a handshake (such as a herbivore public-key exchange) and then an encrypted message content, The spammer would have to individually encrypt and send each email to each recipient. This would make spamming vastly unprofitable.
There are many other solution such as these, and there should never be need for stupid laws. I see an smtp server as no different than an http one.
What's next? We will not be allowed to bookmark these sites? After all, saving a bookmark is just saving a link. Or maybe a big "DO NO READ" warning.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Have a look at how The Register ISP doesn't let you link to some stories on The Register.
In answer to the mealy mouthed reply from The Register that they won't enforce that policy, I can only say: then don't have that policy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
if they don't want anyone to link to them then maybe they should unplug their server from the internet, shut down their server, and cancel their accounts...
All along, I've been trying to promote my site by encouraging people to link to it. Now I see. If I just forbid people to link to my site I will get some links to it. Yes!
I seem to have read in more than one place recently that empirical evidence suggests that linking to your site, especially from other highly linked/ranked sites is a major factor in Googles ranking for search results. Thus if people actually respect these sites wish's they will eliminate themsleves from the HTTP gene pool.....
I'm never going to profess to be an expert on this topic, but here's my take on it:
It's not illegal for me to refer you to Joe's Pizza. I could also tell you where Joe's Pizza is and supply you with directions. I could also tell you where to find the Joe's Pizza menu (for example's sake, on the counter by the cash register, in the restaurant).
So where's the difference if:
My website refers you to Joe's Pizza website, and I supply you with directions (which in the context of the internet is providing a URL) and I tell you where to find Joe's Pizza menu (propviding a deep link).
If Joe doesn't want you coming in his restaurant, he can deny you entry, and it's the same with the website, but is there any legal ground for a person or business to prevent another person or business from making references, regardless of whether they are hypertext links or word of mouth? Couldn't this almost be a constitutional issue?
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Do these sites think that people will just randomly type in their address without searching for it? You know they're going to search engines, and they'll link to the site...and that violates their asinine policy.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
That's like putting up a sign in your front yard and making it illegal for people to look at it.
Karma: NaN
When I copy/paste an adress into the browsers adress bar and then press enter.
This is perfectly legal, no?
So how can it be any different if this task is accomplished automatically by a computer?!?
When you right an anchor tag in html, it is the SAME thing as if you say "reference: book XYZ page 32 par. 4".
The ONLY difference is that the content is electronic instead of being on paper.
And that you do not have to open the book yourself
And that is the purpose of the internet.
Those who claims otherwise are missing the point.
A website is NOT like a store, into which you HAVE to enter by the front door, instead of breaking a window.
It is just an arrangement of documents, which happen to be electronics, with which you are able to have a certain level of interactivity.
I'd rather be sailing...
For incoming mail proxies, you could obviously configure your smtp agent to "trust" one upstream mail server. Thats hugely different than trusting the whole internet.
As for virtual domains, so long as they resolve to the correct machine its not a problem. If the mx records resolve to your ISP's mail server, THATS FINE, it doesnt care about the other record types.
Its not poorly thought out, its the way things should have been done from the beginning.
Other Ideas:
To keep linking to a minimum. Copy the colors and table structure (but not the nav bars) of the site into the linked page, put some porn on it, and put "Hacked by Chinese" at the bottom. (Or Nimda or whatever) Update the links in your site to avoid this page. Put it up on Friday night, delete it on Monday. Claim you know nothing about it.
Use a server redirect to Goatse.cx or some other web site.
Rename all your images, replace them with porn pics, be sure to update your IMG tags.
Most clueless users will assume the originating web site is deliberately linking to porn and will contact them to complain.
Change the file to a frameset that links back to the original site. Get paid by the banner ads you serve in your portion of the frame.
After a few weeks of this, they will stop linking.
Hyperlinks are one of those things on the internet that sort of relies on both parties sort of getting along. Either one can mess it up.
I assume that also any site that has significant ad revenue, will be wanting to protect their money stream they artificially created by breaking documents up to 10 pages or by making the site structure too deep.
In my opinion, lawyers should be the last line of defense or offense, not the first. This is just another instance of it getting all twisted around.
That'll teach you to mod down my critical friend!
Mod me down, I'll just post again. I got 50 Karma to burn...
Serious, Why bother marking him down anyway? It's a waste of moderation points to mod up the good stuff.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Once again, western ideals here folks. Lots of sites in Japan have very explict no linking policies, and it is considered perfectly polite to make such requests (and down right rude to not obey them!)
/is/ rather st00pid, the fact is that:
/sueing/ over such issues is rather stupid, but if some site sends you a 'please take down your link to our site' letter then hey, it IS their site. They where actualy nice enough to warn you, they could have just shoved up a HTTP referer block and said screw you to your content. (admitedly many of the idiot admins who do the cease and desist letters are to stupid to figure out how to do such but. . . . heh)
While I will admit that commerical sites with no linking policies
The site belongs to the owner
The owner is paying for bandwidth and hosting
The owner can invite who ever they want on to their site.
Now granted
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
It was on slashdot last week. The actual story is here.
There was some debate as to whether that made the book into a gift and/or unordered merchandise (under the laws of the postal service), or if the shrinkwrapped contract was enforceable. While the postal rules say you can recieve it as a gift, the cover states that opening the shrinkwrap implies acceptance of the license agreement.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I assume the point of this is to link to places that try (illegally???) to prevent people from linking?
Is that illegal? I assume there are court cases or something, yet there is no info on that web site nor does there seem to be any here, at least in the first few dozens of comments.
I remember reading someplace that the Communications Act of 1934 made it legal to receive any signal that was broadcast. I may be wrong, and I know most (if not all) of the Communications Act of 1934 has been superceded, but the point is, we need someone, somewhere to make a ruling that says if you are publishing information on the Web and not preventing deep links through technical means, then it is legal to link to those pages directly.
All the arguments showing how deep linking can be abused are flawed. They are the same arguments that the media companies used when lobbying for the DMCA. "It could be used to steal content, therefore it should be illegal." "Deep linking might be used to slander somone so it should be illegal".
There are technical means of stopping people from entering your website except through the front door. If you don't want deep linking, then use steps to prevent it. Otherwise, we are going to assume that it's okay.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Your content is first-rate, but your spelling leaves something to be desired. Obviously you should apply for a position at slashdot.
I would love to see the face of the lawyer the newpaper that takes action, when they see Sorkin, Lessig, Tyre at the defendants table, then 50 or so students of Sorkin taken notes for class, as this is their new class project.
Fight Spammers!
Isn't this leaglly handled with existing copyright law?
I would imagine that someone trying to look official would use much of the same written material already on the real website.
They may own the trademark for "The Way to Happiness" but at least they don't have it patented.
Interesting that this story should be posted on /. since I have recently become embroiled in a linking controversy with my university. I and another student have started a small business where students can sell their used textbooks on consignment near campus (off campus because the university's bookstore, owned by Follett has been granted a monopoly on the university grounds). We needed to "deep link" to a university webpage explaining changes in the class numbering system, but are reportedly on the verge of being served with legal action against us for doing so.
As students, we obviously cannot afford a protracted legal action against us by a university intent on defending Follett's monopoly. Should we copy the content of the university page onto a page of our own (with modifications), or continue linking? We have looked but not found the university's linking policy. Do we actually need permission to link?
Wouldn't it make more sense to prohibit children under 13 and acknowledge that linking can't be blocked?
(Linking actually can be blocked, using technical means, but they'd rather just speak their mystic words...)
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
This site sucks! Try ipkonfig.com instead!
Linking to a website which forbids it in a Slashdot article: ROFLMAOUTB-piss-your-pants funny.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Last time I checked, HTTP was a stateless protocol. You make requests for resources, and the server responds in kind.
What the fsck is a deep link? It's a meaningless term. The WWW server makes no distinction between links and "deep links"; as far as it cares, they're the same.
If you don't want people accessing your site without first going through the homepage, then don't let them! Why people are pursuing unenforceable legal solutions to technical issues is beyond me.
I don't think you get it. I have a web site, it is on www.netmar.com for hosting. Their MX record points to mail.netmar.com. My domains have mail.netmar.com as their MX. I check my mail by POPing mail.netmar.com. Netmar does not have SMTP available.
This is what mx records were supposed to be for: if you want the mail service to be run on a different machine for a domain than the web service, you set the mx records appropriately. mx records are supposed to be for SMTP servers.
Why should everyone make themselves vulnerable to source address spoofing just so you can contiune having a misconfigured DNS?
And if you have an ISP that blocks outgoing packets based on port number, well they just suck. Avoid them like the plague. You have no business running a mail server behind a "ISP" that has a noservers policy anyway.
From CIBA's linking policy:
Terms and Conditions
1. You may download, display or print information from this Site (the "Information") solely for non-commercial personal use.
2. You must retain and reproduce each and every copyright notice or other proprietary rights notice contained in any Information you download. You may not, however, distribute, modify, transmit, reuse, repost, or use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes, including the text, images, audio, and video without written permission of CIBA Vision. You should assume that everything you see or read on this Site is copyrighted unless otherwise noted and may not be used except as provided in these Terms and Conditions or in the text on the Site without the written permission of CIBA Vision.
But...
6. Any communication or material you transmit to the Site by electronic mail or otherwise, including any data, questions, comments, suggestions or the like is, and will be treated as, nonconfidential and nonproprietary. Anything you transmit or post becomes the property of CIBA Vision or its affiliates and may be used for any purpose, including, but not limited to, reproduction, disclosure, transmission, publication, broadcast and posting. Furthermore, CIBA Vision is free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques contained in any communication you send to the Site for any purpose whatsoever including, but not limited to, developing, manufacturing and marketing products using such information.
So, by the same logic, I'll just insert into my HTTP request:
HTTP Policy:
Any communication or material you or your web server transmit to this computer, by HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, or otherwise, including any data, multimedia, computer code, or the like, is, and will be treated as, nonconfidential and nonproprietary. Anything so transmitted becomes the property of myself and my affiliates and may be used for any purpose whatsoever, including, but not limited to, reproduction, disclosure, transmission, publication, broadcast, modification, redistribution, or reverse engineering. Furthermore, I am free to use any data, text, logos, trademarks, or correspondence contained in any communication you send to me for any purpose whatsoever including, but not limited to, satire, parody, and general mockery.
There is a spellbook here; eat it? [ynq]
I love sites with what amount to EULAs..."Here are the terms of visiting this site" -- sorry but the whole debacle over deep linking follows suit. If you have a website, it is essentially by default public access. If you have content which you do not want others to get to via deep links, then implement referrer checks or secure the content. Sorry, but linking is not illegal...at least not yet. K.
I guess your ISP does not block port 25. And the recipient's server has to be set up to accept mail from dial-up pools; many do not. At least, when I tried that a couple of years ago, the server I tried to use wouldn't let me in from the dial-up-like block my DSL address is in.
And ISPs blocking port 25 is pretty common; mine's done it, so I can't access an authenticated SMTP server directly, I have to proxy to it on port 26 because some mail clients hard-code the port number.
None of this would be needed if spam wasn't a problem.
Netmar does run SMTP service, for incoming mail only, they do not relay,[snip] , the customers simply use their ISPs mail server as relay.
So there is an SMTP daemon running at your hosting provider that will recieve messages destined for you, bit wont accept messages coming from you? Unlikely, since receiving is the resource intensive part. Regardless, you cant reach port 25 on that machine from your ISP because they require you to use their relay? That pretty much isolates the problem, right at the ISP. Maybe youll look for a new ISP when they start appending pr0n spam attachments to all outgoing mail...
Something unforseen in DNS: the possibility that someones recieve SMTP might be different than their transmit SMTP, or that anyone would care what their transmit SMTP was at all. If there was such a concept, youd be in business.
On the other hand, If your ISP will relay, could you not also get them to recieve incoming email for you? (they are an ISP)
Tele-workers without a VPN connection
Doing evening work from home without a VPN connection
Doing weekend work from home without a VPN connection
Working while "on the road" without a VPN connection
The same mechanism allows pretty much anyone to send mail supposedly from you.
And VPN connections right new are relatively primitive, I agree, hard to setup and not very well standardized.(Unless you know openssh, with which you can setup a secure tunnel trivially)
The solution being currently to accept email as a wild free-for-all, to put up with spam or try to block it with crude hueristics, and to count on people not to forge source addresses to much. This just doesnt sit well with me. Why do we all accept this sorry state so readily?
this must be why i can't search google with altavista
http://www.google.com/robots.txt
I find it rather ironic that at least one of the sites mentioned (UK Universities) itself uses links to pages on other sites that are not the front pages. Indeed, some of them are pages it links to are quite far down the directory tree of the other sites! Isn't this the whole point of hypertext?
I've been considering the idea of only allowing deep linking on my site. If anyone comes to my index page without passing through another page on my site, I would wisk them away to another galaxy or something.
With regard to sites checking the http_referer header, most personal firewalls allow you to block that. Doing that makes it appear that you arrived just by typing in the URL.
Also, couldn't you just use javascript (document.location = someurl) to link to a site. That should prevent the http_referer field and the destination server wouldn't know you came from another site.
I think we should all honor their requests.
Why don't we all help by submitting withdrawals from Google, Yahoo and other places where it is highly likely they have been linked from?
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
is why they're trying legal (as in using the law) approaches to technical problems, something that normally cannot be done. Technical problems need technical solutions.
Because if they went after technical solutions to technical problems, they would be paying a computer consultant $90-$150/hour, rather than billing out $500/hour for a lawyer to waste the court's time with this nonsense.
Since the law and most of the court system is of, by, and for lawyers (and this is doubly true for so-called 'intellectual property' law and lawyers), is anyone really surprised to see $500/hour lawyers on both sides billing out time, when a 5 minute modification to an apache server by a $150/hour computer jockey would have sufficed?
It really has almost gotten to the point where the only viable solution to this particular societal ill is going to become the Shakespearian solution: hang all the lawyers.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
that's all true, but put it in this light:
for the organization that wants restricted linking, which is cheaper? Hiring someone to add a few lines to apache's config file? Or hiring a lawyer to file a suit? Chances are good that there's already a technician available to have the fix me made, OTOH hiring a lawyer may mean searching for one, which alone costs more than the tech's fix, hiring him, usually with up-front costs, then the actual suit, fees for the court (something has to pay the judges and staff), etc.
I actually read a paper last week about broadcast encryption. The author doesnt directly say it, but he claims that if CSS had used a broadcast encryption scheme, DeCSS would not exist. Hence, the MPAA's need for the DMCA would have been (mostly) non-existant.
Examples like these show why lawyers that deal with technology policy need to understand technology before laying down those policies. Many (All?) of the lawyers who write a website's linking policy simply dont know about the webserver's ability to blacklist a http-referrer. If they did, then many would have the techs configure the server in that manner.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.