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."

Comments

Beautiful

[gowen]

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"?

Simple way to accomplish this....

[nizo]

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.

Re:Simple way to accomplish this....

[DustMagnet]

There's another way, with fewer side effects. . .

Just find your webserver and configure it to check the referer field and enforce your policy. If it means enough to you to have a policy (and sue), why not enforce it? This was brought up during some of these court cases. To me, that should have reduced any damage claims to zero, but it didn't.

If you don't want people linking...

[Neon Spiral Injector]

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.

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-Ever y-URL-For.

Re:If you don't want people linking...

[liquidsin]

Indeed. Any webserver lets you do this with relative ease. Don't allow any referrer other than your own site. Redirect all referred hits to /index.html or whatever. But for the love of $deity, stop trying to legislate things that have absolutely no reason to be legislated.

More Beautiful

[www.sorehands.com]

It would be more beautiful if they threaten legal action. Saying to Sorkin that the if he "wants to avoid the expense of having to hire a lawyer.....that he must take down those links.

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.....

Linking vs Spam

[tmark]

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.

Re:Linking vs Spam

[Frobnicator]

The difference is the burden of cost.

A web site is pubilshed with the intent of being publicly viewable. While the /. effect (and similar problems from news sites) can cause problems, the content was placed there for public release and viewing. Generally web pages are placed on high-capacity ISP's. By publishing, you are explicitly offering it to the public. If the individual has a problem with their bandwidth agreement (such as automatically charging more rather than capping use) then it is the individual's problem, not the community's. It is of the form that the publisher pays to publish, and the viewer pays costs associated for viewing, and both consent to those fees.

An email box is a low-bandwidth item where everything must be reviewed by hand. Spam is unsolicited and can cost a significant amount to the reciever without their consent.

So in my view, posting and linking imply consent, spam is without consent. That's where the law should come in -- just like sex with consent is okay, but without consent is rape.

frob.

You know who else hates linking..the ASCAP mafia..

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

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.

Whats next?

[cumorehe]

Requiring people to get permission before citing sources in bibliographies?

mod_rewrite is your friend

[wytcld]

With over half the traffic to content-full sites coming in from search engines which my their nature deep link, it's vital for webmasters to use tools like Apache's mod_rewrite to be sure to present the content in the context you desire. By combining this with functions in scripting languages such as PHP you can make absolutely certain that you (1) welcome visitors however they arrive and (2) let them know exactly where they are, with navigation options that will lead them further into your site, rather than the referrer's.

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.

Re:Vegan.com Links to Huntington Life Sciences

[spitzak]

Despite the fact that they kill cute puppies, I have to respect the fact that they were smart enough to find the simple, technical, and completely legal way to get what they wanted, rather than throwing lawyers at the problem and costing both themselves and you a trememdous amount of money.

Grrr!!

[Com2Kid]

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!)

While I will admit that commerical sites with no linking policies /is/ rather st00pid, the fact is that:

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 /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)