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Online Publisher Blocks LinuxToday Referrals
MadChicken writes "This weekend, LinuxToday found that their link to an article was blocked by CMP Media LLC (publishers of Information Week). The editorial with full details is here. Could this have impact on other online news sites?"
What does denying links achieve? The web is great because it is just that. Start blocking links and it will start to fall apart.
Aparently when you click on the link provided by Linux Today you get: "Unfortunately, we cannot satisfy this particular request because it comes from a source that is not authorized to redistribute our content..." This is not redistribution in my opinion. This is how the net works(?).
Don't make your problems my problems!
Actually it's not deep linking either. Deep linking involves getting the content while avoiding the advertising.
This is simply a referal. You know what URLs are designed for. What the entire web is designed to do. Provide links from one document to another and all that.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
Yeah, but it is
... but besides which this tactic wouldn't have worked against either), but posting a link to information week's article
1. counterproductive, since they're just refusing traffic. AFAIK linuxtoday wasn't publishing a copy (which I could see being argued as theft
2. pointless, since the people that are reading these types of articles might have a better idea of how the web works than the publisher apparently does, and realize that by simply copy and pasting the URL into the address bar (or by blocking their browser's reporting of HTTP referer) they can read the article without hitting the useless block.
I don't get it... to me this is completely short-sighted.
But having these referral sites, I have been introduced to news sites that I would never have thought to go to. From slashdot, I now regularly scan through cnet's site, etc.
why not take advantage of the extra eyeballs and put more targetted advertising? Ads are the only thing keeping these content sites anyway... This to me would be the smarter business decision, instead of just blocking people from viewing free content. Why not put up an ad from Redhat or Microsoft whenever a viewer comes from LinuxJournal???
This is a mark of a stupid business person.
It should be noted that RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) backs up my concern about the "Referer" (great, like if programmers needed help spelling badly):
Because the source of a link might be private information or might
reveal an otherwise private information source, it is strongly
recommended that the user be able to select whether or not the
Referer field is sent. For example, a browser client could have a
toggle switch for browsing openly/anonymously, which would
respectively enable/disable the sending of Referer and From
information.
As far as I know, no browser contains a GUI dialog for toggling "referer". Not even the "privacy" pain discusses it at all. In Galeon at least, it can be turned off by using middle button and opening in a new tab, which sends no "referer" in the HTTP request. I don't remember if this goes for mozilla too.
Here's where this really leads. If more sites start doing this, you will see HTTP_REFERRER disappear in a heartbeat. Why should I be generous enough to tell you where I've been, only to be denied access? I can just as easily make my browser tell you I came from somewhere on your site.
(No, don't respond to this post telling me why these things can't be true. Arguing about what it could be is just as stupid as the original assumption as to what it is. This is like arguing about what time it is, when the real question should be "Who's got a watch?")
Plus it's dumb to assume that IW did this without attempting to contact LT. Maybe the LT email server is broken? The message got discarded by an spam filter? The recipient discarded it without reading it? Happens all the time.
When you have a problem like this, you should work with the other party to solve it. If they refuse to cooperate or explain, then you have something to complain about. Going immediately into crusade mode based on total ignorance is childish.
I only state this hypothetically. I doubt that information week has collected such statistics. I even doubt that sufficient statistics could be collected to accurately identify a group of users so unlikely to click on an ad to make the almost free cost of serving a page too high.
For other types of services, like ones which are more bandwidth heavy, I can see this being a more legitimate response.
Well with the "not authorized to redistribute" quote we know what this particular incident is about, but I see tons of posts above saying how terrible it is to block people coming from Linux news site. I think it's quite possible that it would be beneficial. Linux users tend to be much more tech savy than most and along with browsers like Mozilla rather than MSIE they are much more likely to simply block advertisements than run of the mill users.
Personally I don't block adds at all (well I refuse to install annoying ad showing software like that flash crap) and will actually click on ads for sites I like. However, I know countless people who not only block ads to leech off sites for free, but seem proud of doing so. Anyway, my point was simply that with the number of people who do this rising, being selective about who you waste bandwidth (which can be quite costly for large sites) on isn't necessarily a losing prospect anymore.
As a libertarian and strong defender of personal rights, it flat out pisses me off when I see someone post crap like the parent.
Of COURSE they can block whomever they want. Unless you're replying to a post that is advocating bringing a lawsuit, passing a new law to prohibit referral blocking or bringing in the National Guard to stop them from referral blocking, then what on earth is the point of your post? Yes, they can block whomever they want, and I can utilize my freedom of speech to point out that they're being stupid and will lose any business they may have gotten from me if they keep such a lame policy in place.
Freedom to take an action does not mean freedom from the responsibility of that action, it simply means that neither the government or anyone else can use force to prevent you from taking the action. As I have yet to see a post advocating using force to change their policy, your post is completely inane.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I also use it on some sites to prevent deeplinking, not to mention people linking directly to certain files (images etc)... but I do allow some sites to do deeplinking.
I do this simply because I want to control what a person has read before visiting certain information, like forcing them to read a warning/explanatory text before viewing statistics about something. Without that explanatory text it might be possible that people are going to misinterpret the data; but I don't have to force them to read my warning if I know that the site doing the deeplinking are good at explaining the data to the reader...
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
Linking is required if you want to get any new readers. How the heck do you think anyone's going to find out about their site if no one can get there from a link, google, etc.?
If you want to make a big website, fill it up with content, and then keep it a total secret so no one can see it, you have every right to do that. But what's the point of that? Most of these places make money from advertising, and no advertiser is going to pay you if you don't have any readers.
they can block whoever they want
No.
They can try to block whomever they want. That does not mean the same as saying they "can" block such people.
A number of simple workarounds exist, such as disabling referrers in your browser altogether; simply cutting-and-pasting the URL into your browser's URL bar; using a fake referrer that almost everyone accepts (such as Google); or my personal favorite, always use a page as its own referrer (I've seen a few sites the first two will break, and can imagine some that might block Google, but never a site that will block itself).
In any case, this has little to do with "can" and "cannot". It has to do with the very nature of the web, and the idea of fair-use. The web exists as links. Blocking some of them hurts everyone on the web, not just one or two sites. As for "unauthorized", sorry, but if you run a web site without some form of password protection, you have implicitly "authorized" the entire world to visit, like it or not.
I do need to question the sanity of a site, which derives its revenues from banner ad views, choosing to reduce the number of ad views. But that doesn't matter beyond "how stupid can people get?". Let them shoot themselves in the wallet, doesn't much matter to me. But preventing me from seeing their site, just because I only learned about it from a meta-news site? That I most certainly do care about!
You mean "libel." Slander is spoken, libel is written.
You are, of course, correct.
At any rate, I don't think they have libeled LinuxToday -- the claim that LT is not authorized to redistribute the content is not defamatory, it's merely incorrect.
CMP's statement implies that the content is beyond what would constitute fair use -- for otherwise, CMP would have no legal right to require 'authorization' its use.
Defamation usually requires that you know that the information is incorrect, and you intend to cause harm by publishing it.
From a legal standpoint, I'll refer to the University of Houston's web pages on "media libel."
"Actual Malice is what plaintiffs in the public eye have to prove in order to win a libel case. Actual malice is the act of publishing or broadcasting statements with prior knowledge of the inaccuracy of the statement or a reckless disregard for the truth."
The highlighting is mine. CMP's actions show a "reckless disregard for the truth" since LinuxToday has apparently been very careful to assure that their excerpts fall under fair use.
"Or when trying to get through to sites who have blocked access via Referrer from Slashdot."
:|
Until Slashdot starts doing the right thing when linking sites, this is a very bad idea. Why would a site block referrer from slashdot if not to avoid the DDOS attack? Yes, I'm sure there are other reasons, but I block slashdot referals because I don't want to have my site slashdotted, and all the problems that go along with it.
I welcome our new 99% overlords.