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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.
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.
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.
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.
Interesting. You jump all over everyone for speculating about why InformationWeek would be blocking links from LinuxToday. Then in the very next sentence, you make the unsubstantiated assertion that IW must have tried to contact LT before setting up the block, and make a bunch of uninformed speculations about why the e-mail didn't get through.
Here's what we do know:
1: Links from LT to stories on IW result in a message about unauthorized content distribution.
2: Many online publishers consider deep linking a form of copyright violation.
3: #1 is precisely what one would expect to happen when a publisher from #2 decides to act upon that belief.
4: Referrer blocks don't just set themselves up.
The people at LT are still investigating why it happened, and they haven't ruled out an error. But from the evidence gathered so far, it doesn't look like an error; it looks like a shortsighted attempt by the publisher to control how its content is distributed.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!