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Online Publisher Blocks LinuxToday Referrals

Posted by timothy on from the right-to-free-linkage dept.

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?"

6 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Why bother by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What does denying links achieve? The web is great because it is just that. Start blocking links and it will start to fall apart.

  2. What is going on .... by sygin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  3. Re:Generally most sites welcome incoming traffic by k_head · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  4. Re:its thier site by MRK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, but it is

    1. counterproductive, since they're just refusing traffic. AFAIK linuxtoday wasn't publishing a copy (which I could see being argued as theft ... but besides which this tactic wouldn't have worked against either), but posting a link to information week's article

    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.

  5. Re:Why? by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Does This Mean.... by svanstrom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

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    perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'