Slashdot Mirror
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.
No more slashdot effect once evryone realises you can block us?
How many computers are too many?
The cynic within immediately asks 'who gains ?' from reducing the number of users on your site by denying traffic from what is essentially a free referral service. It doesn't seem to make any sense... If the story was being copied verbatim, and the source-site was losing ad revenue then there's just cause to block the copying site, but in this case Linux Today is only posting excerpts containing links ...
So, what gain can there be ? Does the process of having an outcry against you, then acquiescing to public demand (becoming a 'good guy' again) give you a sufficiently high profile that it's worth losing some page-views temporarily ? I think that it might....
Simon the cynic.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Most people with something to say dream of being slashdotted. Yes, your server melts and your pipes burn, but it's worth it to get 100,000 geeks talking about your project.
So, which brilliant head of marketing thought "hey, they're linking to our pages, giving us free publicity... the bastards, block 'em!"
Good job, Jimmy!
ROTFL.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
My advertisers certainly won't be happy that all these people are seeing their ad via a link to my hit story. I'd better cut them off, and fast!
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
I see this all the time when people want to stop "leeching." Clearly this isn't a "leeching" situation, but rather a "deep linking" situation, but isn't it the right of the site-op to just redirect referrers from outside?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
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!
They said they wanted to respect bluh bluh, but if they wanted to these types of blocks can by bypassed by opening a new browser window using JavaScript and going to the site in those.
Slashdot should also be taking note of this, I relised this could happen a few months ago.
This kind of silent blocking of a referrer does nothing but hurt the blocking site. If their point was that they dont want their material reproduced on another site, this block doesn't stop that - actually it encourages more if it since the site in question cant link to the original material. They are well within their rights but it doesnt seem like a very good strategy for a company who depends so much on the internet community.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Just Click Here
Is Slashdot also blocked as referral?
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=18400894
How ironic, they block LinuxToday to keep the traffic down, then they get slashdotted because of it, heh.
We've (well, many others and I) have always said that if you don't want people linking to you, configure your web server to block it -- it's not difficult. CMP has done this.
But even though they have the right to do something, that doesn't mean that they should. I don't know anymore more about this story than the LinuxToday editorial, but after reading it, I definately believe that LinuxToday did nothing wrong (what they did certainly does fall under the category of `Fair Use'), and reacted accordingly when they discovered the block -- except that I saw no mention of CMP being contact. Perhaps they were contacted and it just didn't make it into the editorial, but if not, they should have been. It could have just been a misunderstanding or misconfiguration, though the message seen does suggest otherwise.
I predict that CMP will change their configuration shortly, probably due in large part to the LinuxToday editorial and this /. article. We'll see if I'm right ...
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.
Edit user.js and add/change
user_pref("network.http.sendRefererHeader", 0);
No more referers sent.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
2. Set 'network.http.sendRefererHeader' to 0
3. Enjoy.
This simply kills off the referer tag from being sent and lets you through. While it's very unlikely this will cause problems, some web sites might not work w/o the tag.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I swear that some of these kinds of decisions are made by people with grilled cheese for brains.
It is unfathomable to me that someone would block incoming traffic to an article on their website. Maybe redirect the visitor to the home if it's that necessary to force people to come in through the "front door," as it were, but to make the visitor feel like he's intruding somehow... that just seems pretty dumb to me.
Website operators need to think about how what they do is perceived by visitors, the same way hotel operators and shopping mall operators think about it. Don't make visitors feel unwelcome, for Pete's sake!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
The referrer field is, especially when it is used to act against my interest (by blocking access to something), my own browser being hostile toward me. Without the active participation of my _own_ browser, they would not be able to block me from accessing the site. This is on the level of DRM, and ought not be acceptable in the free software world.
Now, in mozilla you can turn of referrer all together, but that is not good enough, because then they can simpyl start blocking access to deep pages when there is no referrer (this will create problems for instance for emailed links, but I know some sites do it (porn...)).
So mozilla needs to go further to assist it's users, rather than be party restrictions on them. My software should serve me, and me alone. Here is what it needs:
- Always set "Referrer" to the root of the host.
- Always set "Referrer" to one directory above the current page.
- And, most importantly, support for an html extension where the "a" tag (or any other, now that other things can be links) has a parameter that tells the browser referrer to use. So that Mozilla could be set to respect links like this:
<a href="http://slashdot.org" referrer="http://www.google.com">
and then set the HTTP referrer field accordingly. That way the browser would not betraying me my providing the source of my link to the destination site, so that they can use it against me.
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.
= 9J =
It's well known that the #1 factor in the Google PageRank sorting routine is the count of links to your page from sites that have no relation to you. Therefore, blocking other site's refererals will just lead to them not to linking you, and your placement in Google to drop.
Power to the Peaceful
The Referer header is what I consider to be one of the worst parts of HTTP. Alhough there are a few sites that require it for operation, I have rarely encountered any troubles simply not sending one. I believe it is considered somewhat "unclean" to send a bogus HTTP Referer header (such as the / of the dest server), so it might be better to simply disable it altogether.
The Links web browser has the builtin ability to set the Referer to a static value, the page being requested, or not send it at all. I have been referer-free for quite some time, previously with a proxy server, and now with links.
I would advise people to consider whether or not they want the administrators of every web server they visit to find out how they got there (including web searches and privately-hosted HTTP servers).
Privoxy. It works on MacOS X, Windows, Linux, etc.
3. Counterintuitive. Next thing they will do is to is to stop referrals from directories, google, and personal bookmarks, in fact, from any referers from outside their own domains. If they want this they would be better publishing in another media, NOT in the www where linking is one of the basis.
But even if it is intentional, it is totally within their rights to set up their servers any way they see fit.
Closed archives, copyrighted databases, blocking "unauthorized" traffic, ... Sir Tim, all this does not have 'semantic' writ all over. Our condolences.
Forgive them, for they know not...
668.5
Most of us aren't discussing whether they can, we're discussing whether they ought to.
On the other hand, some websites that don't like deep linking will only show you their deeper pages if you DO have a REFERER set from one of their other pages - so you have to go in through the front door. That's one reason you might not want to block REFERER permanently.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think by cut'n'paste he meant the URL not the contentt, as in the user can copy/paste the link to get to the site. (A URL that is copy/pasted will have no referer [sic])
While it's very unlikely this will cause problems, some web sites might not work w/o the tag.
Actually, quite a few use this as leech-protection, in order to prevent external direct links to downloads. Privoxy does this the smart way - it forges a referrer header from whatever site you're loading. If I follow a link to say, CNN, they will see "www.cnn.com" as the referrer.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
(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.
Yes, they can block who they want, but they don't have a right to determine who will have fair use rights. The message that they displayed was "Unfortunately, we cannot satisfy this particular request because it comes from a source that is not authorized to redistribute our content..." That implies that LinuxToday was violating CMP's copyright (because CMP has no legal right to decide who is 'authorized' to make fair-use excerpts. Thus, CMP has slandered LinuxToday.
On a wider scale, we have seen large corporate entities go to great lengths to prevent fair use. The RIAA and MPAA have redefined fair use and put copy protection into place to prevent fair use copying and backup. Broadcasters will have a "flag" in HDTV broadcasts that tells digital recording devices whether a broadcast can be recorded. Software companies have long fought against fair use. I just bought Unreal Tournament 2004. It uses a form of copy protection and, on top of that, requires that a "Play CD" be in the drive. You can't back up that CD using normal methods and you're hosed if it gets damaged or lost. (There were cracks out the next day, but 99% of people will never know about the cracks.)
We need laws protecting fair use before large corporations effectively quash it. Should CMP be allowed to "punish" a site for exercising their fair use rights to excerpt? I see both sides of this one, but, given the big picture of corporations deciding to prevent fair use, I have to side with LinuxToday.
...could that be developed into a generic anti-slashdotting? I.e. you simply keep count of the referrers, which you got spare power to do before the real crunch starts... if load gets too high, issue static pages to the top referrer(s).Hmm 30secs of thinking, but it definately sounds patentable :D.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
... damn! I forgot that all the subscriptions I have for them are free.
You know, you probably could reduce your slashot referal traffic to almost nil just by taking it out of your sig, instead of blocking it. Besides, with a tagline like "Free Porn", I was rather assuming that you made your money off banners rather than subscriptions.
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.
True, unless they block anything that wasn't refered from one of their own pages. (Weird, but possible.) As for the "repost of article text" type cut'n'paste, it's sad when someone does that with a major news site, even posted as an anonymous coward to avoid karma. They're damned unlikely to be slashdotted and newspapers and writers are still going through legal fights over web and archive rights, so they're touchy about the subject.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
FWIW, here's the URL for Xitami. It's a free web server for win32 and it works rather well (including a web-based configuration interface).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
1. $
2. $
3. ???
4. $$$$$
Infuriate left and right
If everyone mirrored/posted links to mirrors more often perhaps the /. effect wouldn't be nearly as harsh and sites wouldn't take to drastic measures to try to keep their sites going.
Mirroring a site without written permission from the copyright holder(s) is a clear violation of copyright, while simply linking to the site is not. My bet is that if LinuxToday had mirrored the articles they'd be looking at a lawsuit from CMP instead of just being blocked. Mirrors just aren't a practical solution against a slashdotting under the current circumstances because there's no real time to get the required permission to set them up.
In Opera, You can toggle the sending of the Referrer Header at any time.
Use the quick menu: Just hit F12, then 'f'. (on v6.03 at least)
I can see lots of uses for this. You can use this to hide where you're coming from, such as clicking on info links from BitTorrent repositories of questionable nature. Or when trying to get through to sites who have blocked access via Referrer from Slashdot.
From the online docs:
"
Disabling referrer logging
Do you want Opera to send information referring to the page from where the document or picture was requested?
If you enable this option in File > Preferences > Privacy, Web servers can store information about the site that you last visited before you jumped to the current one. This allows webmasters to analyze how people find their way to his website.
Disable this option if..."
[Remainder of text deleted to fit within fair-use guidelines. Ahem.]
It would wreak havoc on the spirit of the internet to have user-definable Referrer fields, though...
-j.
If you assume the only reasons for a Corporation (or Government) to not do something is politics or money the answer becomes (IMHO) a bit clearer
Since news of this blocking will spread amongst the Linux websites, it can't be providing good politics for TechWeb (I assume this to be source of the linked article). Advertisers will question why traffic is purposely being blocked and will reduce their custom accordingly.
The only remaining possiblity is that UBM Plc (the parent parent company) thinks that there's money in this scheme.
There are three methods of obtaining revenue from a news website. The first is selling advertisments (and the registration information if any). The referral blocking has effectively ruled this out as a method here.
The remaining methods, subscription and reselling, might be the answer. UBM resells its news stories through B2B channels
PR Newswire provides comprehensive communications services for public relations and investor relations professionals....news and information distribution to global audiences, and communications monitoring and measurement.
(I would link, but it's framed and hidden, it comes from the UBM plc website). They also claim to be the leading US B2B media company.
Taken the path of least intelligence. The reason LinuxToday was blocked is either the CMP wire customers are complaining or some CMP subscription service is suffering because of the ease of getting the information via a 3rd party aggregator. Why 'pay' for access to the NY Times and the Washington Post when Google will aggregate the important stories for you?
It could of course be more complicated, involving low click-through rates or ad-impressions for LT referrals, but the blocking message implies there are 'authorised redistributers' of the content.
bb
Just so nobody is misled by your "entertainment publishing company" comment, here is a list of CMP Media's print rags (copy/pasted from their web site):
Bank Systems & Technology
BioMechanics
C/C++ Users Journal
Call Center
CMP Books
Communications Convergence
CRN
DB2 Magazine
Diagnostic Imaging
Diagnostic Imaging Asia Pacific
Diagnostic Imaging Europe
Diagnostic Imaging SCAN
Dr. Dobb's Journal
DV Magazine
EE Times
Embedded Systems Programming Magazine
Game Developer
Geriatric Times
InformationWeek
Insurance & Technology
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine
MSDN Magazine
Network Computing
Network Magazine
Optimize
Psychiatric Times
Software Development
SysAdmin
Technology & Learning
Transform Magazine
VARBusiness
Wall Street & Technology
Windows Developer Network
Xtreme Video
Several of which many SlashDot'ers probably read.
From time-to-time, I've gotten several of them. CMP is decidedly uneven -- some of their rags are good, some are woefully clueless. My personal assesment is that their management is mostly clueless, except for being able to sell advertising and bring those dollars to the bottom line.
So, while I agree with "I'd be worried, except that it is CMP media"... I think your characterization of them as entertainment media needs to be clarified as the sarcasm that it is.
In any case, their "please don't send me traffic" attitude is clueless.
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 know what would be a great plugin for mozila.
To make the referer the actual link that you are going to, ie, if i clink on foo.com on slashdot make the referer foo.com in mozilla errr firebird errr firefox errr anything else they might like to rename their fine product too.
You mean copyright infringment. Theft is criminal law, publising someone elses paper without permission is civil law.
The Mozilla PrefBar has a configurable checkbox option for sending referers.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
I don't know about the rest of ya'll but this really doesn't surprise me in the least given my experience with them. I subscribe to Sysadm Mag. Ever since I subscribed I've been getting spam for all their other magazines. The spam always comes from email-publisher.com, better known as the spammers at topica.com. Why CMP is using a known spammer's services I have no idea. I've tried unsubscribing to no avail. If it wasn't for Sysadm Mag and a few of their other nice mags I'd tell them to stick it.
Only when those people are in your website contents demograph. Having a bunch of people visiting with little or no interest in your product or your advertisers is just wasted bandwidth. Sure, there is such a thing as "general" advertising that can make some money from almost anyone - it's called hit the monkey, you've won $1000, and nude girls here. However last time I checked this kind of advertising didn't give enough of a return to fund anything more then cheap porn sites and other zero content redirectors. Would Slashdot stay in business if you directed everyone in South Africa to visit every few days using some sort of public terminal? Unlikely, since a billion or so hits in bandwidth usage from 3rd world people wouldn't be very useful to advertisers selling servers, caffine beverages, and girls who pretend to be dating you.
The problem is that then you get web designers sitting down and thinking "Should I really worry about catering to these bastards using Firefox? They avoid looking at my pop-up ads, most of them block my banners after the first time through, and I can't even get referrer data from them. I'll focus on IE users -- they're easier to deal with."
May we never see th
I've ignored these guys since.
iksrazal
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." Stephen Hawking
Send them this in your fake header, should give them something to worry about at their monthly web strategy meeting =)
c lient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=disgusting+filthy+goat+s ex
Referer:http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=nav
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
" Defamation usually requires that you know that the information is incorrect, and you intend to cause harm by publishing it."
Well the harm here is very real and I'm not so sure intent to harm need be proven. The content of the refusal page strongly imples that the linker has done something roguish and has attempted to violate their intellectual property rights. Below is a fair use excerpt of CMP's blocking page:
"Unfortunately, we cannot satisfy this particular request because it comes from a source that is not authorized to redistribute our content. Thank you for helping us protect our intellectual property."
Nonetheless, I'm sure this CMP will reverse this foolhardy decision, once they notice the blinky lites in their server farm aren't blinking so much anymore and as their advertisers start clammoring for make good ads to offset the reduced traffic. This is just the kind of issue that will lead to a mushrooming boycott by their primary target audiences and make CMP an overnight Internet pariah.
I went to the articel url posted in the comments here, and at the bottom of the page I noticed a link saying "Licence this Article". Clicking it provides a pop-up window which lets me get a "Quick Price" (SM?) on how much I should pay for re-distributing the article. If I want to link to the article from my corporate or academic website, the cost is $2.50. If I want to email a link to the article to one friend, the price is $5.00. This despite the fact that there's a link at the top of the article which apparently lets you email it for free. This service is provided to CMP Publishing by an outfit calling itself the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. They are at www.copyright.com. *Sigh*
/.ing them sends exactly the wrong message. You want them to see a sharp reduction in traffic to all CMP sites and reduced readership for their dead tree publications as well:
Bank Systems & Technology
BioMechanics
C/C++ Users Journal
Call Center
Communications Convergence
CRN
DB2 Magazine
Diagnostic Imaging
Diagnostic Imaging Asia Pacific
Diagnostic Imaging Europe
Diagnostic Imaging SCAN
Dr. Dobb's Journal
DV Magazine
EE Times
Embedded Systems Programming Magazine
Game Developer
Geriatric Times
InformationWeek
Insurance & Technology
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine
MSDN Magazine
Network Computing
Network Magazine
Optimize
Psychiatric Times
Software Development
SysAdmin
Technology & Learning
Transform Magazine
VARBusiness
Wall Street & Technology
Windows Developer Network
Xtreme Video
If you are looking to obscure your link, you can visit almost any popular site and repurpose their own redirection script. Almost all sites have this, for example, want to visit slashdot and have the referrer come from Google? Just use
THIS (http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.msn.com)
This won't work if the site is restricting referrals to its own hosts, but otherwise it can obfusicate the referer.
Mirroring a site without written permission from the copyright holder(s) is a clear violation of copyright
shh don't tell Google, or Archive.org who both do just that, unless i "opt out" with my robots.txt
you know what would be a great plugin for mozila.
Privoxy does this, and it's pretty handy. As a webmaster, I hate it (seeing how users navigate around helps me improve the site), but as a user, I like hiding my referer [sic], because I know as a webmaster I point and laugh at the wacky search terms people use.
Here, lemme demonstrate... in the past 24 hours, I've gotten hits from "why I like cooking", "how do i get interested in stuff", and "how do you spell fiance". (Yeah, ask.com always gets the best Stupid User Queries. I should go see if they run a ticker like Google does (used to?))
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
(1) If you can't afford to pay, then don't play. Isn't this what bandwidth caps are for? What about the back up plan for those sites that can't handle the traffic but need to be up? Sounds like poor planning to me.
(2) News sites like CMP are mostlikely ad revenue driven as is evidenced from their pages which are chock full of ads. They are also trying to sell you a subscription to their print edition and get you to sign up for newsletters, etc. Blocking people from coming to this site because they are "not authorized redistributors" is a demonstration of a fatal missunderstanding of how the internet works. Once a person puts up a web page, they have published information for the general public to consume. Trying to limit that based upon "authorization" is wrong. A link is not a redistribution of the content, anymore than someone telling you about a great book that they read. If links are redistributions of content, then the whole of the internet is likely to be in violation of the Copyright Laws under the Berne Convention.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons