New Orbitz Terms Prohibit Inbound Deep Linking

chekovma writes "Orbitz has announced a new set of Terms and Conditions that take effect March 12th which require anyone who uses their website (creates an account there) to follow strict inbound linking rules. These rules prohibit a user from creating even a plain text link to orbitz.com without first notifying them and require a user to take down such a link at their desire. It also disallows any deep linking -- meaning even this post violates those terms and conditions."

Comments

Too much of something good?

[peterdaly]

Generally I think their idea may be good, but maybe taken too far and/or poorly executed.

Here's why:
Orbitz is a travel site for purchasing tickets, etc. The price and availability of these things changes constantly. Additionally, I would bet they may run into customer service problems if too many people are all trying to view and/or book the same flights at the same time. The system is really designed to be a point in time quote system. The problem comes when someone does a deep link, to a quote for example. Chances are if a link is posted on the web (or sent through email), the page the new visitor sees may be different from the page/price/availability the creator of the link saw.

That all being said, there are technical means to reduce, if not eliminate this problem. Could be they are implementing a technical solution, and are putting this in the TOS so they have something to point to when deep links suddenly stop working and customers complain.

PR wise they could have done this better, but I bet they never thought a place like this would publicize a TOS change.

On the other hand, I could be all wrong about their motives. :-)

-Pete

We wouldn't have much of this problem if ...

[Skapare]

We wouldn't have much of this problem if browsers didn't send the HTTP "Referer" header that gave away the URL that linked to them. So I say let's cut this header out. They don't need to be tracking where we have visited before, anyway. And besides, that header name is misspelled.

And while you're at it, cut out the HTTP "User-Agent" header. With web standards, there's no longer any need for this, either. That will stop the practice of favoring certain browsers.

"Don't Link to Us!"

[geegs]

Although no longer updated, David E Sorkin's Don't Link to Us! page is still relevant.

A page like that could be useful for shaming companies into improving their linking policies.