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Deeplinking Prohibited by Indian Court
Anonymous Coward writes "The Delhi High Court recently passed a temporary injunction restraining India Jobs Search Engine Bixee.com from linking to Naukri.com. This is the first case of its kind in India. There have been similar cases before in the US (Ticketmaster vs Microsoft), Denmark, Australia and Germany before. Wikipedia has a detailed article on the "deeplinking" issue."
Don't you love how slashdot provided a link to the anonymous coward's email right there in the headline? On this article it might not matter so much, but if it was a chinese citizen posting about a chinese rights article, it might matter. Way to go, slashdot.
SecureThe.Net - Practical Resources for Securing Systems
If you don't want someone on your website, you put a password on it. If you don't want someone on your wireless network, you put up some barrier. This has been the standard behavior on the network forever, and works pretty well. Open unless locked. Websites are like stores in downtown Manhattan, people assume you're open and try to walk in. If you're closed, you put a lock on the door so that people know what your policy is.
Why is it, then, that people who don't want deep linking on their sites don't simply use the Referer ID to determine where the person came from, and block out those who didn't come from the current site? Technologically speaking, it is a very simple trick that has been used for years on smaller sites here and there, and larger sites to prevent direct linking to images. From a scripting standpoint it is trivial to look at the referer id and redirect to the home page if it didn't originate on the serving site. It is as easy to do, as finding someone's IP address, yet the people who care don't seem to care enough to do it.
You don't solve a technological problem through legislation. You especially don't change standard network behaviors on a case-by-case basis through legislation. And quite frankly you don't voluntarily venture onto a network with certain standard behaviors and then complain to the feds about them. "Oh look, my mobile network line allows for incoming calls. Boo Hoo Hoo, Uncle Sam protect me."
The ______ Agenda
http://www.efytimes.com/fullnews.asp?edid=9018
It appears that Bixee.com is an aggregator site for job searches, but Naukri is stating that "when [Bixee.com's] website becomes popular and gains a large number of hits, the necessity to access the plaintiff's website would be obviated."
That doesn't make any sense. Aggregators can't survive without the sites that they aggregate. Most aggregator sites won't ever choose to become content providers, because of the resources that this would entail.
Aggregators have positive and negative effects on the sites they aggregate, but it would be counter-productive for them to make the sites themselves unnecessary.
two notes about spoofing the referID
one: its easy BUT you have to use command line programs (wget) or plugins, in other words you have to delibertly set out to fool the content provider.
two: becuase note one takes effort you can pretty much guaranty 99% of you visitors will not employ it (of course there are execptions).
So as long as nothing mission critical needs protecting then checking referID is a good thing for websites to employ, just do not rely on it 100%.
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
This is an important topic, but the /. article doesn't include a link to any report. So it should not have been posted.
With a link it's news (and in this case news that would matter). Without it it's just hearsay.
...someone already updated the Wikipedia entry to include this story.