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No Linking To Japanese Newspaper Without Permission

Posted by timothy on from the thank-you-for-visiting dept.

stovicek writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica about the Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, or Nikkei (English language site, so far apparently unaffected): "Nikkei has taken efforts to preserve its paywall to absurd new levels: anyone wanting to link to the site must submit a formal application. [...] The New York Times, which reported on the new policy on Thursday, notes that the newspaper market in Japan is radically different from that in the US. Although some smaller outlets are experimenting with new ways of reaching readers, most papers require subscriptions to access online content, and the barriers have kept circulation of print editions quite high compared to the US. Nikkei management appears worried that links could provide secret passages to content that should be safely behind the paywall, and this fear has led to the new approval policy."

9 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. The difference is quality by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember when I was willing to shell out a few bucks a year for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, our American business paper. And then Rupert Murdoch bought it and turned it into Pravda with better paper.

    Now, I'm not saying that the Japanese Nikkei is any better (yes, I am), but you have to understand that in Japan there is a strict code of honor that everyone implicitly abides by. This is why there is so little petty crime and violence there compared to the U.S. It's also why people are willing to pay for music rather than download it. The penalty for disobedience and "going your own way" is social ostracization.

    So it makes sense in the Japanese worldview to demand a virtual face-to-face meeting in order to link to information and stories. The linker is a supplicant who must throw himself at the feet of the information "daimyo". To do any less would shame both the supplicant and the lord.

    I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's how it is over there. Over here, we're free to say stuff like "FIX YOUR FUCKING WEBSITE, YOU IDIOTS! IT'S BEEN BROKEN FOR HOURS!"

    1. Re:The difference is quality by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Yakuza is part and parcel of that code. It isn't an aberration at all. It is a product of the same culture that brings you pedophilia dressed up cartoon outfits, hugely xenophobic attitudes towards other races, hivemind-like business practices, a deep insecurity of own culture, the equating of product defects with moral defects, institutionalized misogyny, and widespread depression among males.

      It's a fucked up, oppressive culture that creates many terrible things, but at the same time many beautiful things. You can't separate the Yakuza from Japanese culture, just as you can't separate the geisha or sushi or cherry blossoms or Honda cars from it.

    2. Re:The difference is quality by russotto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      you just described my impression of america.

      Nice troll. America lacks almost completely the equating of product defects with moral defects. It lacks a deep insecurity of its own culture (quite the opposite, Americans take American culture so much for granted that many are often surprised when it doesn't exist elsewhere, and we export it without even trying) Institutionalized misogyny is largely absent; the places it holds out are generally places considered either morally suspect or low class or both (car sales, and particularly used car sales, being one such holdout.). Hugely xenophobic attitudes towards other races are held by a minority of the population, again usually not well-thought-of by the rest. Hivemind-like business practices? Uh, no. Even in the bad old days of legal cartels, there was nothing resembling a hive mind. Pedophilia dressed up in cartoon outfits? Again, no. So that leaves widespread depression among males. Judging from the drug commercials, I'd say you've got that one. One out of seven.... you must be European.

  2. Can't begin to compare by angus77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ummm..."the barriers have kept circulation of print editions quite high compared to the US"...? Circulation of papers in Japan has always been ridiculously higher in Japan than in the US. Some of those papers have daily circulations of eight figures---no American paper has ever achieved circulation figures like that, past or present. The local paper that I get (the Shizuoka Shinbun) has a daily circulation of over 700,000 (vs 900,000 for the New York Times), and it's not even read nationally like the Yomiuri, Mainichi, Asahi, Nikkei, etc.

  3. Nature of the beast by In+hydraulis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perhaps my understanding of the World Wide Web is flawed, naïve, or both, but I don't think it works this way.

    Wasn't one of the premises of the WWW to be able to hyperlink to anything you want, anything at all, and the underlying technology designed to reflect this idealogy?

    If I'm wrong, please educate me.

    1. Re:Nature of the beast by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's like it was when the internet was ruled by the techies. Now it's ruled by the beancounters.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Re:Let's write out the pseudocode... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where would you add the not? That code is messed up. If you do "is not Authorized", it is still broken as OurUrl = false, Authorized = true would still cause denialpage. And now I assume that if OurUrl is true then Authorized will be true too. Let me suggest:

    If (RefererURL is OurURL) or (RefererUrl is Authorized) then { show content; } else { show denialpage; }

    In this solution we avoid unnecessary negation and I would think this would be clear for all readers. A thing to note about this approach is that this is "deny by default". Alternatively:

    If (RefererURL is not OurURL) and (RefererURL is not Authorized) then { show denialpage; } else { show content };

  5. Re:Let's write out the pseudocode... by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a bigger bug than that: you can't trust the referrer. It's completely controlled by the browser, not the page the link was on. Users can easily set the referrer to any string they wish, e.g. with the RefControl extension for Firefox, which will happily set it to the address of the current page—or the home page of the site—by default.

    If you really want to know whether the user is authorized to view a page you need to track their session, either with (secure) cookies or (secure) URL parameters. Better yet, use standard Digest authentication and let the browser take care of the credentials. The referrer string has no place in a proper authentication protocol.

    --
    "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
  6. Not about technology. by v(*_*)vvvv · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nikkei has had many many failed internet ventures, and this is just another one of their bad ideas that passed through their over-aged internet-illiterate bureaucracy.

    I suspect this is more about politics within the market and about them preparing to strong arm those they think can be strong armed... It isn't like they're going to put up a notice, and sue all the referrers.

    In the old days, a ton of Japanese web sites would have "link free" or "links not permitted" notices on their sites. For some reason, many felt the web was linked with permission, and that they had a say. As if anyone could do anything about outside links, when I would tell them the internet was all about free linking, and that you wouldn't put pages up that you didn't want linked in the first place, people would seem to get the idea...

    This Nikkei thing is not about individuals linking to news articles. There site is practically unlinkable because they keep deleting stuff anyway.