Slashdot Mirror
That Link You Just Posted Could Cost You 300 Euros
Nate the greatest writes "Do you like to tweet or share links to interesting news articles? According to a coalition of Irish newspapers, that makes you a pirate. The National Newspapers of Ireland has adopted a new policy. Any website which links to one of the 15 NNI member newspapers will have to pay a minimum of 300 Euros, with the license fee going up if you post more links. Note that this is not a fee to post an excerpt or some punitive measure for the copying of an entire article. No, the NNI wants to charge for links alone. It's almost as if this organization has no idea how the web works. Or maybe they have found an elaborate way to commit suicide."
http://www.nni.ie/v2/broad/index.php
And yes, I'm truly an anonymous coward.
Anybody have a link to one of the 15 NNI member newspapers?
And since they're not just going after Google, they will be even faster to change their policy once they start sending out the license fee requests and actually get peoples' attention.
A newspaper (that depends on people reading it and it's website) punishing people for reading it or discussing it's stories via the internet and links. I can't see any flaws in this plan.
Company policy isn't law. Too bad for them at least.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
hahaha. ha. hahah. lol. haha hahaahahahahahhahhahhahhhahahahahhahahahahahahsahahahahhahahhahhahah
Google won't want to pay, so Google won't post a link to their sites. Ever. Anywhere.
them hundreds of times today?
This looks like a simple minded (Irish) way to get a lot of links posted for free. ... after a few drinks.
Being of Irish extraction (hence anonymous), I can understand how awesome this idea must have seemed
its linkable
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Someone will steal their Lucky Charms.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
A new kind of info terrorist on the web.
All the extra links will create a huge pagerank boost. That's worth quite a bit.
They must have some really top notch content if they are worried about linking with only the summary threatening their business. I typically read articles for the insight and interpretation (the why and the how), not just the details of what happened when and where.
If they are actually providing some deeper level content they should want anything that links to their site (drives traffic, ad revenue, etc). Unless of course it is behind a paywall...
Actually, that fee would end up coming from slashdot, if it were actually enforceable outside Ireland
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
about the NNI taking this action...
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1026/1224325733736.html
LOL.
The website for Women's Aid linked to stories on the newspaper's website mentioning Women's Aid, as if the news stories are some form of endorsement. Maybe that's what the newspapers are charging for. It is not the same like Google or blogs bringing visitors to the newspaper.
I once had a signature.
I'm just impressed they were able to sober up enough to write the stories in the first place. They must have rounded up all five sober people in Dublin to pull that off.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I didn't mean that the link would necessarily work. (Take you to content). Just that the act of linking to a published http url on on the world wide web must be considered a legal act.
The name "World Wide Web" implies this. This was the fundamental intent of the core technology that has enabled the mainstream and worldwide use of the Internet.
Either the web as a whole is illegal, or linking to whatever links are published must be legal. Anything else is not practically administrable, is prima face ridiculous, and must be considered a nullity by any competent legal jurisdiction.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This is all just a big ploy to get us to go to their publications websites and get us to link to them....earning them more clicks, page views etc.
We have all been duped!
Their next scheme: billboards covered with giant tarps. You have to pay them to unroll the tarp and show you the ad. Brilliant!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's like a car dealership sueing anyone that shares the street address of the car dealership.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
They clearly don't want to be in business anymore, and who are we to stop them? I wish them the greatest success in their... um... endeavours.
And bugger off dying dead tree industry.
If we all decide to boycot this nonsense and not visit their website at all. That will be 0 hits, 0 revenue. Catch my drift? Maybe they don't understand the "Inter" word in Internet.
The Consultation Paper, at page 48, briefly discusses the issue of linking and goes on to provide for a proposed amendment to existing copyright legislation to provide that the offering of a link on a page on the internet is not an infringement of copyright law. The underlying rationale set out by the Consultation Paper in this section is misconceived and we do not accept as being based on fact.
Section 6.3 of the Consultation Paper provides that Courts, (although it does not specify which Courts) are increasingly concluding that a link, by itself, should never be seen as a publication, reproduction or communication of the content to which it refers, even where that content is an infringement of copyright. The NNI takes serious exception to the statement included in the Consultation Paper that “the fact that links make access to that content straightforward does not change the reality that a link, by itself, is content neutral.” "
It is the view of NNI that a link to copyright material does constitute infringement of copyright, and would be so found by the Courts.
Just when you thought people couldn't get any stupider...
I did. They paid me big money for my services.
I basically told them that Minitel was a great idea in the wrong hands and that they could do it right. They are actually trying to create their own internet and they beleive in it.
-Dr. Clotaire Rapaille
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Depends where you look, google finds me various cases that win or lose.
I can see the validity in not wanting users to potentially completely circumvent their advertising, knocking off revenue, however don't some sites have advertisements for a discounted, for example, so you go to that product on it's site, have a look, then maybe see what else is on offer?
They are getting free advertising to some extent, and with users these days wanting minimal effort (would you rather copy and paste or search for the content, especially on a phone / tablet? I thought not..) they shouldn't be clamping down on a nation of speed readers..
I thought someone else linking to your content was a good thing, as it pushes business your way, free advertising and all.
"advertisements for a discounted product", blaming fatigue
The USPS has the facility for international money orders. (https://www.usps.com/shop/money-orders.htm) Handy when doing international business in small amounts. Otherwise, direct-wire transactions are available through most banks.
No, I don't get those link as clickable so I would have to cut and paste and no referrer from /. would be sent to their server.
It just made me think about a small script that would request their pages and fake referrers from various sites the attacker wishes to get into rouble with them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
It's almost as if this organization has no idea how the web works.
Wow, they sound like people from that old and expensive form of media.
You know, those things that are all dying out because they're no longer needed?
Hmm, what were they called again?
According to a coalition of Irish newspapers
Ohh, that's right, newspapers! Haha, man, that sure takes me back.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
If NNI went to war, this would be their weapon of choice
Any website?
1) Go onto each member of the cartel^H coalition's site . ...
2) Find therein a comment board and post a metric bucketload of links to all of the others.
3)
4) Eat popcorn.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I decided, having had a couple of stiff ones (drinks) this evening, to drop them a line via the website in an attempt to contribute a tiny amount of sanity and/or education.
Unfortunately I was told my email could not contain anything other then [0-9|a-z] IN THE BODY and due to my use of punctuation I was not allowed to email them. I was going to "correct" my correspondence, but the I thought "fuck it, I've got work tomorrow", and I have a glass of wine and 2/3 of a frankly very good cigar to do in.
If one argued that DNS is the root of all web links then perhaps that too should be removed. That would show them how to completely disconnect them from the web.
Who want to get excessive on their butts?
Because I download copyrighted material.
Sharing links is like sharing addresses. If I tell you that house on the corner of Main St. & Spring Ave is a crack house, did I break the law?
Just because you have a link to something doesn't mean you are going to use it. Or that what the link points to is actually even what it says it is, or is even still to a viable file.
Of course, most of us know that, but law makers don't seem to, and their lobbyist are probably paying them enough money not to care.
Be seeing you...
"Any website which links to one of the 15 NNI member newspapers will have to pay a minimum of 300 Euros"
They're completely clueless as to not just how the web works but how international law works. Most web sites are NOT in their jurisdiction. They can't enforce this. I would simply ignore them. And I would make a point of NEVER going to Ireland, etc so I'll never be in their jurisdiction. It's a filthy little country that my ancestors fled generations ago.
Maybe if Ireland just collected taxes from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and other internet firms that claim to be "arts" and locate themselves in Ireland, they wouldn't have to go after poor people to infill for rich people's tax avoidance?
Other nations have print media subsidies. Smart online papers provide buffered news service - realtime or developing to subscribers, time delayed or AP wire to non-subscribers. It's not hard.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That has nothing to do with Google, I heard on Onion News that Apple are rearranging geography to suit their maps.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is a shining example of why every effort must be made to shitcan any certified mental cases in positions of authority within your organization before it is too late.
It is ok to throw the ethics rulebook out the window without regard for who it may fall on if it gets the batshit crazy idiots in your company fired.
Well I'm going to post links to Irish newspapers and charge them $300 per click-thru. If they don't like it, they don't have to respond to HTTP requests with my referrer URL.
Oh, and I'm also hitting them with a one time € 1,000,000 idiot fine. Failure to pay fine will result in confiscation of all assets that belong to NNI, its members and their subsidiaries, as well as the personal property of all high-level executives working for same.
Making sh*t up is fun. Making legal sh*t up is fun and (given all the lawyers I see) very profitable.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
and sometimes I have sales. It turns out that most of my customers that come in during my sales heard about the sale by word of mouth.
How to I sue all those people infringing on my sale by telling others about it?
This space available.
If they don't want people linking to them, the should set up an Apache Redirect Rule for all Get Requests that have a Foreign site as the Referrer.
Silencing free speech and expression with lawsuits when you can easily curtail that behavior on your own should be seen as unconscionable and any such lawsuit dismissed, with any fees associated in the defense against those claims rewarded to the defendant.
Guess I'll just have to copy the content of the story and not link to them.
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
I have just started a policy that says if I link to a news site's article, they will need to pay *me* 300 euros with the fee going up for each click thru.
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your invoice # 88266 for the sum of 300 Euros.
This has been forwarded to our accounting department who have informed me that as of today, your account is now 30 Euro in debt, being calculated as follows:
Opening balance: 0.00
-
Your Inv# 88266: -300.00
Handling fee: 150.00
Processing fee: 120.00
Account setup fee: 60.00
-
Closing balance: 30.00
Please remit your payment for 30.00 Euro within 7 days to avoid legal action.
We thank you for your business and trust you will continue to trade with us.
Regards
F.U Assole
President, Don't Mess With Us Inc
Not being able to mention a movie (without a fee) to your friends so they can watch it too.
Isn't the whole point they want people reading web site?
This is seriously the newspaper industry shooting itself in the foot. Nobody reads the dead-trees editions, and they don't want people who think an article is interesting to let other people know they think it's interesting. They're simply going to drive themselves out of business.
Are those newspapers going to pay €300 to each of the sites that they link to? Or do they think that they should be specially privileged and allowed to charge outrageously without ever needing to let someone do it back to them?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I charge 3x that for any links I post having such restrictions.
Not a bad flamebait to get tons and tons of backlinks from outraged sites and raise their Google Pagerank and rank higher in the SERPS.
witold.org
Most of them don't even have an irish dedicated website. They are pathetic. It's like passing a decree that makes people owing me $300 if they ever whisper my name in their car. There. Be warned.
I am a Prince in Nairobi and we whispered your name in the limousine. We want to send you the money we owe you. Could you please send us your bank routing number and signature so we can do so?
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
What happens in Ireland, stays in Ireland, me lassie!
The G
Every time I read a story like this, I wonder if the person running their website is just really really good at search engine optimization.
"I couldn't pay people to link to my site, but if I tell people not to they're going to do it out of spite. More links to my site means higher search engine placement means more revenue for me."
Screw it. You don't want me to link to you? I won't. And I hope your site goes out of business.
It's not that irish or french people want this, only some lobby pushing for it, and some bad politics which follow... :)
Google news is free advertising for them and they didn't even understand that...
btw you're right, god doesn't exist
I'll just wget -r and link to a local copy of it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
... I gather Google are now going to de-list them from their index?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Link to an Irish newspaper? They needn't worry.
Serving Bandwidth costs money.
These newspapers may only want local populace who pay for the content.
It's kind of pointless to do this with international and national news as everyone will simply move on to another free source.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I almost feel bad about having left when I see posts like this. But there are no jobs at home, so the tradition of emigration continues. I don't remember /. being so damn racist though, jeez guys. Lucky charms and stupid drunkard jokes are so playschool.
You will certainly not fuck that up. Them, on the other hand, seem pretty intent on blowing the whole thing to bits.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Dear Sirs, While we do not plan any monetary compensation for the outgoing links to your website, we would be partial to a barter deal. In compensation to our linking of your web site, you may publish any number of full page ads for our web site in your newspaper, free of charge. :)
-----
Dear Sirs, Thank you for your kind offer to pay us for linking to your web site. While we often get requests from various parties to link to their web site, and while we understand that such links are valuable to you and help you increase your advertising revenue, we do not accept compensation for it as a matter of policy. Therefore we are happy to assure you we will continue to link you your site free of charge. We would however accept a token gift of appreciation, like a cake or flowers for our staff, if you wish to share a small part of the revenue you earned thanks to us.
-----
Dear Sirs, We have noted that you no longer wish to be linked from our web site. While we do not understand why you would want to decrease the number of visitors to your web site, it's your tree and feel free to hang yourself on it. We have removed all links in question and set up a filter to make sure we never link you again, and will recommend our business partners to do the same.
-----
The only problem is, which approach to choose
(not native speaker, sorry for clumsy english while trying to sound official)
The EU have been leading the march towards open linked data and the semantic web which makes this all the more surprising comming from Ireland.
To claim an underlying rationale is misconceived means nothing without the actual rationale. I have seen a lot of otherwise correct arguments made with misconceived rationale. So I see no problem with making the claim as you have quoted it.
The second bit is nitpicking on exactly which courts are being called out. Nonetheless, I think it is true to say, again without context, that this statement cannot be considered true: âoethe fact that links make access to that content straightforward does not change the reality that a link, by itself, is content neutral.â
Links are hardly content neutral as a blanket statement. A website with poor security, such as JavaScript which, when disabled, fails to protect the page - or a query string which permits access - can certainly be non-neutral.
The real argument here is specific to the definition of copyright in Irish law. If I link to your website, you own the copyright, and you are serving up the page. So you are the one making the copy - I am merely providing directions to people on how to request it. I quite obviously did not copy something without permission. So, on its face, a link to copyright material does not constitute infringement unless it is non-neutral (intending to bypass some security, for example).
The first argument is context dependent, and they left out the context. The second is inarguable except in certain contexts. The last is quite obviously incorrect as a generalization.
A deep link where they can buy a clue. URLs are in general neither copyrightable nor trademarkable, and if they wish to limit what visitors can see on their web pages, there are many ways to do so, such as having your web server check the REFERER value, which was designed for applications such as this, or having it check for appropriate cookies.
I seem to remember that one news site told Google to stop indexing their web server, so Google did. Traffic dropped off radically; I forget if they'd notified Google via robots.txt (so they could fix it themselves once they realized what a mistake they'd made), or it they'd used some kind of Stupid Lawyer Tricks, in which case they'd have had to ask Google nicely to start indexing them again.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks