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.
hahaha. ha. hahah. lol. haha hahaahahahahahhahhahhahhhahahahahhahahahahahahsahahahahhahahhahhahah
Google won't want to pay, so Google won't post a link to their sites. Ever. Anywhere.
Someone will steal their Lucky Charms.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Company policy isn't law.
Maybe in Ireland. Wait till the Americans get the same idea.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
Its definable, not necessarily linkable, beyond the domain name.
Its pretty trivial to make a dynamic website, for the sake of example, moronirishnewspaper.com and all the links on that are random numbers which are mapped to the the real story. Then every minute or whatever add new links and destroy the links that are more than 30 minutes old. So MIN.com/123456.html points to the most recent blarney competition, but in an hour, that URL will be deleted and/or repointed to goatse or whatever instead of the original story.
One amusing thing you can do, if you rotate every minute and keep the last 60 links around for an hour, is trivially analyze how long someone's been on the site and/or how long between clicks. You can also get all "top sekrit" security by obscurity and give different random number links to each subscriber, so if you see a link out in the wild, you know exactly who released it and when and what it was linked to. Other than that, it is a pretty moronic stunt or experiment. Why yes, I have done some pretty bizarre things solely for the F of it in the past 20 years.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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?
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.
I think you're trying too hard. All you have to do is replace the site with a Flash applet. Or for extra awesomeness, use Java instead. Now the only functional hyperlinks will be to the main page that loads the applet, which will load their content cover page, and all article content is accessed there, within the applet. Plus since the content won't be searchable, the won't have to worry about Google and friends providing links directly to their site.
Or they can just do what brain-dead mobile site developers do and redirect all incoming links that don't have a referrer of their own site back to the home page.
End of Line.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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
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'!"
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?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
This is even worse than trying to claim that "you told John Smith where the infringing files are and therefore you are guilty of copyright infringement too." This is them saying "you told John Smith how to legally access our files (which we serve up), therefore you are guilty of copyright infringement." At least with the first example, there's primary infringement to base a claim of secondary infringement on. It's wrong, but there's at least a line of reasoning there. This is claiming secondary copyright infringement when no primary copyright infringement exists.
Using your crack house metaphor, it would be like a police officer arresting you for directing John Smith to a crack house on Main Street and Spring Avenue when it is a perfectly legal residence or store and neither you or John Smith insinuated it was a crack house. But because an address theoretically could be a crack house's address, all addresses are illegal to give out.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.