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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.
Google won't want to pay, so Google won't post a link to their sites. Ever. Anywhere.
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
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
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 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.
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! --