Re: legality of web links to articles?

[Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- jci -dot- com]

>WEll, what do you do about sites that explicitly say that you can't link
>or, if you do, then you have to ask?

Microsoft and Ticketmaster got into a squabble over that as well. In this
case it was the fact that MS provided a link into TicketMaster, rather than
a link to their front page, which then deprived TicketMaster of advertising
revenue and traffic numbers for its opening page.

The best case is if they say don't link, then don't. Doesn't matter whether
you have the right to do it or not. Doesn't matter if it goes against your
private definition of the web, either. There's a little thing called
"courtesy" that should come into play. If someone says "please don't" and
you do it anyway, at the very least you're being rude and arrogant. You
could be costing them money, either in terms of lost ad revenue, or in
terms of making them pay a higher charge because of traffic to the site.
(More traffic is not *always* a Good Thing. Sites have collapsed under the
flood after being slashdotted.)

>The WEB was conceived primarily for commerce;

Ooops. That one's so far wrong it hurts. The web was conceived as a way for
Physicists and other scientists to share information electronically. Just
ask Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who created it while working at a Eurpoean
high-energy physiscs lab. The business folks, as is their wont, only hopped
on the bandwagon after it started drawing a crowd.

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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Opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
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