Re: Linking to other's pages

[Walt Tucker <walt_tucker -at- MENTORG -dot- COM>]

I didn't come in on this thread until now.  However, I found the information
below interesting for a few reasons:

  -- Paul Allen owns Ticketmaster
  -- Paul Allen was co-founder of Microsoft (along with Bill Gates)
  -- Paul Allen and Bill are still buddies
  -- Paul Allen owns the Portland Trailblazers (scratch that one.  It
             has nothing to do with this thread) :-)

It wouldn't, therefore, surprise me to see a bunch of self-promoting
cross links between the tickmaster site and Microsoft.  Not to say that
Bill and Paul aren't both businessmen, but I can't imagine they are taking
this too seriously.

I do like the ticketmaster site, though.  Very comprehensive. It looks like
something Paul Allen would put together.

-- Walt

> Arlen said in part:
>
> Microsoft's "Seattle Sidewalk" contains links to Ticketmaster's on-line
> ticket ordering site for specific concerts. Ticketmaster has a site with
> information about the concerts it sells tickets for. Ticketmaster didn't
> like the fact that people were getting their concert information from MS.
> (At a guess, I'd say it might be because of lost advertising revenue, but
> I'm not fully aware of the circumstances here, so I could be wrong.)
>
> Ticketmaster wanted MS to pay them a royalty for the privilege of linking
> into their service. MS declined. So now Ticketmaster is feeding the
> referring page reference through a filter on its end and rerouting all
> referrals from "Seattle Sidewalk" to a page explaining their position on
> this matter, telling the user essentially "you can't get here from there."
> (I believe the phrase they're using is "the sidewalk has come to a dead
> end.")
>
> It's an interesting issue, but whether you agree with Ticketmaster's
> position is not the question. Even if you think they're behaving like
> morons, they have a right to behave like morons. The idea we should take
> away from this story is this: it's time to recognize that it's a Good Thing
> to get permission for those links after all. The technology is there to
> greatly inconvenience your audience (and harm your site's image and
> utility) if you don't. And as more sites become ad-supported, this
> phenomena may soon become the norm, rather than an aberration. Ticketmaster
> has given the tube a good squeeze; the toothpaste won't go back in readily.

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