Blogspace vs. NPR

jonkl writes "National Public Radio's linking policy at npr.org has caused a fuss within the blog community that's hot and getting hotter. The policy's simply stated in two sentences: 'Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. If you would like to link to NPR from your Web site, please fill out the link permission request form.' This is buried, of course, in a page linked to the site's footer, but somebody noticed and mentioned it to Howard Rheingold, who passed it on to Cory Doctorow of boingboing.net. Cory wrote scathing commentary, calling the policy 'brutally stupid,' even 'fatally stupid.' The outrage is spreading; this has to be a rough day for the NPR ombudsman who's deluged with email by now... ~24 hours after Cory's report." Reminds of the KPMG policy.

linking?

[Principito]

Did we (slashdot) ask permission to link [npr.org]

Ah, and we'll make it better

[bsdfish]

So we'll /. NPR and thus demonstrate to them that linking really *is* harmless, right?

Hey, you violated their policy!

[phong3d]

I hope you filled this [npr.org] out before deep linking to their site.

Wait... I just deep linked to a link prohibiting deep links! Ack! My brain!

Freedom of Speech

[tswinzig]

This is clearly a case of freedom of speech. Let's see NPR try to bring charges against someone for linking to their site. It'll be laughed out of court. It's a basic right for someone to be able to publish publically available information, such as a universal resource locator.

Just ask 2600.

whoops

Re:bad news for the Internet?

[Waffle Iron]

After all, it's their site, so they make the rules.

But hyperlinks are one-directional pointers from other sites. Why do they get to dictate which pointers other people choose to put in their sites?

If they want control over incoming links, they should create their own text markup language, network protocol and browsers that only support bidirectional linking. They can publish their site on their new network and link up with like-minded content providers. Who knows, it could be the killer app of the new millenium. (But I doubt it.)

Re:Why oh why?

[hagardtroll]

Why don't this just do away with their domain name npr.org and have everyone visit them with via their IP address instead. No use making it easy for anyone.

Revenge..

[sporty]

The perfect revenge is to put up a website explaining your policies about requiring permission to sending you cookies to your browser.

Secondly, send a cease-and-decist letter to npr.org to stop setting cookies while you browse their site.

Maybe then they'll learn, that if you put information free to the public, without authentication, what the hell are they to expect?

Re:Why oh why?

[_Sprocket_]

...They don't want to allow someone to link directly to their content because this basically gives away for free the very thing that they're selling.

...you view their ads on the intermdiate pages (the pages that get skipped when someone deep links to an article). The transaction may not involve any money, but it's still a transaction and one that deep linkers invalidate by making it worthless to the seller (npr).

This could otherwise be summed up as a "failure to understand the environment you operate in" and thus a "flawed business model".

My Letter to NPR

[BitHive]

Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:26:45 -0700
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Link Permission Request

Hello,

It is trivial to tell your webserver to check the referring page of a
visitor. If the visitor is referred to npr.org from an address that is
*not* npr.org, you can deny them access, or redirect them to a page
explaining why npr.org does not allow hyperlinks.

While this is really lame, it would address your bandwidth cost concerns
without resorting to such ineffectual assertions that linking is
"prohibited". That's wishful thinking.

Love,
Jason

Re:Why oh why?

[Eponymous, Showered]

Calling NBC competition for NPR is like calling triple fudge ice cream competition for a nice salmon steak with steamed asparagus and new potatoes. Depends on how you define competition, I suppose.

Re:Why oh why?

[sgage]

Well, both the ice cream and the salmon will make a turd.

Dear NPR...

[Erotomek]

I just can't wrap my brain around something like this. What is the point of being on the web if you don't want people to visit your site? Provided, you actually want people to visit your site, don't you want to get your information out to as many as possible?

Dear NPR [npr.org],
oh, sorry!
Dear NPR,

I have a great offer for you — I can implement a solution to your serious problem with people linking to your website, which makes other people visit your website. This is a serious problem, imagine that you have a shop and everyone, miiiiiilions of people want to buy your products! They could destroy your shop completely and even kill your employees! This is also true with websites — this is exactly why people pay lots of money to search engines like Yahoo or Overture to lower their ranks. I can do two things:

1. suggest using intranet (instead of Internet) servers with IP addresses 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.255 — these are anroutable IP addresses, so no one from the Internet will see them. I can configure such servers for you, as well as an OpenBSD firewall blocking every incoming and outgoing packet going to ports in this ranges: from 0 to 193, from 194 to 27539 and from 27540 to 65535.
2. use my superhuman hacker power and build a solution which will detect a so called "Referer" Hypertext Transfer Protocol request header (this is a totally new techology, as well as a totally secret one — no one has heard of it yet, so don't be mad at your web designing/programming crew that thay have no idea what does it mean) and use a secret tool which we hackers call "mod_rewrite" to show to all of those visitors who are coming from unlicensed pirate links a message "YOU @#$%^&* THIEF!!! I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE YOU BASTARD!!!" instead of actual content of your Intelectual Property which they try to steal so shamefully. I could even start flooding them with some of my hardcore porn pop-up consoles (and by hardcore, I mean really hardcore), which will be very annoying and I can assure you they will never come back to your website again.

All of these I can do for only $24999.95 which is only a small fraction of what you are going to pay your lawyers (and judges) to solve this problem in the court. Additionally for an extra fee of $199999.95 I can also strategize user-centric markets, extend collaborative convergence, as well as evolve interactive e-commerce infrastructure of your company.

Yours truely,
— Erotomek.

P.S. I could give you link to my website but you understand that it would mean even more visitors and I already have no idea what to do with all of those ad revenues.

Re:Worse than 'brutally stupid'

[5KVGhost]

Wow, what a dumb policy. An an interesting glimpse into the mindset of the people who run the place, I'm sure.

This part is interesting:

"No one, individual, entity, organization, etc., may utilize Calumet City's site for any derogatory, profane, or otherwise inappropriate use that may contain any

fowl or otherwise inappropriate content." (emphasis mine)

"Fowl"? What does Calumet City have against content about birds?