Comments on: Sites that ban you from linking to them. Still. In 2010

By: This Link May Be Subject To Copyright at dissociatedpress.com

This Link May Be Subject To Copyright at dissociatedpress.com — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:55:16 +0000

[...] Press to do so.” And if you think we’re crazy for instituting these policies, check out this collection of sites that ban you from linking to them. If a policy’s good enough for Jimmy Choo, it’s good [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:29:30 +0000

This is great! Overpaid lawyers will have written these t&cs without having a clue about the internet, links or anything else. They were also probably charging about 10 times the amount that an SEO bod would get paid to do this.

By: UK Websites with No Linking Policy

UK Websites with No Linking Policy — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:07:01 +0000

[...] most recent blogpost is a must read, giving you a list of examples of UK websites that has such “no linking [...]

By: Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog » The Weekend Coffee

Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog » The Weekend Coffee — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:13:26 +0000

[...] You might have noticed that we link to a lot of other sites at the Big Bad Blog. But you probably are not aware exactly how brave we are to do this. Linking to some websites is against their terms of use, and there’s a list of (some of) them here. [...]

By: Useful links from the last few days

Useful links from the last few days — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:46:47 +0000

[...] Sites that ban you from linking to them. Still. In 2010 » malcolm coles - Links? No thanks say a range of major brands such as the Independent newspaper, Vodafone, Ticketmaster and easyJet [...]

By: Susie Porsz

Susie Porsz — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:29:24 +0000

I think I know why this is... By deeplinking, you are by-passing their homepage which is the main area they can make ad revenues so they would rather you direct to their home page and then people browse to find the relevant page. Of course, most users will quickly leave a site if they cannot find the page they wanted so it defies logic when it comes to customer satisfaction but, as ever, seems to come back to money.

There are also plans afoot for the National Licensing Authority (owned by the national newspapers) to start charging companies a license to be able to send links, but it's not finally decided yet. After all, they are all losing increasing amounts of money from ad sales so have to try and get the money back somehow. Finger's crossed they won't be allowed to!

By: Cass Heaphy

Cass Heaphy — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:13:08 +0000

I am presuming all of these websites use their robots.txt file to disallow all user agents and meta robots in the header to prevent crawling and indexing of their content - thus preventing search engines from indexing their content - which would break their T&Cs with automated linking?

Who in their right mind would want targeted, relevant and qualified search traffic?

These websites are genius - a vanguard of forward thinking futurists who can see the inherent dangers of letting their customers actually find them and use the information resource they have created. Stop the madness now!

By: Malcolm Coles

Malcolm Coles — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:50:27 +0000

Tomasz: It's never been tested in court directly, so who knows if it's enforceable. As to Durajke and Alan Gains's points, however, that doesn't mean they haven't got lawyers who would ask you to stop. This is fairly unlikely to happen ... I'm not expecting any letters even though I've deep linked to the examples. Scaryduck: That is just idiotic. Most of the other examples seem badly drafted lawyer idiocy aiming to stop iframing that goes too far. Going straight out and banning all links is stupid. And unenforceable. I wonder what happens if you link to them without visiting the site to know what the T&Cs say ... Andrew Denny: No, I didn't ask permission - this year or when I wrote a similar post last year. I did ask the royal mail for my paper licence - see the link at the top of the page .... William - Direct gov are one of the ones who don't like photocopying

By: William

William — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:45:55 +0000

FWIW DirectGov says

Directgov welcomes and encourages other websites to link to it as the main UK central government website. You can use the linking code and images provided below to link to Directgov. By linking to Directgov you are deemed to have signed up to the terms and conditions.

except:

Restrictions on sites which can link to Directgov

We do not permit a website to link to Directgov if it contains material which is libellous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene, or is in any way a breach of the laws of England and Wales or infringes any third party intellectual property rights.

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:31:33 +0000

I've always been fond of this site: http://www.robertscpa.com/kayaks/index.htm
which not only says "Links to this site may not be used on any commercial site" but follows up with "Any other public use of these pages requires the written permission of George Roberts. Your use of these pages in part or in full by quoting or by providing links without written permission CONSTITUTES YOUR AGREEMENT TO PAY GEORGE ROBERTS THE SUM OF $1,000 FOR EACH USE OF EACH PAGE IN PART OR IN FULL."
(Emphasis mine - that upper case stuff is actually lower case on the site..)