Ars Technica: No linking to Japanese newspaper without permission

"We've definitely entered an era of experiment when it comes to online content, as a number of publications with a tradition in the print world are testing out approaches like building paywalls, mixing free and paid content, and limiting the amount of content that's indexed by search engines.

But Japan's Nikkei newspaper has taken its attempts to control access to an entirely different level: it now requires a formal request for any inbound links to its site."

NYT: Nikkei Restricts Links to Its New Web Site

"Japan’s largest business newspaper, the Nikkei, joined the trend of other news sites last week by requiring readers to pay to view its Web site. But, in a twist, it also imposed a policy severely restricting links to its articles — or even its home page.

Links to Nikkei’s home page require a detailed written application. Among other things, applicants must spell out their reasons for linking to the site."

Global Voices: Japan: Blogosphere Reactions to the Nikkei Ban on Links

"... Having had experience working for a major newspaper, Kappei Nakano at ASCII is more understanding of Nikkei's position. He examined the link policies of the national newspapers and came up with three reasons on why they're so rigid.

' 理由1：クレームに対応したくないから
理由2：見出しに著作権が認められなかったから
理由3：個別の記事は更新、削除されることがあるから

Reason one: they don't want to deal with complaints
Reason two: titles aren't protected by copyrights
Reason three: individual articles can be updated or deleted... '"

I am gobsmacked. I wonder if in the interests of being somewhat consistent they intend to write to every website they wish to link to to ask for permission. They're effectively going to cut themselves off from the interwebs. Interesting isolationist policy there... ahem.

I'm assuming as the internet programming becomes more and more mature, the ability to control where someone is linking from comes into play. In other words, you can post a link but the linked site won't accept the link and connect anyone that uses it. I like the idea as I have no problem with people taking steps to protect their intellectual property. Hopefully sites aren't stupid enough to think the outside links to their site are illegal or can be controlled externally. That's like a town demanding all atlas companies not to post directions to their town.

The bit about them disabling right clicks on the mouse is silly. Might work for a majority of Japanese users as they're not computer savvy (using mainly cell phones), but anyone can disable Javascript in most if not all browsers on their computer. Had to do that with Goo site as they had all those nice song lyrics.

Here's the irony: Corporations have made a mint using video cassettes, DVD's, BlueRay, Internet, etc yet by using these very things they open their products up to easy copying. Then they want my tax dollars (well, if I actually paid taxes) to finance the government efforts to prevent copying of these easily copyable material. It's a great example demonstrating the phrase "Have their cake and eat it too".

The government should only step in when there's a cordinated effort to profit off the intellectual properties of others (black market). This file sharing battle should be between the intellectual property holders and the illegal downloaders only. Sort of the difference (well, the distinction made by a few) between those that grow their own pot and those that grow it to sell en masse.

Nukemarine Wrote:I'm assuming as the internet programming becomes more and more mature, the ability to control where someone is linking from comes into play. In other words, you can post a link but the linked site won't accept the link and connect anyone that uses it.

It's already trivial to do that. You just check the referrer. Unless the user has hacked their browser, that is always sent.

wccrawford Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:I'm assuming as the internet programming becomes more and more mature, the ability to control where someone is linking from comes into play. In other words, you can post a link but the linked site won't accept the link and connect anyone that uses it.

It's already trivial to do that. You just check the referrer. Unless the user has hacked their browser, that is always sent.

I think you mean 'referer', n00b. And doesn't everyone disable them these days? Also, don't forget this site: http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com/ (I use this handy add-on for that)...

But hmm, this has very little to do with protecting intellectual property. I think it's a terrible idea - for Nikkei. Isn't the whole point of the web linking? When blogs or other news sources link to Nikkei, they might copy an excerpt, which falls under Fair Use, and add a link back to the original source, which seems like a perfectly good way to reference the source to me, and would generate traffic for Nikkei. Anyone writing an academic paper does that, and they don't need to contact every source in their bibliography for permission to cite them either. I don't see why this situation should be any different. The only thing I can think of that would be questionable is if all content from one site was actually copied wholesale over to a third party website and displayed, like using frames or something, in order to generate traffic for ads. But I think most people linking to news articles wouldn't be doing that.

You can't prevent people linking to your article in a third rate blog or whatever anymore than you can prevent someone citing your work in a scholarly unsound paper. That is, you might technically be able to do it but it seems rather silly. Also what happens if ever there's an article that blows up and everyone wants to link to it. Imagine fielding thousands of requests to link to one article, and some poor underling having to check out the referring website and see if they make the grade. I'm sure there's a jdorama pitch right there. :p

Yes and speaking of corporations, that reminds me of the time Sony (Music) tried to sue itself for enabling piracy. I can't find the article I'm thinking of but this is close enough: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/sony.html

nest0r Wrote:I think you mean 'referer', n00b.

I think you mean 'referrer', n00b^2... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer

Blahah Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:I think you mean 'referer', n00b.

I think you mean 'referrer', n00b^2... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer

I think Nest0r was being sarcastic.

[ファブリス]

Irrational tactics from companies desperate to survive in the midst of a global transition to online content delivery. Personally I would't give it too much thought. They will reinvent themselves or they will die. Right now they're trying to juice every last penny out of their old tactics, with the help of governments, in the name of sacro saint economy. But eventually all these old tactics are bound to fail anyway. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes though... difficult times.

LegionOfDeicide Wrote:

Blahah Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:I think you mean 'referer', n00b.

I think you mean 'referrer', n00b^2... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer

I think Nest0r was being sarcastic.

Yes. I was alluding to the referrer/referer thing.

Sure, I was just joining in the geeky fun!

On topic, it's really easy for websites wanting to link to Nikkei to do so by passing all their links through a refferer removal service like anonym.to (that is, if Nikkei are preventing linking by using a referrer whitelist).

It's easy to stop one person from pirating 100,000 copies of something, but you'll never stop 100,000 people pirating 1 copy each. Not that links are piracy, this is all really silly to me, but...

@nukemarine and the others who have mentioned said subject.
About: Intellectual Property comments.
Before you spout "intellectual property" consider how absurd the idea really is!, I know we are all conditioned to accept it, but honestly. Anyways, here are some eye opening lectures:
http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=226

Easy to enforce. They just need to authenticate every access.