The anti-Google Police has entered the building
The anti-Google Police seems to have entered the building. In Iceland, that is. According to Boingboing, one of Iceland’s major news outlets tries to stop people from deep linking to its articles.
Morgunblaðið, Iceland’s oldest newspaper and most-visited website (now co-edited by the former prime minister and head of the central bank) has just announced an anti “deep linking” policy saying that Icelanders aren’t allowed to link to individual pages on the site, only the front door. Which is to say, the people of Iceland can no longer talk about any news online unless it happens to still be on the front page of the newspaper.
Morgunblaðið forbids “repeated and systematic use of links, including deep links, where a certain piece of news or other material is referred to”. Of course this is supposed to stop platforms like Google News to get traffic from aggregated material.
Curious if somebody dared ask the question in what way this wil really help Morgunblaðið.
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[...] See the rest here: The anti-Google Police has entered the building – Bart Brouwers … [...]
Perhaps they’re simply balking at the idea of Google forever archiving every bit of data anyone ever access and/or makes reference to because they don’t believe there should be “One World Database” of all user’s activities? One must be blind not to see the extraordinary worldwide access Google has been given (especially in these days of national security and nebulous threat level indicators) over not only the unprecedented data access but satellite and road by road visual footage which may or may not all be used simultaneously for “Evil” purposes some rainy day, if not already?
But maybe I’m just being too fatalistic?
I don’t think you are too fatalistic, but I believe Google’s power is not the point here. It’s about the illusion that in a modern world you can direct people to the one way street of your home page and still get traffic. Moreover, Google is just one of the many aggregators, not all of them evil and looking for world domination.
In response to another comment. See in context »The “deep linking” debate is mind-numbing to anyone who understands what a web server is. Your web server can control who gets there and how. If someone lands on your site and you don’t like the referral page, redirect to your main page. All that is contained in the HTTP header- the first thing a web server sees before deciding what to do with a page request.
Any company on the Web which uses lawyers instead of developers to gain competitive advantage is wasting the oxygen (and electricity) better used for a real business plan.
Great last line in your comment, Steve.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by bart brouwers, Tweets Tube. Tweets Tube said: The anti-Google Police has entered the building http://bit.ly/c8UGkg [...]
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