[HN Gopher] Bill Gates, Man United and 20 other sites that ban l...
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       Bill Gates, Man United and 20 other sites that ban linking to them
        
       Author : fanf2
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2024-04-26 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (malcolmcoles.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (malcolmcoles.com)
        
       | firemelt wrote:
       | is it forced? how did they could do it?
        
         | netsharc wrote:
         | In theory they could check the referer and redirect requests
         | containing the referer to the front page. Or to a page that
         | says "Violation detected". Or to a picture of testicles like a
         | particular non-fan of Hacker News does when his site sees this
         | site in the referer URL.
        
       | lolc wrote:
       | That's some weird-ass disconnect from reality. Is that clause
       | some kind of meme the control freak legal departments copy from
       | each other without good reason? Or is there an actual reason I
       | could understand?
        
         | scotty79 wrote:
         | High level of delusion about ownership of other people and
         | their actions.
        
       | keiferski wrote:
       | Maybe I'm misremembering, but I feel like this used to be a
       | widespread thing one did circa 2000-2005 (before Web 2.0). I
       | remember emailing a handful of sites and asking them if I could
       | link to their content, and this being a normal request.
        
         | t0mas88 wrote:
         | I think the typical email about links from around that time was
         | for SEO optimization. They would request that you link to their
         | site from a high ranking domain in exchange for a link from
         | them back to you.
        
           | keiferski wrote:
           | No, that's a different thing and it still happens today. I
           | remember it being considered polite to ask people before
           | placing a permanent link on your website. (Which was
           | different from posting it on a forum.)
        
         | cvalka wrote:
         | Why would you email them for their permission? Are you nuts?
        
         | cl42 wrote:
         | +1
         | 
         | People disagreeing with your or shocked by you might not
         | remember (or maybe are too young?) the Internet of the 1990s.
         | Search engines sucked, directories were _the_ thing, and
         | putting your site in a directory or linking to a website was,
         | sociologically + relatively speaking, a pretty big deal.
         | 
         | Back then, there was no expectation that a website was publicly
         | available to everyone, even though it was accessible if you
         | knew the URL. Sort of like today people don't share their home
         | addresses or photos of their living rooms unless there's a good
         | reason to do so.
         | 
         | EDIT: a better example in relation to today might be Tor
         | addresses or dark web URLs.
        
         | cwillu wrote:
         | It was widespread, but so was mockery of the concept of needing
         | permission to link.
        
       | marklar423 wrote:
       | Several of the examples reference "deep linking", for example
       | "While we welcome all normal links to our sites we regard 'deep
       | linking' as an infringement of our copyright." - I wonder what
       | that could mean. Anything besides the home page?
        
         | whaleofatw2022 wrote:
         | It can be a little wishy washy.
         | 
         | stuff like /about or /contact -might- not be considered a deep
         | link depending on the opinion of whomever is running the site.
        
       | leosanchez wrote:
       | Never expected Man Utd to feature in HN :p
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-26 23:02 UTC)