Japanese Newspaper Says: How Dare You Send Us Traffic!
from the don't-tell-your-friends! dept
While others, like News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, continue to make a lot of noise about cutting off or punishing news aggregators like Google News, Japan's Nikkei newspaper has decided to take some action in the war against the "freeloaders" by forbidding any links to its content without explicit permission. Apparently, Nikkei believes not only that "unauthorized" links would somehow circumvent its paywall, but also that it is such an incredibly important source that free referrals are neither necessary nor welcome. Although most of Nikkei's Japanese competition apparently also locks up content behind paywalls, going beyond a paywall to actively block inbound links seems very short-sighted, in that it will serve to drive traffic and attention elsewhere. It's still pretty amazing how certain organizations don't seem to have any understanding of how the internet works.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: linking, newspapers
Companies: nikkei
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Japan is so different
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Re: Japan is so different
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For once I agree
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These artards need to get off me internetz!!
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You pay for access to historical company articles and data as well as current articles.
Are you suggesting they should put their whole database on line for free access?
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With that logic they have nothing to worry about google then, I mean there it is laying out there on the internet all brazen and open.
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It may as well say "Making access more exclusive increases its exclusivity..."
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If this newspaper's competition suddenly see a spike in their adviews, do you really think it's likely that they want to cut those people off?
Sure, there is no shortage of short-sighted CEOs running a lot of businesses (into the ground), but not every newspaper in the world is run by an artard.
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Not to say that they may get more money by opening up and attaching adverts to search results (a la Google).
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Sure, if you put your older news (like say, after it's been freely accessible for 2 weeks) behind a paywall, I might be able to understand it.
But this is about them limiting you how many times you can access their website for free. After 5 visits each month: "I'm sorry sir, but you are forbidden to access this site, unless you pay us." That kind of trick will rarely if at all work on Joe Schmoe.
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Not to say that they may get more money by opening up and attaching adverts to search results (a la Google).
You either did not read the article or... did not read the article. The question is not about paywall. The question is about links to the site, which the company does not want to exist. If you have a paywall setup, you want as many links as possible just like anyone else on the internet, because more people getting to your main page = more chances of getting someone to pay directly or indirectly.
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Restricting Access
Think about it. I was so pissed that AP would reissue stuff that was already out there and try to charge for advertising their content that I went the other way : even though Google will place articles next to the sign - AP the UnEssential Network. Nor will I carry their content.
Not that I consider much of it different from propaganda.
They have a bad case of 'Unclear on the Concept' too.
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