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.Filed Under: linking, newspapers
Companies: nikkei
