Earlier this morning I was reading a post on a UK blog entitled “15 more sites that forbid you from linking to them“. After having a chuckle at the list and the stupidity of trying stop people linking to your website I got thinking “Surely Australian websites aren’t this silly are they?”. Oh how wrong I was.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I don’t pretend to understand the complexities of law. I do however inhabit the real world and from my personal perspective these terms & conditions are utterly inane.
Don’t Link Here
I kept the idea basic. Find Australian websites that had Terms & Conditions that either banned or inanely denied you linking to their website. I did not have to go far. And yes I am breaking their terms & conditions by linking their terms & conditions pages here. The irony does not escape me.
Vodafone AU
This is one of my favorites. It’s the age of the social web, Vodafone Australia is active on twitter and nearly every single page on their website has a “Share” button with which to spread the link to your friends on a myriad of social networks. Surely these guys have a sane linking policy? Not according to their Web Site and Online Services Terms of Use page (emphasis mine):
“You must not however reproduce, frame, transmit (including broadcast), adapt, link to or otherwise use any of the Content, including audio and video excerpts, except as expressly permitted by statute or with Vodafone’s prior written consent.“
Got that kids? Before you hit that share button make sure you get the written consent from Vodafone. Or else.
Fairfax Digital
Again I’m not kidding here. These guys control some of the biggest news websites in Australia including The Brisbane Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Not a day goes by when I don’t see someone post a link to one of their sites on Twitter, Facebook a blog etc. Yet deep in the bowels of their Fairfax General Conditions of Use page we find this little excerpt:
“You must not link to the Fairfax Network from any other website (or otherwise authorise any other person to link from a third party website to the Fairfax Network) without our prior written consent.“
By now no small part of Fairfax Digital’s traffic must come from links being spread via social media. These guys must be giving out a lot of letters of consent or a lot of web users are technically in the wrong.
Harvey Norman
Yes the tech giant of Australia. Surely they know enough about the internet to figure out these sort of terms & conditions are just really, really dumb? Apparently not. Behold this excerpt from the Harvey Norman Terms and Conditions page:
“We do not permit any linkages to this website without written permission.“
Get the feeling you’re going to need a filing cabinet full of written permission slips to use the internet now?
Virgin Blue and V Australia
This one honestly came as a big shock to me. I love these guys. I use their services all the time, they are very active & friendly on twitter and are possibly one of the most customer friendly companies I know. However if you want to link them to your friends you’re apparently out of luck according to the Terms of Use/Site Disclaimer page:
“You must obtain our written permission to make any hyperlinks with this website.“
Bugger. Seems like a lot of effort to go to simply to show my friends and family the awesome people that I choose to fly with.
JetStar
Fortunately for Virgin their competition isn’t much better at this game either. Their Terms of use page even has an sub heading about linking to them but unfortunately the meat of the statement is:
“You must not link to this site without obtaining the prior written approval of Jetstar Airways or Jetstar Asia Airways“
Oh well. No traffic for you as well then I guess!
Everyone Does It!
Well no they don’t. The logic behind these terms & conditions seems to be to prevent sites these companies don’t like from linking to them and as such have gone for the lazy option of a catch all “written consent” requirement. Other companies have a far more rational approach to things. Let’s have a look shall we?
Optus
As much as I might rubbish Optus for their terrible service in my area they do seem to have this issue figured out straight. Here’s what their Copyright Notice page has to say on the subject of linking:
“You are welcome to link to this web site“
Well that seems to sum it up pretty nicely don’t you think?
Prime Minister of Australia’s website
I honestly thought I was going to find all sorts of draconian linking rules on government websites. I was utterly wrong. They had the most readable and sensible conditions I had ever seen. Let’s have a look at the Prime Minister of Australia’s About this site which has an entire secition on “Guidelines for linking to this website”. I won’t reproduce it in full here (several paragraphs worth) but it is worth the read if for nothing else this statement:
“Deep linking is permitted, however this can create maintenance overheads as the page to which you link may become unavailable or move“
Again simple facts. Yes you can link, just be aware that your links may break in the future if they move things around. Pretty straight forward statement is it not?
Feedback
I’d love to hear about what other inane website terms & agreements you’ve stumbled across. This “anti-linking” ones particularly caught my eye since they effectively entirely defeat the purpose of having a website especially in today’s age of social media link sharing.
Do you think we can somehow convince the companies listed above they need to hire a law firm maybe just vaguely in touch with today’s internet? That just maybe catch all terms & conditions make you look like a company that thinks faxes are still the pinnacle of communication?
Oh and yes. Please feel free to link this article anywhere you like.
Daniel McNamara is an antipodean steampunk geek, amateur photographer, licensed reptile keeper and zombie film lover from Brisbane. This post originally appeared on his siteDawnstar Australis.
JJ
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 11:44 AMMaybe they’re just there to prevent people linking to things like images, etc. porting them into their own websites… that and nicking other copyrighted stuff the same way…
Graeme
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:04 PMVirgin – “You must obtain our written permission to make any hyperlinks with this website.”
There’s nothing to say you can’t link to them. You just can’t use their website to create any hyper links. That’s fine, because you’ll be linking from your own site to them. Even then you’re not using your site to create them as the site itself is not a link creation tool.
Xheis
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 8:13 PMThe most sensible way to do this is to simpley give your readers the ip address of the company.
NOTE: It advised to underline, colour it blue as well as renaming it to the appropriate title. E.g.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au
adam mc
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:04 PMDoe’s this include linkage to there Term’s and conditions. Which the article includes?
Martin Olminkhof
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:28 PMpointed out the irony in the article
grrrr-ammar
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:54 PMDoe’s [sic] this include linkage to there [sic] Term’s [sic] and conditions. [sic] Which the article includes? [sic]
I love the question mark on the second sentence but not the first – classic!
adam mc
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 1:29 PMI guess people with dyslexia are not allowed to quick comment on an article without being punished. Griping at your gripe.
Mr Biggles
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 3:39 PMis incorrect use of ‘their’ and ‘there’, as well as the superfluous use of the ‘greengrocers apostrophe’ (re: Term’s) considered dyslexia…?
adam mc
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 4:21 PMsimple answer, yes. merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Xheis
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 8:17 PMI shouldn’t have to tell you to use your capitals where required and was that ellipsis needed?
glennc
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:09 PMtheir loss
Peter
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:47 PMThere are legitimate reasons for needing written permission – one for example: a malicious competitor or cranky ex links your site on a kiddie porn or other inappropriate site and you get a knock on the door from the authorities – if they didn’t get your permission, you’re in the clear…or you may simply not want your site/brand associated with some other site for business reasons.
Even though most people ignore the terms of use, it gives the site owner some recourse if something does go wrong
Cam
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 3:21 PMSpot on – it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card, that’s all.
Bob
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 8:20 PMPerfect explanation. Unfortunately, completely lost. Almost no-one reads the comments to see if their point has already been raised or answered.
ozoneocean
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 1:28 PMWelcome to the corporate world where moron managers handle everything with copy and paste templates.
That’s what they go to business school for… if there’s not some style-sheet or standards rule book that applies to something, the cretins will create one, never-mind they have no idea what they’re making rules ABOUT.
This sort of thing infects every facet of the corporate world.
Guido Fox
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 1:51 PMI’m not a lawyer either, but would not a “Share” link (as per Vodafone) imply consent?
Ron Lankshear
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 2:10 PMThey obviously don’t mean it for normal links. They just bought a package of T&Cs
I assume they are really try to stop someone dressing up a page to look like them
which could be used for Phishing etc
Nathaniel Baker
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 2:40 PMSomething that I don’t get… Linking is THE POINT of the entire internet.. hence why its called “the web”. Besides, how do you think search engines like Google get their listings? The do a search for robots.txt on sites sure.. But the priority as to where the site gets listed in the millions of lists is based on the amount of “external links” from other websites also point to that link. That way Google thinks its more appropriate or popular. Why would u want to not link.. The higher a site is up the search engine the easier it is for someone to find you. IE my site, search for “Adelaide weather” and its in the list on the 2nd page so far.. only because I’ve got allot of people linking to my site. Far better than saying no u can’t link to it and not even appearing on page 278 where no one can see me.
Bobby
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 2:49 PMEVERYBODY should contact them, via snail mail with a formal request for permission.
An action day of this type will soon make them realise what an administrative nightmare it would be to actually follow their T&Cs.
Even a bombardment of legitimate email requests would probably get them having another look.
Do any of them provide the contact details of where to obtain this permission?
Steven Kim
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 5:01 PMI actually did write to them; I don’t want to disobey the law and/or get sued.
Hi,
Would it be possible to get written consent in order to link the article, “Tablets might be a flash in the pan: Microsoft global chief strategy officer “, from my Facebook?
It seems to be unusual to ask for formal written consent on linking to an article, but it is said as such in your Terms And Conditions (http://www.fairfax.com.au/conditions.html). Under the subheading, “Third Party Websites, advertising and activities”, it states, “You must not link to the Fairfax Network from any other website (or otherwise authorise any other person to link from a third party website to the Fairfax Network) without our prior written consent. ”
Thank you, I look forward to a reply.
P.S. ; If the Terms and Conditions are correct, have you given proper written consent for all the search engines to link from their site to Fairfax Digital?
Mike
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 3:12 PMQuick, someone let google know they’ve violating the terms of service & need to remove these websites immediately.
No-one thinks through the consequences of trying to remove themselves from the interconnected links that spawned the name “web”.
It’s particularly amusing on news sites where more and more of the content is derivative & sourced from elsewhere on the web.
Sam
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 4:28 PMThe White Pages Australia websites linking terms are stupid. You have to agree to click agree on an agreement before you’re allowed to link that says that you will only link to their home page and only with their specially provided icon or the word “Australia”.
http://www.whitepages.com.au/info/link-to-us
sarah
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 4:47 PMI can understand the linking to their uploaded multimedia content and they should be able to kill off any incomming links abusing the hosting of content.
However, unless you want to be stung by plagiarism claims when using other peoples work you must acknowledge your source or its Plagiarism.
My argument is supported by a reputable source
under UNSW plagiarism guilelines ” Copying the written expressions of someone else without proper acknowledgement” is considered Plagiarim http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/plag.html
Goodnews is UNSW that have a reasonable Copywrite & Disclaimer ” only material owned by the University of New South Wales and so indicated, may be copied, provided that textual and graphical content are not altered and that the source is acknowledged” http://www.unsw.edu.au/gen/pad/copyright.html
Virgin Blue
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 6:39 PMHey Daniel,
Great article!
Talk about going outside the box (and into the terms) for a story!
The team noticed you were doing your research yesterday, and wondered why anyone would be looking in there – now we know!
This particular line of “legalese” is effectively to give us a legal leg to stand on should a website or person of a “questionable background” should use our name and url on their site – we can then call in the heavy hitters!
Of course this rarely happens, but with certain incarnations of our name you can’t be too careful (if you get my drift).
Look forward to more of your banter on twitter soon!
Virgin Blue Social Media Team
Tomas Medina
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 8:15 PMI’m sorry, but the hyperlink is the basis of the world wide web. If you don’t want something hyperlinked, don’t put it up.
Jay
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 9:46 PMVirgin definitely has a point, they wouldn’t want the masses at large linking or putting up silly pictures of them piggy backing on a naked girl doing the vacuuming or water skiing.
They want that reserved for their Chairman, Richard Branson.
Justin Thomas
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 12:30 AMI wrote a website copyright policy that advised sites should ask for permission before linking. It was to stop people implying an association with my organisation when that was undesirable. And to encourage people to provide their own content rather than just lamely framing our content or deep linking.
DingoJunior
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 9:16 AMI know you’re not a lawyer, Daniel, but were you able to get any info on whether these T&Cs are legally enforceable?
Ash Nallawalla
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 11:27 AMThe White Pages example seems to be an oversight, as I mentioned it while at Sensis and got the Yellow Pages counterpart changed, at least to the satisfaction of the lawyers. It was some old legacy wording.
However, some of the comments above show there is continued confusion about what is a “link”, what is the benefit of links and how can you distinguish between a beneficial link and one that leeches your content. That’s an article on its own.
Chris Brown
Friday, April 1, 2011 at 1:18 AMI didn’t link to Jetstar, but made an alternative site.
http://www.dontflyjetstar.com
Steve Tran
Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 4:08 PMA great way of fucking with them would just have everyone for a week or so sending them paperwork, asking to link their crap and swamp their inbox.