Link Control

If you are reading this particular post on the Web and did not go to the domain’s home page first, stop now. Go to the home page and navigate through whatever sequence of links the domain owner has created to reach this page, and if there are ads, you MUST look at the ads, preferably multiple times, so reload those pages a few times, and then circumnavigate the domain until you find your way back here again.

Ridiculous? Of course it is. I have often been impressed with the seemingly clueless notion of some people on the Web who think they can control whether others are “allowed” to link to them or not. Have you ever had someone demand that you remove their link from your site or blog? I have. Clearly, these people do not understand what the Web is all about.

Linking itself is vital to the structure of the Internet. The World-Wide Web would not exist without hyperlinking. It is a rare web site or blog, indeed, that contains no links to other sites or is not linked to by other sites. Links are what web surfing is all about, enabling users to easily go from one web site or blog to another to find useful information on topics of interest.

Federal Judge Harry Hupp, in Ticketmaster vs. Tickets.com, (link courtesy of Morgaine), clearly ruled that we have the right to link (hyperlink) on the World-Wide Web. The only caveat he gave was that when we include material in an HTML frame, to not do it in a such way as to represent material from another site as our own.

Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of HTML and the Web, wrote in his book Weaving the Web, that he foresaw that “Hypertext would be most powerful if it could conceivably point to absolutely anything.” Indeed, HTML literally means HyperText Markup Language. Without hypertext (links), search engines, directories, services such as Yahoo!, and just about every other conceivable web site out there would cease to exist because you would have to guess at what URL each page was located under. Preventing people from hyperlinking to anything they wish to link to, especially when such pages are freely viewable to the public on the Web (without password protections or other such safety measures in place), is an attempt to control and contain the user experience of the World-Wide Web… something that was never, by it’s very nature, intended by the creator of HTML. It is, also, an attempt to inhibit free speech, something protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, in places that are not owned or controlled by those demanding the removal of hyperlinks.

Come to think of it, maybe I should just stop complaining and join the control-freak party. Maybe I can figure out a way to force you to read my posts in full before you can go on to the next post or section of my web site, even if you don’t like what I’ve written. Next step, charging you for every post you read.

Not.