Hyperlinking Considered Harmful? Thursday 2006-07-13
Oh my gosh!
Lorelle of WordPress fame writes in her very much readable blog “Do I Need to Ask Permission to Put a Blog in My Blogroll?“. She says that she haven’t thought about the question before and writes
“Since a link in a blogroll is a compliment and recommendation, do you need to ask permission to include a blog in your blogroll? Good question.
I would think not. You are not linking to content, and you are not violating any rights. You are linking to the whole blog, not a single post. There is nothing to ask permission for, is there?”
Earlier in the week she pointed her audience to an article by Shel Holz entitled “When is a Link not a Link“, which questions your right to link to somebody else’s content.
This seems to to amount to something, I don’t know what. Don’t blame Lorelle, she is perfectly sane or I’m brain dead, but could it be that the summer over the western hemisphere is too hot , or maybe the web has matured to the point of being suicidal?
Is HTML, “Hypertext Markup Language” to be considered harmful? Oh, Goodbye.
Before we seriously enter the Web 2.0 world of fame an ridicule, let’s take a deep breath and a step back and look at what the web 0.1 – 1.0 is all about.
It all started as a possibility to link text based information to other relevant text based information. When the author of a ( usually scientific ) document referred to sources or or other texts of interest in the domain of his/her article, it would easily be reached by including a link to that material.
With the advent of HTML as a formalized way of accomplishing this, and the hypertext transfer protocol as a standardized communication protocol between the information servers and clients ( consumers ), the web was born. The rest is, as they say, history. And amazing as such.
This is what it’s all about, don’t you, dear reader, agree? Linking information to other relevant peaces of information. In the beginning very few used the web and decided what was relevant. Linking was done in rather closed domains and cross linking between domains sparse.
As the web has grown ( some under stating here 
, the writers and readers on the web have very disparate opinions on what’s “relevant”, and as a consequence cross linking among “domains” abound.
Many links lead to ballooney, and link lists without human comments are useless. Human nature plays its part – and it should. It is to be expected.
For those of us who want the web to be a source of useful information, it may be frustrating to sift through ads we don’t want, sex we don’t like and thoughts we think could be offered by a piece of wood – or worse.
But it’s inevitable, and in some way the start of a new kind of democracy ( oh, how dared I ?), where everyone has his or her say. If you say something clever many will listen. Yes, hopefully, I know.
Am I spacing out? Right, I am. It’s my blog, so I can do that.
Back to the linking and blog roll business, or “can I link to any content on the web?”.
Yes I can, but with some exceptions.
- I can link to anything if I don’t pretend or imply it’s my own stuff.
- I cannot link in someone else’s images or media in my own page without permission.
- I cannot use someone else’s texts in my own pages, except for citations.
Citations should not be extensive and the should be attributed to the copyright owner, possibly linked to the original text.
This means for example that you should not link someones HTML or other document into a frame of your own document, as this could give the *impression* that it is part of your own site.
As for asking permission to include someones blog in my “blogroll” or linking to other recommended reading – give me a break!
If someone doesn’t want to be linked to, or recommended or read at all for that matter, there are lots of ways to avoid that. Here are a few.
- You may choose to send the info by email to a selected audience.
- You can publish your documents in a closed network behind firewalls.
- You can require authentication for individuals or groups that you allow to read your stuff.
- You can set up a robots.txt file to tell ( well behaved ) search bots not to collect all or certain parts of your web.
- Finally you can sell all your stuff and gadgets and hide under a rock.
I don’t think I’m being harsh here The web is all about hyperlinking and it is a social endeavour. It’s all about information and it’s all about people.
Link on, and happily so!
- Posted in : The Internet,WordPress
- Author : Petit
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