By their logic, surely they will be pursuing google for a large sum of money very soon because google posts literally hundreds, if not thousands, of links to their websites “without asking first”. Not only this, but googles cache’ing mechanisms would be violating their copyright.

This is indeed, a rogue industry.

By that same rational….. Do the newspapers intend to pay for each link to an advertisers site that they host? Possibly ending up paying more for the traffic they drive to advertisers sites than they receive for hosting links in the first place? Surely they’re killing their own revenue model. Also…. This is ludicrous, I was under the impression that the people who pay to advertise in wide circulation papers would rather there are more people visiting the sites rather than the papers legal depts chasing “deep link” offenders… So bloody Irish…

It’s not clear from your article whether NNI are asserting copyright to non-clickable links?
For example, if I write in a printed publication that there’s an interesting article “on page 12 of today’s Irish Times”, is that not a de facto link?

Excuse me, but I just realised that I may have accidentally put a “link” in my previous comment!
To protect myself from a possible 300 Euro liability, I must now state that there is NO interesting article on Page 12 of the Irish times, nor indeed on any other page, and in fact I must urge you never to look at that newspaper at all!

Is this some kind of a joke?

only time i read Irish papers now is when some one puts a link up and i click on it. don’t go out of my way to read them. seems a bit foolish, how do they think something like this will get me to see their advertisements. if they want to shoot themselves in the foot then let them.

Indeed! And the Industry in France and Germany are going a step further trying to make Google Pay. Even though Google doesn’t really show their content, plus they can opt out, plus if someone clicks on an ad, they really choosing to ignore the Newspapers website.

So pleased to read this post – McGarr are really playing a strong hand with this article.

I say let them shoot themselves in the foot and make it law. People will stop linking to them, their traffic will drop and they will lose out on easy advertising incoming from the lost page views. Eventually the dinosaurs will either have to admit charging for linking to their content is silly and/or they will just get replaced by a better news site who isn’t trying to charge the wrong people for their content. Basically, don’t bite the hand that links to you.

IMO they are not destroying the internet, they are just using the internet to destroy themselves.

Oh my god… pay for linking to an article! As a Search Engine Optimizer this makes me disturbed. They should think why the content is available for free on their website in the first place. They react the opposite as to how they should, they should be happy traffic is generated to their sites so they get higher in Google and earn more on advertisements. They turn the world upside down. They think in old fashioned printed media ways. These newspapers probably have no idea what the world wide web is, a collection of links to pages with information. Without links there would be no internet. If they want no one to see their content or only paid than get off the internet or hide them under a paid barrier for your customers, cause heck that will probably be a great business model (so not). I”d say be happy for every link they can get cause every single one of them brings extra visitors, being able to get higher income on advertisements or advertorials. If they continue with this and links need to be paid… I’d hope Google would ban these newspaper websites entirely from their search engine, as well as the public, draining their add income extensively, maybe than they will see what the internet is about

[...] Were Irish Newspapers Hoping In 2012 To Destroy The Web Or Just Commit Mass Media Suicide? [...]

OFC, the commercial logic is flawed.

Newspaper publishers have the right to assert their copyright on their content. They could even assert copyright on the links themselves – they created the link to their website in a unique manner – it does indeed belong to them.

Clearly the NLI initiative is not about asserting copyright, but rather about collecting legitimate revenues on the basis of those copyrights. Think IMRO for the newspaper industry.

So with the correct focus on this as a discussion on the commercials of online news sites, then as Darren and David have alluded to in the comments, the ramifications are much wider for the newspaper industry.

Are search engines or directories exempt from this approach? If not and such a commercialisation of deep-links became the norm, then one of two things will happen:
– search engines would fail: they simply could not pay for every link they make to any website where the owner asserts copyright on the link
– online newspapers would fail: far more likely to happen as search engines and everyone else would simply ignore this sector and redirect their attention to high quality alternatives

If you don’t believe the latter point, then check what happened when the Irish Times introduced their paywall. The largest online news properties in the Irish market became all but redundant and then within a few short years removed the paywall again.

Is the NLI asserting these commercial interests with ALL websites that deep link their members’ sites? If they are not taking on the big boys – Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter etc. – in the same way that they are taking on individuals, voluntary organisations and small businesses, then there is a much bigger ethical issue here.

So the newspapers would prefer that I don’t link to articles (which are often regurgitated press-releases) that they have published – fine, I’ll just link to other sources instead? Like the new press-release distribution service that will spring up to replace the newspapers as they go into commercial free-fall.

This would be laughable if it were not for other half-cocked attempts at censorship by people who are forming expensive Oireachtas committees to regulate social-media etc.

I get my news elsewhere now, finding our media incapable of discourse on current issues.Years of reducing ‘analysis’ to ‘commentation’, and dilution of ‘culture’ to create ‘entertainment’ has left me alienated from the majority of media here.

In other words, if news agencies require payment, then the product requires overhaul because it ill-provides what it claims to do.

Media is become dominated by ads/entertainment , there is barely anything approaching intelligent discourse on current issues – including censorship, available to the reader. Dumbing-down is not the word for it.

Dear Media :
If you want a competitive product , then up your game and stop blaming the world for going elsewhere to hear/read about current issues.

+ stop intimidating charities for personal profit ffs

[...] for example, I’ve criticised every national newspaper in Ireland for their refusal to report this story. In short, my twitter feed is a slow suicide note to my [...]

I believe a proper response would be to send the newspapers a bill every time they publish a story about you or your organisation.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

[...] “2012: The Year Irish Newspapers Tried to Destroy the Web”: [...]

Nice suicide note from the Irish papers. All we need now is a web-only publication (preferably run by someone with a clue), and we can say goodnight to the Neanderthal press.

If they don’t want to be linked to, then let’s make their day!

Let them. Let them insist that anybody linking to them has to acquire a license.

They’ve not thought this through really have they?

No link -> no google, bing, no organic traffic, no facebook traffic, no twitter traffic, no trafic, period.

“Poof”
“What was that?”
“That was the Irish newspapers vanishing off the internet”
“Good riddance”

I presume then that all of the publications in question have sought prior approval and paid upfront fees for all of the material that they link to from their pages. Of course they have! Pah!

There is an easy way for organisations that take such a precious view of “their” content. Just block unauthorised referrers, and whitelist those that have paid the appropriate fees.

Oh, you might lose a little of your traffic … and your ad revenue … but you’ll make it up on all those juicy link fees. So that’s just dandy, isn’t it?

[...] (As an aside – Jebus, I’ve not only linked to an Irish newspaper there, I’ve actually quoted an article.  That’ll cost me a kidney!) [...]

Sounds like no one here values copyright. Content has been too free for too long. If you value what you read you should pay for the right. Journalism isn’t a charity.

[...] http://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2012/12/30/2012-the-year-irish-newspapers-tried-to-destroy-the-web/ [...]

Isn’t a hyperlink just a formalised way of referring to something? That is, a machine readable way of pointing and saying ‘that thing over there’?

As such, if this ‘linking law’ idea becomes mainstream, I look forward to people asserting that you need a license in order to refer to something or point at it, per occurence – that would make journalism entirely impossible, as the subjects of enquiry could simply refuse to license the ability to talk about them, or set their prices unreasonably high.

Sounds like somebody needs to explain to the Irish Newspaper Industry that a link is literally a written request for permission to view content. If they would like to refuse it all they need to do is configure their servers to do so.

This is beyond stupid.

Any money spent on this by any paper would have been far better spent in an attempt to establish their site as a reliable source.

Unless they’re getting a raw deal on their hosting costs I cannot imagine a reason why anybody would actively want to discourage traffic.

Extrapolating, sections in published materials, essays including references, notes, concordence(s?) & the pages of their referral are all criminal acts not to mention telephone/mobile conversations: To fill out an [anything] application go to http://www.url.com and press “form” button… or sharing a link to a good coupon offer, amongst many other examples.

Nuts, absolutely nuts. Ok, publishers aren`t really good in the internet business. Therefor, they most likely don`t know that links pointing to their sites are quite essential for traffic – one important part of SEO is linkbuilding and direct referrals as well. As consequence, if people start _not_ linking and de-linking their sites, they will fall back within Google´s natural search. Ooops. To be honest, if you take a look at what happens to publishers, they won`t stand a chance with mediocre or exchangeable content against thousands of specialised blogs, portals and communities.

Only high-class magazines like the Economist with real good journalism offer a better value than what you get on the web for free. Not only free but sometimes just better than Wikipedia-copying journalists.

By the way, the Belgian publishers had tried something similar stupid. They wanted to charge Google for being listed with their content. Google de-listed the sites, traffic and therefor ad-income crumbled. Soon, the publishers were very cooperative and kindly asked to forget the mess….

….nuts.

Brendan wrote: “Sounds like no one here values copyright. Content has been too free for too long. If you value what you read you should pay for the right. Journalism isn’t a charity.”

Whoooooooooooooooosh!!

That’s the sound of whole discussion going way over Brendan’s head

If the Irish newspapers wish to do this, they can configure their servers to return 404 for all incoming links that don’t include a paid-for license key in the query collection. Unauthorised use of a license key is already a breach of copyright. This would, of course, largely cut them off from the open Web and reduce their traffic.

It is, of course, absurd to suggest that linking to a web site should require permission.

If the owner of a web site does not want certain content to be freely available then it is up to them to configure their web servers accordingly.

What if the link was actually a link to the Google redirect url (it just redirects the query to the URL mentioned in its data input)
Google doesn’t publish these as they technically only exist during the time of the click, and you are linking to a Google service and not the newspaper

Or what about URL shortening tools like bit.ly? Again, you are not linking to the newspaper site as the link is to to bit.ly, but the data sent in that link results in the query being forwarded

Of course the best option is to simply not link to them at all and watch them disappear

So, following the newspapers’ line of logic, the next step would be, is that you would be infringing copyright if you passed on your newspaper to another person…? However, anything contained in either the newspaper or the link would be containing advertising, along with giving credit – and thus publicity – for that newspaper/magazine, would it not?
So, in fairness, the newspapers should be charged by those who are spreading their articles and advertising…;-)

There is a sensible (and legal) way around this.

Instead of linking to a newspaper story, write an ‘abstract’ of the story, and publish it on your own site, with a full (non-linking) attribution.

This is ‘fair use’ under international copyright agreements, and is not plagiarism, if a full attribution is given.

No-one should EVER link to an Irish newspaper site under ANY circumstances. If they wish to remain invisible, we should respect that, and if a link is desired, find the story in another (non-Irish) newspaper site, and link to that.

That way, the law is satisfied and everyone will be happy.

@Brendan
“They could even assert copyright on the links themselves – they created the link to their website in a unique manner – it does indeed belong to them. ” ??????
They don’t create links. Links are created by others (and can be copyrighted by the link creators). Yes, their content is copyrighted. So what? All a link does is point to content. All they are trying to do is add a little income to their coffers. It has nothing to do with copyright. They can easily refuse connections to their servers. (Then wait. Last one out, turn off the lights)

This is purely the last gasp of the print industry before the Internet finishes what it started. I worked for a city newspaper and it was evident they were not doing well at all, finding any way to generate more revenue.

Though going the route of the music industry, meaning screwing with everything else instead of fixing your core business model, is a bad way to go. If they think industry giants and long standing web practices will go away because they think they should be paid for it, they are sadly mistaken.

It is nice to see the newspaper industry taking action again. Too bad that action is putting yet another nail in it’s own coffin. Great job NNI!!!

Just noticed that there are two Brendans commenting here.

Everyone rightly disagrees with the second one (which is not me).

@Brendan2, noone here disagrees with a publisher’s right to assert copyright on original content.

However, this debate is not about copyright, but about commercial interests and how they are exercised.

Clearly the approach being taken by the Irish newsprint industry is not going to work.

So, if I post a comment with a link would they charge me or the website publishers?

To charge me they would have to gain my personal details from the sites publishers which I’m presuming would require some kind of legal action. If they were to charge the publishers then you could put a website out of business in a matter of minutes by flooding their comments system (if unmoderated) with link after link.

This idea has been thought up by someone in the industry that doesn’t actually know how the web works but hates it for destroying a once great media type.

I’ve worked with lots of them over the years and there’s still a few left.

*slaps head*
Links give you traffic
Traffic gives you readers
Readers get you advertisers
Advertisers give you revenue.

Someone must have misunderstood a part of that equation. This seems beyond crazy.

We welcome links. Please feel free to link to http://www.writing.ie anytime!

[...] pay for linking to articles on their websites. The body collecting money on behalf of these papers wants me to pay to link to things like the idea that we might have a heatwave next summer. On a slow news day the Irish Times would [...]

Missing part of the point… URL’s are rented, not owned. Their address is not able to be copyrighted. A person can secure their home, but the street address is not a protected item… so the use of a URL is not able to be protected. It is the right of the newspaper to make all visitors go away or have the visitor pay if they want, but charging for using a public reference to a URL that they do not own seems unreasonable. The best question is not if the newspapers have a right to protect their materials, but do the newspapers have a right to charge people that use a URL that the newspapers do not own?

Hmmm…. If I copywrite my email address, can I charge people who send me junk email?????

So what happens if I buy one of these newspapers, read it, and then give it away for free? Will the newspapers then try to sue me because I am giving away revenue?

So they want to reduce readership. no issues. Where do I mail an audio of me laughing for 15 minutes?

The outrage here would be justified if there was anything to be outraged about. Sadly for you and your argument, this is not the case. The publications are merely concerned with preserving their copyright against the attacks of ‘news aggregators’, who simply take copyrighted content and republish it without permission, attribution or payment. That is the real problem here, not linking.

@Eddie wrote “The publications are merely concerned with preserving their copyright against the attacks of ‘news aggregators’, who simply take copyrighted content and republish it without permission, attribution or payment.”

Not so, Eddie. Read the original story. THEN respond.

“A normal link is an incitement to copy the linked document which infringes copyright.”

Not to mention the fact that in some countries, copying online contents is not illegal in the first place.

You know there’s long standing politically incorrect English jokes where an Irish man bears the brunt of a joke because he just doesn’t understand the simplest of logic or common sense. ie ” Why did the Irishman drown eating pickled onions?…Because he got his head stuck in the jar”.

It would seem that despite years of the PC brigade trying to dispel this racially orientated stereotype that the Irish newspapers are hell bent on proving the stereotype correct.

Why did the Irishman refuse free advertising? Because he thought he could charge someone to advertise for him.

I looked at the first site on the list, the “Irish Independent.” All their videos have a large “SHARE” button as an obvious way to encourage readers to link to the video

I guess the webmaster will have to change all those to say “PAY €300 AND THEN SHARE” or something like that.

I note that the Irish Times puts a Facebook Share link on their story pages. Are they going to charge you when you choose to share their stories?

This, as some very witty Cracked editor put very eloquently, “is like trying to stop an assailant by punching him on the knife.”

It’s the swan’s song of a dying industry, a desperate effort to grab the last bits of cash before sinking into the depths forever.

Times are changing, move on or die.

I disagree with Richard Page; I don’t think there’s any risk of re-establishing that colonial stereotype – there’s already an Internet stereotype of the Dead Hand of Print Journalism trying to do a King Canute against the dreaded web, and this behaviour simply reinforces that one.

What with pay walls, overpriced subs for tablet PDFs of free websites and so much more, it’s hard to find a ‘print’ organisation that ‘gets’ the web.

12 years ago I had a job editing the web site of a very successful magazine; in the end I gave up, because they blocked anything that would make the site successful, from an early experiment in social media, to denying us news stories. Their rivals weren’t quite so stupid, and stole the market from under their noses.

The Irish ‘print’ is following that proud, sad tradition, and as so many have said, there’s no risk of destroying the web, none at all. Just themselves.

They just don’t get it.

Since when do the Irish have to be just like everybody else? If Irish media want to shoot themselves in the foot, who’s to stop them?
–An Irish-American journalist

What’s a newspaper?

@Eddie–do you even understand what a news aggregator is? It is a site that links back to the original article! Now, Eddie, perhaps you don’t understand how this strange contraption called the internet works: when people click on links on news aggregator sites, those links take them to the website of the newspaper in question. The more traffic on the website of the newspaper, the more advertising revenue that paper is likely to get since much internet advertising is driven by traffic–or clicks per page.

In short, NLI/NNI are basically denying themselves revenue and destroying their own businesses with this absurdity. No clicks means no advertising revenue. Infuriating people by charging 300 Euros just to link to them means no one will bother even reading them at all. No readership, no advertising revenue, no newspaper. While I know several Irishmen and women who’d love to spend all day at the pub (in fact, I’m related to at least two dozen I can name right off the top of my head!), my guess is the staff at those papers would tell the fools making these ridiculous demands to get stuffed.

What a way to shoot yourself in the foot.

By this thinking, everytime they link to a YouTube video, a Facebook page, a tweet etc etc etc they should pay these companies money.

In fact they linked to a story on my site at one stage a few years ago. Think I’ll issue them with a bill for, um lets say €1500 for doing that

All of you seem to go into the same direction, which is, it’s crazy. But lets look at it a little more in depth. Newspapers are paying journalists to provide and cross-check information. We know we can mostly rely on the information they provide. Journalists are paid to do that. Up till now, the paper copies of newspapers and the printed advertising paid for that. With people increasingly going online, that revenue is fast disappearing. So, newspapers are looking for new types of revenues. Their articles is what they sell, so I can understand they try to use that to raise the money they need to keep going. By the way, newspapers in many countries have settled with Google on their content, with Google paying them money by the way. Google, through its ads business actually gains money by referring to those articles, so its only fair they share the revenues.
The Irish newspaper industry seem to do it their way. Is this the best way. I don’t know. But I understand what they try to do, survive and continue deliver us news that is verified and credible.

[...] 2012: The Year Irish Newspapers Tried to Destroy The Web (McGarr Solicitors)  [...]

This is very stupid, and unenforceable.

A URL link is merely an “electronic citation” and cannot infringe any copyright.

If the newspapers have copyrighted material posted on their public Web sites then they should implement a subscription gateway, the way the rest of the world-wide Web community does.

But @Christian, if they encourage people to link to the site, they’ll get more visitors, and then they can get more advertising revenue.

The approach they’ve taken is like a department store asking people not to tell anyone where they are, and charging €300 for mentioning the address.

The industry needs to understand linking isn’t the same as unlawfully copying – just like giving someone directions isn’t the same as stealing from the premises.

[...] Periódicos Irlandeses trataron de destruir la libertad en la web [...]

A link is simply a recommendation to read someone else’s website, and trying to punish people for providing that free service is the height of stupidity.

A link tells you where to find a particular article, and after that it’s up to the newspaper to decide how they deliver the content. If they wish to charge, that’s their right.

If I recommend today’s IT editorial and tell you it’s available in Eason’s, will some debt collector arrive at my door looking for his slice? He should, because it’s the very same thing as linking on a website.

There are some in the mainstream media who feel threatened by the idea of qualified people expressing what’s on their mind and this development is certainly redolent of that insecure faction.

I suspect this move is inspired by the rantings of Ireland’s Greatest Journalist.

I have a funny feeling that these newspapers are in serious financial trouble and are seeking a way to earn some big money over the next few months. What I can’t understand is why these newspapers are online in the first place if they don’t want people to read their papers online – that’s all a link does is offer friends a chance to read interesting articles that someone feels is important! I doubt anyone wants to “steal” their work – they could do that from the online website edition without using an external link! DAH!!

[...] this: Irish newspapers want money from any website for each link referring to any of their online [...]

[...] You can see a ubiquitous perspective of this over on slashdot.  And a source of a story is here: [...]

I may be a little dim here but if Newspapers do not want people to ‘link’ or share articles etc from their web pages for FREE they can resolve this very easily, by making them subscription only.

Then you can link away but the copyright will be protected to only those allowed to view; just like every other business on the web who make their revenue from content supplied.

Its an industry simply struggling for revenue and picked the worst way to drum up another revenue stream. One of the reasons the industry is struggling is due to the overcrowded market of printed papers, in particular in the north. It’s time some rational business sense came into play, merge local papers, rather than producing struggling media publications that only serve certain sections/religions in society. if they don’t want to share content online, then stick it behind a paywall and kiss goodbye to the online advertisers…which they won’t do either. The industry is on its last legs…give it another 20-30 years and it will all be online.

A link on the Internet is nothing more than the Internet version of a citation. If they want to be consistent, they should apply this fee to all forms of citation, such as in government or university papers, books, on TV shows etc. Of course they won’t do that, which just goes to show that they don’t understand that the Internet isn’t all that different than what we’ve had before, it’s just faster, cheaper and allows information to propagate globally.

So I went to the NLI website, and clicked the license fee calculator link (I won’t link to it, because, well, I might need a license). The first choice is what type of company you are, a Commercial Company or a PR Company – no charity organisation or private individual options. So even if Women’s Aide thought they needed a license, the NLI tool won’t tell them how much it is.

[...] Et irsk advokatbyrå, ved navn McGarr Solicitors, har tatt saken, og er sjokkerte over basement noe uvanlige måten å forsøke å tjene penger på. «This is not a joke», skriver de i første setning i sitt blogginnlegg «2012: The year Irish newspapers attempted to destroy a web». [...]