Ten years of WWW and they still don’t get it
Posted on August 18, 2004
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 71 views |
When will corporations/organizations learn that trying to institute linking policies on the web is not just futile, it’s completely inane? My guess as to the continued rearing of their ugly, clueless heads: lawyers with too much time on a golf course and not enough time in front of the keyboard.
Case in point: any links to the official Olympics website, like this one, that don’t conform to a bizarrely twisted set of linking rules, like these ones, cannot possibly exist. It is forbidden. Unsanctioned, as it were.
Know what I like most about their terms? This statement: “For your protection and ours…” My protection? Really? What dire fate might befall me should I link via Hot Sweaty Atheletes Gone Wild rather than Athens 2004*.
The worst penalty I can think of that they might bestow upon an errant, unrepentant, irrascible linker is being locked into solitary confinement with NBC’s linguistically-impaired sportscasters and being forced to watch synchronized diving and those damned McDonalds commercials non-stop, forever. Pray for death.
Olympic Folks: this is the web. Please catch up.
(* if you actually clicked that link: I like the Olympics, except for synchronized diving and a handful of other ones that make me go “WTF?” but I like the childish humour more)