In my Inbox this morning popped a report about how Associated Press is suing Moreover (owned by Verisign) for using content from their site.
Straight away on reading it I was reminded of something that happened way back when here in the UK, when I first started working full time on web projects in 1996. The Shetland Times sued the Shetland News for linking to its news stories without permission. The nascent Internet held its collective breath as the concept of linking to other sites threatened the whole concept of websites, and especially search engines and news aggregator sites.
Settled out of court, this was followed by another threat the following year (1997), where news aggregator site News Index received a legal notice from The Times about using its content without consent. This too, endangered the whole concept of linking on the Internet.
Obviously, ten years later, we know that everything turned out OK, and the “old media” way of looking at things didn’t prevail and common sense won the day. However, this new case between two Internet heavyweights again jeopardises the status quo, this time over threats to Internet-based business models.
From an SEO point of view, this case is interesting because of the high weight given in the search engines to the value of links. Much as common sense prevailed then (why wouldn’t you want someone sending you traffic?) in today’s web optimisation world people are extremely grateful for links, and indeed, there is a market in buying and selling links so the concept of someone not wanting people to link to their content is somehow ludicrous.
But, the web is evolving and changing, and the landscape transforms on a day to day basis, so we will have to see what happens about this new blot on the horizon.
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