I’m confused. Wouldn’t linking to a site that you are referring to in your blog post (or wherever) be a form of promotion for them?

I would think that someone would like for another blogger to link to their post. It gives them credit and drives traffic to their website. It’s also a way to get in front of their readers and followers.

I’m curious to see the outcome of this situation . . .

this is backwards… Links are necessary, and the majority of webmasters are going out of their way to increase their links by link building. To say no to links is nuts.

As the creator of content, if you don’t want links, it is your RIGHT to block linking. People with popular images, images for sale, and contend for sale do this all the time. If you are LOOKING for links, I agree, this is stupid. If you are trying to SELL Images or Content, allowing people to freely link to them is equally stupid.

To think that just because information is on the internet, that it is free – is anarchistic. Market evaluations, Stock photography, and YES, news articles are all examples of content that was created for PROFIT. Failing to protect these assets would be a disservice to the company that created them.

Personally I feel that the right to link is a natural one. If someone has made something public then anyone should be able to point at it. Once a newspaper is issued the publisher has no right to prevent you scrap booking it cutting it up and using it in anyway you choose. Why does Rupert Murdoch believe he can control a free media the Internet?

The weight of public opinion will be against him and he will hurt no-one more than himself. If he does not want links do not post in the first place! The only right he should have is to ensure any use is attributed and this is done by the fact the link is to his own site. He should stop his complaining and stick to paper publishing. Does he think he can choose his readers once he prints the paper? No! So what is his problem?

Global companies and hidden rulers of the world have started their campaign to destroy the last free media in the world – Internet.
Internet is just a group of web sites that have millions of owners, pages, etc. Internet can not be bought. So it has to be destroyed, at least in a way that we know it.
This attempt to rule the Internet started with Murdoch – Microsoft deal.
Next on the list is Google whose influence on the web community is immense.
French president Sarkozy has started, Putin continues, more to come …
Now this thing with links.
This is all going in one direction and one direction only: towards the end of free thought.
It will be achieved in tiny, small steps: one thing here, another there and those steps will not seem co-related at all. But be sure that they are. There’s no pure coincidence and this last fort of freedom is to important for them to let go.
Beware: the process has started. It will not stop. We may slow it down a bit and resist as long as we can.
For starters we should boycott Murdoch completely. Don’t visit his sites, don’t link, renounce subscriptions, do whatever you can.
Switch to Ubuntu or some other NIX, support Open Source community.
As I said before – we are those who feed the beast. Let’s stop.

I think linking is a right, but, while that is true, it’s up to the source whether or not a link is accepted. I’ve blocked links in the past when the source was not appropriate.

I agree on the note about advertisers with this site. What do they have to say to the idea of being affiliated with a site that shows no respect towards others? Good PR requires socializing with others even if unrelated. I think Google should drop their page rank for breaking such business and public internet etiquette.

News Corp has enough people that go to their sites directly that they don

But – freedom of speech is a limited freedom, and doesn’t include the “right” to steal other people’s intellectual property and benefit from it (ie – make money.)

THAT is what Murdock is putting the lid on. Brick and mortar (tree and ink) newspapers are dying away because of the Internet. Part of the reason they are dying is they have not been able to come up with an economic architecture that allows them to profit from the work of the people they employ to produce intellectual property. IE – they haven’t been successful in getting people to PAY for reading their on-line newspaper, and they haven’t been able to get advertisers to pay for the creation of information that is stolen by aggregator websites and published by them.

The aggregator websites are profitable. They sell advertising that is viewed by people attracted to their websites by content that cost them nothing to produce. They really are stealing the content from other companies that are in the business of producing content and hoping to profit from it.

Obviously if you steal your content, your cost of operation is much lower than a website that is paying people to produce content. It’s hard to compete against theft.

Murdock is not talking “links”.. he is talking about content, and that’s what he has several times threatened to cut off. Theft of content he has paid to have created. It’s intellectual property rights that are at risk here – and for some reason a lot of people on the Interwebz seem to think all information should be free. If it was free – then there would be no incentive to produce or pay for the production of information, and the Internet would sufffer as a result. As a clue – Murdock is entitled to guard and cut off access for any content he might produce, and personally – I think he has been overly patient in not doing so.

For the conspiracy nutcases – the only conspiracy I see here is the encouragement of the “free the Internet” thinking by large aggregators like Facebook, Google and Yahoo – their false outrage and claims of the death of the Internet are widely overblown when they’re really just bitching because they might have to fairly pay for some of the content they make money off.

THINK ABOUT IT. It’s all about the money..

the entire

Inter net – is about hyperlinks so that ideas – concepts and information flow easily and quickly to people functioning in this arena!

without hyperlinks – I do not believe there is an Inter net – and so any entity – big or small that prevents or does not allow hyperlinks to its contents is actually making itself extinct – and may expect the same treatment with its own ability to hyperlink to other entities contents –