Here is the thing that we all dance around online, the elephant in the Internet, if you will.

You are a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The Journal pays your salary, gives you an office, provides you benefits, etc. You write a great article, it goes in print, goes online, goes wherever. The Journal has paid you for your article, which is a representation of your effort, talent, experience, whathaveyou.

The revenue that provides the pay for that reporter to write that article is generated from sales of the Journal, as well as what ads are on the originating site (The Wall Street Journal.com, or whatever).

Whether or not News Corp or WSJ has found a way to generate revenue online is not the issue. Yes, that is a failure of foresight and ability to anticipate changes in print media, whatever.

The point, the crux of the problem, if no revenue comes in to the originator, there is no impetus for continuing to pay people to create good content. You don’t have good journalists writing good articles, you don’t have trusted media names providing good content.

Yeah, it’s great to have your work reprinted and copied and sent out through the Internet, but that notoriety and fame doesn’t pay the rent, or feed the cat, or put money into an IRA. At some point the people that create the work have to be properly and financially compensated for their work. Taking what someone else wrote and putting it on a separate site and charging ads to line your own pocket without kicking down to the entity that created the article is lame, and will ultimately drive good reporters out of work.

It’s not evil to say that you want to be paid for your good work. It’s not evil to want to control the ways people distribute your work and then profit off of it without paying you for the rights.

And as for the “right” to link, you don’t have a “right” to do anything on the Internet. As long as the companies on the Internet, be it Google or Bing or yes, even News Corp are private concerns, they can take their ball and go home. They don’t HAVE to let you do anything, they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and if you don’t like it, you can go soak your head. Whether it is wise to do so is debatable, but that is their right. Charging to read articles will likely doom their business models moreso than it already has, but hey. Things change, media evolves, life goes on.

The lesson is this, kids: You don’t get quality for free, or at least not for very long, but that’s not entirely the fault of the businesses that fail to capitalize on their resources or provide new avenues of revenue. You can’t just do something because there is no one around to stop you, whether that is breaking into an empty house or ripping someone’s hard work off.

The easy allure of the Internet has engendered an entire generation of people to think they are entitled to take anything they want just because it is easy to take. You cannot take or use someones work without paying them for it, which, aside from the moral issues therein, because why should they bother to make any more of it?

Can we just all agree that we don’t blame businesses for wanting to control their product, but let’s work towards away that the beauty of sharing information on the Internet shouldn’t suffer because of reactionary policies or shortsighted business models?

It’s everyone’s Internet. Together, we can help it live up to its potential.

I feel that if anyone puts anything on the web that is open to all viewers, then people have the right to link to it. If it was to be paid for then the site owner should have it in a members area where you have to pay up front to view it. What’s next? How about putting your Sunday paper on the net for free then sueing everyone who comes to your site and reads it instead of buying the paper. Again if it is on the open internet then I should have the right to view it, link to it, and quote it. Now if I ran a paid site that my viewers had to pay for access, then followed a link that they had to pay to view, then that might be a different story.

Smacks of all things Rupert, really.
Can’t bear the thought readers might check another site first, huh?
Or maybe the link originates from somewhere you’ll find a balanced, objective view …

How do one define the worldwide web without links. They are the essence of the internet. They allow each person to surf, going from one web site to another following those virtual routes.
If an institution or company with a website opened to the public does not want other websites to link it, then they are no longer part of the web and should just have a site in their intranet.
Those companies take advantages of the free internet, getting traffic for free and now they want to sever the connection with the rest of the www?

Let us imagine a situation where everybody stops everybody from linking.
No links to other sites at all. None.
Impossible? Are you sure?
What if “big players” manage to pass a law or a rule or whatever to protect their interests?
Ok. It’s a bit far fetched. But on the other hand – who knows. Strangest things have happened.
And then we all have to ask one another for a permission to link…
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My website had problems with others stealing material from it without a link or reference.
I strongly support copyright and I’m against unauthorized publishing of someone else’s work.
But is that an issue here? I don’t think there’s anyone who’s not aware of copyright.
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News aggregating sites are somewhat like search engines for news. They make profit in a similar way Google does. We could argue that they can’t exist without the “real” news companies, but there is obviously a demand for this.
We all live fast and don’t have time to browse for news all day. We need it all in one place.
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I don’t like what’s started here – a process of “raising the walls”. One case is not a problem, but if this spreads it won’t be good.

I accept with information: If an institution or company with a website opened to the public does not want other websites to link it, then they are no longer part of the web and should just have a site in their intranet.