Dallas Morning News Prohibiting Direct Links to Stories on Its Web Site
Wired News is reporting that Belo Media Corporation, the company that owns The Dallas Morning News, is trying to enforce a provision in The DallasNews.com Terms of Service that prohibits direct links to web pages that contain individual stories on its web site. The paragraph receiving new emphasis is:
4. Links to, and frames of, the Site. If you operate a Web site and wish to link to this Site, you may link only to the home page of the Site and not to any other page or subdomain of us. You may not frame or utilize framing techniques that involve any Marks, copyrighted material or other proprietary information (including images, text, page layout, or form) of any portion of the Site or suggest any relationship between our Site and you without our express written consent. In addition, you agree not to decompile, reverse engineer or disassemble any software or other products or processes accessible through the Site, not to insert any code or product or manipulate the content of the Site in any way that affects the user's experience, and not to use any data mining, robots, cancelbots, spiders, Trojan horse, or any data gathering or extraction method in connection with your use of the Site.
Makes us wonder whether pointing this fact out is, in their lawyers' minds, a violation of their intellectual property rights? It doesn't really matter because we haven't linked to them in a long time, and we're glad to comply with their wishes by never linking to them again.