Japan's Nikkei Newspaper Goes Pay To View and Even Restricts Links

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Japan's Nikkei Newspaper Goes Pay To View and Even Restricts Links

engine

3:39 pm on Apr 9, 2010 (gmt 0)

Japan's Nikkei Newspaper Goes Pay To View and Even Restricts Links [nytimes.com]

Japan’s largest business newspaper, the Nikkei, joined the trend of other news sites last week by requiring readers to pay to view its Web site. But, in a twist, it also imposed a policy severely restricting links to its articles — or even its home page.
Links to Nikkei’s home page require a detailed written application. Among other things, applicants must spell out their reasons for linking to the site.

In addition, regular readers of the site will also notice that the paper has disabled the ability to right-click — which usually brings up a menu including “copy link address.” The paper’s “link policy” ends on an ominous note: “We may seek damages for any violations of these rules.”

bill

11:40 pm on Apr 9, 2010 (gmt 0)

The Nikkei has always been a paid site for its English version. Its not cheap either. They do have good content though, so a subscription would be worth it.

The linking policy was obviously made by some clueless committee of aging technophobes. It's a joke of a policy and just goes to show how out of touch they are.

graeme_p

8:07 am on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Do they have any legal right to prevent links?

AFAIK courts have ruled otherwise in most countries.

JS_Harris

8:10 am on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Links to Nikkei’s home page require a detailed written application.

Funny, they work just fine without one too, the linked article even has one. /shrug

disabled the ability to right-click

view/page source is your friend.

On a more serious note, if I was in business in Japan and had previously enjoyed the paper/site I'd buy a subscription. If I didn't previously enjoy the paper/site I probably wouldn't be starting now. That's the problem, as the number of new readers drops will the company cope with reduced income or start doing other silly things with their web properties ?

maximillianos

11:18 am on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Just plain weird. It is like saying that you can't refer your friends to their paper without written permission. They must have a problem with someone overlinking to them from bad properties. Why else would you care? Unless I'm missing something.

iThink

11:53 am on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Japanese economy is facing the problem of stagnation or deflation since last over 20 years. Looks like the folks in charge of Nikkei want their website also to stagnate in the same manner followed by deflation (decrease) in the number of visitors to the website.

wolfadeus

1:00 pm on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

I don't think you can prohibit other people linking to your website - surely not as long as you don't take any copyright material, correct?

weeks

1:18 pm on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

I'm surprised no one here, just for irony's sake, has provided a link.

Interesting way to get international publicity.

jasonward

2:48 pm on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

great link-bait scheme, get bloggers all over the world to defiantly post their link and raise their rankings.

nickreynolds

10:17 pm on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

I am absolutely refusing to let anyone link to any of my sites. Please pm me for a list of my sites that you MUST not link to. And please don't talk about it on any forums or blogs.;)

ken_b

10:27 pm on Apr 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

I am absolutely refusing to let anyone link to any of my sites .... ;)

Ummmmmm, are ya up for a little reciprocal non-linking? :)

brotherhood of LAN

3:31 am on Apr 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

Weird. A bit like asking people to not talk to you. Don't link to their site?

I guess they're interested in their home market and readers visiting their website, and anyone out of that loop aren't welcome.

TheMadScientist

8:07 am on Apr 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

Alright, I'll be the first to not link to them from this thread:
http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/freetop.aspx

I wonder if the search engines have sent in their written request for permission to link to the site yet?

Can you imagine Google, Yahoo and Bing needing to send written permission for every page they wanted to include in their results for every site on the Internet? Last I checked those result thingies they show visitors are all links.

In thinking about it, maybe we should just unlink the entire Internet and start over by requesting the permission of the sites we would like to link to? LMAO, that's actually kind of funny, can you imagine what it would do to Google and Bing if we all took our links down and waited to get permission from the sites we would like to link to before we re-installed any of them? Talk about throwing a wrench in the works. LOL.

I do seriously hope they do the courtesy of requesting permission from everyone they link to for any reason since they think it should be required of others who would like to link to them, you know a bit of example setting and holding yourself to your own standards.

Of course unlinking the Internet would be the best April Fools Day Joke I've heard of: 'On April 1, 2011 the entire Internet was mysteriously unlinked for a short period of time... Around 9am local time all outbound links were mysteriously removed from sites, but then began reappearing about 5 hours later. On some sites it was reported people were seeing 'What now GoogleBot?' in places usually containing links...'

webastronaut

8:38 pm on Apr 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

Yeah pretty weird for sure.... Almost like WebmasterWorld blocking Google from indexing their site.... LOL if you remember that...

zeus

12:24 am on Apr 12, 2010 (gmt 0)

uhhh I can not link to them, are you kidding, I can link to what ever I want, they can not do anything about it.