Post: 12 July 2015 (updated 13 July 2015)
Kieran McCathy has a piece in The Register making fun of the organisers of the Pan Am Games in Toronto for the terms of use on their website toronto2015.org.
It looks if the
TO2015™ terms have been updated in the past 24 hours, but according to McCarthy they included a blanket ban on linking to the website without written consent.
The World Wide Web wouldn’t work at all if linking to other publicly accessible sites required written consent, and (of course) any such requirement is unenforceable in practice. In some legal jurisdictions there are restrictions on deep-linking and framing, but in the US and in Europe even those techniques are usually not a breach of copyright.
This kind of overzealous lawyering of website terms is rarer now than it was in the early days of the web. But a surprising number of UK websites still have a “no linking” policy in their terms of use. For example:
You may not create a link to any page of this website without our prior written consent.
It is not permitted to create a link to this website without the written permission of Barratt Homes.
No third party is permitted to link any other website to this site without obtaining our prior written consent.
You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior written consent of Ryanair.
You undertake not to establish a link to the Website, Mobile Apps or ODEON Social Media from any other website, intranet or extranet site, without our express prior written consent.
The Link App (included here mainly for the irony …):
You may not create a link to this website from another website or document without The Link App’s prior written consent.
And here are a couple of sites that should really know better, because their main purpose is to provide access to public data:
DCLG’s Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Register, which is operated by Landmark:
You may not create a link to this website from another website or document without Landmark Information Group’s prior written consent.
Greater Manchester Open Data Infrastructure Map, a site developed by New Economy with funding from Cabinet Office’s Release of Data Fund:
You are not permitted to link to any part of our Website without our prior written consent. Where you are permitted to do so, any link must be fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.
Any approved link must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists and you must not establish a link to our Website in any website that is not owned by you.
We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.
Update 13 July 2015: New Economy have updated the above to read as follows:
You are permitted to link to any part of our Website without our prior written consent. Any link must be fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.
Any link must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists. Any link should acknowledge New Economy as the creator of mappinggm.org.uk
We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.
This is clearly an improvement, but still attempts to create the impression that users need permission to link to the Greater Manchester Open Data Infrastructure Map site. There is no legal basis for this view.