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Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com.

 

BBB: Don't Come to Our Site!

2:25:44 pm mst / 14 March 2001 found by diana / filed in legal / source Politech 106 hits / 2 comments / 0 e-mails

The Better Business Bureau is apparently trying to prevent other web sites from linking to them, on the grounds that the material on their web site is copyrighted.

There just doesn't seem to be any end to dumb arguments about the internet and copyrights!

Comments

This comment board has been retired.

silly me! by diana 4:13:16 pm mst / 14 March 2001 / # 2

Silly me! When I first posted the story, I forgot to link the text "Better Business Bureau." I've since corrected that mistake with a link, which I shall repeat here for the sake of pissing them off: Better Business Bureau Obviously, this link means that... 1. the Better Business Bureau endorses everything on the GeekPress web site 2. the Better Business Bureau agrees that my chocolate chip cookies are undeniably yummy 3. the Better Business Bureau regards Titanic a terrible movie 4. the Better Business Bureau agrees to pay me 1.6 billion dollars. Ah, the power I wield in a single stroke of HTML! diana.

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Incredible by MysteriousStranger 2:58:07 pm mst / 14 March 2001 / # 1

Their reasoning is totally inane. Their argument might make sense if other sites were copying content beyond the usual fair use provisions. But merely publishing a pointer to their material is no more copyright infringement than publishing directions in a newspaper article listing where to order their publications. And as far as the argument that a hyperlink suggests an endorsement on their part of the referring site -- that's also bogus. Again, all sorts of people could list their name/address in a print article, yet the BBB wouldn't consider that any kind of implied endorsement on their part.