The "blogosphere" has been buzzing about a legal statement on the Cingular website which restricts how people are allowed to create a weblink from their website to the Cingular website. As we have bookmarked the press pages of practically every cellular operator who have an English press service - we sat down and took a random selection to see what their websites said about people linking to them.
Firstly, the originator of the story seemed to be a blog run by Harry Maugans who said he was just scanning the Cingular Terms and Conditions, when he noticed the following text:
"Links to the Sites. You are granted a limited, nonexclusive right to create a hypertext link to the homepage of the Sites, provided such link does not portray Cingular Wireless or any of its products and services in a false, misleading, derogatory, or otherwise defamatory manner. You may not use a Cingular or Cingular Wireless logo or other proprietary graphic or trademark of Cingular or Cingular Wireless to link to the Sites without the express written permission of Cingular Wireless. This limited right may be revoked at any time."
Now, while legally valid, it does go against the core principle of the internet, which is to link to other websites - and to the specific page being talked about - so that people can easily jump from one website to another. Restricting links to the homepage only breaks that communication link and causes more work for the reader. There is also a serious search engine visibility issue, as the more links into a website, in general - the greater the chance that the website will appear when people search for it. By trying to restrict inbound hyperlinks, the websites are actually only harming themselves.
A few years ago, much comment was made about the Sellotape company website as they had said (and still do say) that "Hyperlinking to this site, is not permitted without the express prior permission of Sellotape." but it seems that the policy has spread to other companies as well.
So, below is a random selection of websites (and hyperlinks) which we looked at to see what they might say about hyperlinks to them. We limited our research to pages which were likely to contain such information, namely T&C's, legal notices and privacy pages.
For the record, cellular-news welcomes links to our website regardless of the reason and whichever page a 3rd party website might choose to link to.
www.vodafone.com - Specific page
1.6 You may establish a link or "deep link" to the Site from your site, provided that you have obtained Vodafone's prior written consent and that in Vodafone's sole discretion, the context is relevant and the link or its description is not detrimental to Vodafone.
Nothing found
Nothing found
Nothing found
www.singtel.com - Specific page
6. Hyperlinks from Third Party Websites
You agree that caching, hyperlinking to, and framing of the Site or any of the contents are strictly prohibited.
SingTel reserves all rights to disable any links to, or frames of any site containing inappropriate, profane, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent or unlawful topics, names, material or information, or material or information that violates any written law, any applicable intellectual property, proprietary, privacy or publicity rights.
Nothing found
Nothing found
Nothing found
www.swisscom.com (English language version)
Nothing found
Nothing found
Nothing found
www.verizonwireless.com - Specific page
(Note - it is not actually possible to get to the terms page without entering your address, so it is possible that the terms vary depending on your location)
You may link to our site, subject to the following guidelines:
Nothing found
Nothing found
www.rogers.com (English language version)
Nothing found - although the security certificate to access the terms and conditions page had expired when we checked it.
www.pannon.hu (English language version) - Specific page
2. TERMS OF USE
(note - section 3 is fairly generic and not really relevant to this article)
Nothing found"
Posted to the site on 5th May 2007
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/23573.php