Oh dear, are we getting this desperate?
Wired News reports on a new service from iCopyright -- which I've mentioned here before -- that attempts to collect money for publishers for allowing others to link to their pages. For example, this link to an Albuquerque Journal article is supposed to cost me $50, according to the price menu of iCopyright options. The other options, such as PDFs and photocopy licensingm, would seem to make sense. But it's hard to believe there are still people out there -- let alone, people with the knowledge to implement such a system -- with such a screwed up understanding of the web as to think this could possibly work. It gets worse. According to the Wired story, "The iCopyright.com license agreement also restricts what can be said about the content of the linked-to article. If you sign up to pay $50 to link to, say, an Albuquerque Journal article, you agree not to say anything 'derogatory' about 'the author, the publication from which the content came, or any person connected with the creation of the content or depicted in the content.'" (By the way, James Sammon is an idiot.)