Thousands of Sites That Ban You From Linking To Them

I always enjoy reading stuff Malcolm Coles puts out. Today, he just dropped a really well written post:
15 more sites that forbid you from linking to them

Insanity?

Yes. It is. In this day and age more links means more more more rankings. So why are these sites not allowing people to link to them?

Legal Legacy

I blame the lawyers. Many of these statements used to exist in the days of iframes, when loads of people use to iframe other sites to make up their own. These iframes were seen as links, hence hundreds of legal teams just simply copied and pasted terms from one another, and to this day this outdated concept still exists.

Proof

I randomly picked a paragraph from Malcom’s post:

You are not permitted to create a link to any part of our Services other than the home page unless you have our prior written consent.

What does that give me?

Well of course Malcolm ranks first for it. But what about the rest? Lets look at them:

www.littlecharleybear.com/p/terms

You are not permitted to create a link to any part of our Services other than the home page unless you have our prior written consent (and for the avoidance of doubt, such consent shall be deemed given in respect of widgets and embeddable media players which we may make available PROVIDED THAT you use them in accordance with these Terms and any further instructions published through our Services). We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice. Our Services must not be framed on any other site.

http://www.gettinglegaldone.com/terms.html

You are not authorized to (i) resell, sublicense, transfer, assign, or distribute the site, its services or content; (ii) modify or make derivative works based on the site, its services or content; (iii) except for linking to this site’s home page, create Internet links to the site, its services or content, or (iv) “frame” or “mirror” the site, its services or content on any other server or Internet-enabled device. All rights not expressly granted in this Agreement are reserved by us and our licensors

http://www.goaugmented.com/index/terms

You must not transmit, republish, copy, modify, frame, store (in whole or in part), pass off or link to any material or information on or downloaded from this site without our prior written consent.

http://www.sandsendholidays.co.uk/tnc.htm

However, you must not copy, transmit, modify, republish, store (in whole or in part), frame, pass-off or link to any material or information on or downloaded from this Site without our prior written consent.

I got bored after the first few proved I was right. However, if the theory holds, there are millions thousands of sites out there with this copy pasta  from lazy legal teams.

Lazy lawyers

OK, OK, so I dramatised it a bit. There arent millions, but I would content thousands of sites… Thanks to Lord Manley and Matt for rapping my knuckles.  However, you need to run a number of variations of the original query, to find all of these sites… I only ran a few.

I have known this for a few years, funny how Malcolm spurred me to post this.

My Tip: Blame the Lawyers  (and go and change these T&Cs on your sites!)