New Orbitz Terms Prohibit Inbound Deep Linking 524
chekovma writes "Orbitz has announced a new set of Terms and Conditions that take effect March 12th which require anyone who uses their website (creates an account there) to follow strict inbound linking rules. These rules prohibit a user from creating even a plain text link to orbitz.com without first notifying them and require a user to take down such a link at their desire. It also disallows any deep linking -- meaning even this post violates those terms and conditions."
Good Morning Slashdot! (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
So don't use them.
Duh.
Cache of links (Score:3, Insightful)
Since non-members aren't bound by this agreement, it'd be interesting to see what actions (if any) they would take.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
A competitor may want to deep link in order to directly compare rates for flights... similar to what Progressive does with car insurance. Or, some unaffiliated company (like a travel agency) may want to build their own travel web portal and simply use the Orbitz site to show/reserve flight information without Orbitz's permission.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Orbitz should be allowed to do this. After all, it is their site. At the same time, however, consumers should voice their annoyance at being so inconvenienced. Just a quick email to their customer service department telling them "I'd love to use your site to find the best travel information I can, however, I find the TOS too restrictive for my needs and will be using Travelocity instead. I felt it important to inform you of this loss of business in the hopes that you will one day revise your TOS to allow deep linking for personal use."
</ramble%gt;
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
First, Orbitz should be allowed to do whatever they want. This includes prohibiting deep linking.
Second, Orbitz should not be allowed to legally enforce anything that doesn't have a signed contract behind it.
These two combine to form what I think is the correct set of possibilities. Orbitz can yell and scream as much as they like. If they really want to, they can even implement technical restrictions. It's almost trivial to prevent deep linking with a technical solution; embed a unique, expiring identifier into every URL. If you want to get really draconian, tie it to the incoming IP address, or a cookie, etc. Problem solved. What they cannot do is allow deep linking on a technical level but then sue people for doing it.
I believe that disallowing people from sending a correct request to your web server and retrieving a correct response is utterly bogus and the law should come down on the side of the requester.
However, I don't know how the law actually is, I just think that's how it should be.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
Just one example, poke around the Apple Store [applestore.com] for a bit. Find something cool. Try to send the link to a friend. It won't work for them.
This kind of thing is trivial for a database-backed web site, which both the Apple Store and Orbitz undoubtedly are. They're either being lazy or stupid, or the web monkeys are revolting against management by implementing their ideas in a stupid way.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Other than that, prior art seems pretty useless as a way to stop something being patented in the first place.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Now it will be neat how this affects things like google web crawl
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's what US Federal Law actually is. I agree with you -- US law
Deep linking can run afoul of those laws.
So, oblige them, and DON'T DO IT. Indeed, remove all links. Link to other travel sites instead.
Just a suggestion.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok...instead of a direct deep link...would it be legal to get data from their website...reprocess, and put it up on yours? That way, nothing but 'facts' are on your website based upon what they put on their site?
Re:Hmmm (Score:3)
I find it objectionable that somebody would place data in the public domain like on the net and then expect that they can actually hope to control it. My objection comes from my gut reaction to IDIOTS.
Re:Copyright infringement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which makes absolutely no sense because there is no such legal entity as "Intellectual Property".
Perhaps you meant to sugest that theur URLs were copyrighted?
Perhaps you meant to sugest that theur URLs were patented?
Perhaps you meant to sugest that theur URLs were trade secrets?
Perhaps you meant to sugest that theur URLs were trademarks?
Well copyright fails because a URL is a peice of factual information, just like some street address. You cannot copyright factual information. So that doesn't work.
Patents fail because, well, a URL isn't an invention. So that doesn't work.
Trade secrets doesn't work because the moment they allow members of the public to ever see the URL is ceases to be a trade secret. So that doesn't work.
Trademark doesn't work because by using the URL you are not deceptively engaging in commerce under that trademark or otherwise confusing the public. So that doesn't work.
Intellectual Property is a really really rotten term. In any discussion using the term Intellectual Property the probably of someone missunderstanding the law rapidly aproaches 1.
-
That would be trade secrets. (Score:3, Insightful)
Trade secrets doesn't work because the moment they allow members of the public to ever see the URL is ceases to be a trade secret. So that doesn't work.
I figure the thinking is that they don't allow "members of the public" to ever see the URL. They allow only account holders, who have agreed to the non-disclosure policy which is the subject of this article, to see the URL.
Re:Copyright infringement? (Score:3, Funny)
Breakin the law! [orbitz.com]
Breakin the law! [orbitz.com]
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Sirs,
I refer to the text of your Terms and Conditions as attached below.
My question to you is how do you intend to enforce these conditions since,
1. To read them someone must go to your site and find them.
2. You cannot dictate what any internet user puts on their own website, this is called the right to free speech and is embodied in almost every constitution in the world, even if some countries seem determined to undermine it with legislation.
and
3.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
"Those are two instances which are clearly not in the best interests of Orbitz. However, what about more mundane uses? Perhaps I want to help a friend find the best price for their trip? Technically, I won't be able to directly link them to the results I've found. Instead, I'd have to walk them through exactly what search/browse/filter criteria to use and hope that their result set is no different than mine."
No, you wouldn't -- just e-mail your friend the link and don't worry about it.
It seems clear to me that Orbitz put this into place so that they have the grounds to go after others that are putting permanent deep links on their web sites. They're going after the aforementioned competitors, et al., and not you.
"Perhaps Orbitz should be allowed to do this. After all, it is their site. At the same time, however, consumers should voice their annoyance at being so inconvenienced. Just a quick email to their customer service department telling them "I'd love to use your site to find the best travel information I can, however, I find the TOS too restrictive for my needs and will be using Travelocity instead. I felt it important to inform you of this loss of business in the hopes that you will one day revise your TOS to allow deep linking for personal use.""
I'm not sure what the point of this would be, other than to get attention. If you want to send a link to a friend, do it. Their TOS hasn't been written for the purposes of what you're doing. No need to be a martyr.
In case I'm not being clear, here's a similar example. I run a web site which has a TOS that states that we have the right to bounce accounts for excessive profanity and various other naughty things. Now, this does not mean that we're running a profanity filter and proactively bouncing anybody who utters the random "fuck." The TOS is in place so that we have a clearly defined right to bounce people who are being obnoxious. If somebody were to send me an e-mail similar to yours -- "I would like to use your site but since you won't let me use profanity I'll go somewhere else instead" -- I would rightfully point out that they were being a moron.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
I liken a website to a public street, you have no real expectation privacy on the street, I don't think you should have much in the way of such on the web. The website is a public offering.
If I sat on the street, played guitar, I could not tell people passing by not to tell anyone about me, nor should they hum any tunes they heard me play.
Likewise with a website. If you don't want everyone to access it...don't put it out there.
They certainly shouldn't be able to sue you for nothing else but deep linking.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.orbitz.com/ [orbitz.com]
Oh damn, did I just break the law?
http://www.orbitz.com/ [orbitz.com] http://www.orbitz.com/ [orbitz.com] http://www.orbitz.com/ [orbitz.com] http://www.orbitz.com/ [orbitz.com]
Holy shites!! It's
How about automated extraction? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't create a link, can you call it deep linking?
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't make a joke out of this (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, except for the fact that your home is private property. The internet, specifically the web portion, is a public forum. If you don't want the information out there, don't put it out there.
Sure, you can tell me not to smoke in your house, but, you can't tell me not to smoke outside your house on the sidewalk in fr
Free advert (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Free advert (Score:3)
Re:Free advert (Score:3, Insightful)
They need to read the Ticketmaster case (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe, Legality of 'Deep Linking' Remains Deeply Complicated [beachbrowser.com]
BTW, anyone who reads this post owes me $20, that's my TOS.
Re:They need to read the Ticketmaster case (Score:5, Funny)
That's okay, I'll just subtract it from the $350 "Proofreading Fee" you owe me for reading your post.
Re:Free advert (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Free advert (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of rules that apply to one medium that does not apply to others.
You can have a dog on a rope outside barking his ass off 24 hours a day, and it's fine. But if you play your stereo for 20 minutes too loud, a neighbor can call the cops and have it turned off.
You can make a copy of a CD for backup purposes legally, but you can't circumvent the copy protection to do so without breaking the law.
You can be charged $50,000 for downloading a 2MB MP3 from an internet source, but only $300 by driving 50Mph over the speed limit.
There's so many examples of "What the hell? This makes no sense!" that it's become a sad fact of life.
Come on... (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus, you'd think their web developers would have pointed out their stupidity - or maybe I'm just being naive.
Re:Come on... (Score:2)
Oh, I'm sure they did. PHB's all the way.
Re:Come on... (Score:2)
Re:Come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Future (Score:2)
Oh, dont forget the attack on p2p technology
Its a matter of time.. Enjoy it while you can.
Re:Come on... (Score:4, Insightful)
When people link to their site it's advertising. Yes it's a double edge sword to allow linking but regardless it's getting the orbitz site some publicity whether good or bad.
By not allowing links to your site in any form, their basicially relying on their Thunderbirds puppets and that gay sounding guy playing hide and seek to promote their site.
Word of mouth is the strongest form of advertising a company can have. Period. One person satisified/dissatified with your service will tell anyone interested in their product their experience. By not allowing people to post in their blogs or their site or even e-mail for that matter, your basicially cutting a large portion of free advertising you could be using to promote your business.
Terms and Conditions of this Comments (Score:5, Funny)
By reading the terms and conditions of this comment, you are locked in to obeying them by the most basic laws of physics of the universe and failure to obey them will cause you and your entire family to instantly cease to exist.
Re:Terms and Conditions of this Comments (Score:5, Funny)
Holy crap, it worked.
A Cease to Exist notice? (Score:5, Funny)
Man, your lawyer must have friends in very high places if he can issue a Cease to Exist notice!
How is such a thing delivered? Does the Reaper come in person?
Blockwars [blockwars.com]: Free, multiplayer, Tetris like game.
Re:Terms and Conditions of this Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this is funny and all, but is this what our world is coming to? Is it going to be someday that imprinted on your hamburger patty is an EULA that absolves the fast food companies of any obligation to your health?
Why is it that the courts are more worried about enforcing the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law? Wasn't that the whole point of English Common law to begin with? To make the law accessible to the people? If people are entering into contracts and agreements simply by visiting websites, listening to ads on TV/radio, and even going to public parks [slashdot.org] how can they realistically know every facet of every agreement? That is to say that if I actually took the time to read all the small print on every ad I see, all the EULAs on software I've already bought, and check to make sure that every time I take a picture I'm not violating someone's copyright, I wouldn't get anything done.
Moreover, don't contracts/agreements hinge upon the idea of benefiting both parties in some way? What possible benefit are people gaining from being restricted by rules they neither know nor understand?
-Grym
Re:Terms and Conditions of this Comments (Score:3, Funny)
Could I modify that to
If you find this amendment to your T and C's ameniable please provide the deepest spot on your comment to link to.
How Does This Affect My Rights?? (Score:2, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with "rights".
Re:How Does This Affect My Rights?? (Score:2)
Re:How Does This Affect My Rights?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does Google have an account at Orbitz ? If not, then any TOS Orbitz posts doesn't bind Google.
Simply viewing a web page does not make you bound into whatever inane rules that web page's maker has posted. Not even in the US, altought Orbitz can propably drive any private linker into banckrupty with court fees, so the law doesn't really matter there...
Re:How Does This Affect My Rights?? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm afraid they remembered: http://www.orbitz.com/robots.txt [orbitz.com]
Oops, I just violated the Orbitz TOS. How careless of me.
Orbitz can suck my danglybitz (Score:5, Funny)
Afraid they can't sue me for that. I've never visited their site (except for pop up ads which I didn't give permission for), so I haven't agreed to their silly EULA.
That was so much fun, I think I'll do it again. http://www.orbitz.com/robots.txt [orbitz.com] !!! http://www.orbitz.com/robots.txt [orbitz.com] !!! http://www.orbitz.com/robots.txt [orbitz.com] !!!
Neh neh nyeah-nyeah neh!
Re:How Does This Affect My Rights?? (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't have a right to use my webpage. OK? Even if I put it on the web and leave it accesible to everyone, you still don't have a right to use it.. I may let you, I may not. I may decide to block access based on any criteria I can determine -- apparent geographical location, whether you accept cookies, your user agent, or the selection of a pseudo-random number.
It's my website. Legally, and morally, you have no right to use it, any mo
Public website is like a shop, not a house (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad analogy; even if your right to stop people visiting is enforcable, it's not like leaving your house open.
The computer equivalent to that would be exploiting a security hole to gain access to a system that clearly wasn't intended for public use.
Your website is more like a shop, in that if it's publicly accessible and the doors are open, permission is im
Re:How Does This Affect My Rights?? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is bullshit.
If you publish something in a public forum, you are, by definition, giving up some control over it.
You can't set out a stack of free catalogs and then try to dictate how people can use them. If you give me a catelog, I don't have to use it to auy your crap -- I'm perfectly within my rights to shred it and use it for kitty litter if I so desire.
More appropo
Message to Timothy (Score:5, Funny)
When will companies learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Use the referrer field (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Use the referrer field (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course they can. But how in hell will they ever see another new customer via the internet again?
Too funny.
Re:Use the referrer field (Score:3, Interesting)
The meaning of 'or' (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to put words in the grandparent's mouth, but I think 'or redirect' might just mean that if you want to connect to orbitz.com/very/deep/link from outside of orbitz.com, you get something else, like the orbitz.com front page instead.
It's not really difficult to go beyond this simple
Re:Use the referrer field (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Use the referrer field (Score:3, Interesting)
>>Can't their web server just reject or redirect any page requests that don't have a referrer field of their own web site?
>Yeah, I'd have thought so. It might confuse tinfoil hat types though, or some proxies, who refuse to send referrers because the Orbitz site would break. You could, of course, use "no referrer and no session cookie" but the tinfoil hats aren't going to use cookies either.
Tin foil hat types who disallow cookies are probably a small percentage of the folks who will use Orbit
maybe we should oblige them (Score:5, Funny)
Re:maybe we should oblige them (Score:2)
Re:maybe we should oblige them (Score:5, Insightful)
I was considering setting up a link on my homepage to an Orbitz page just to spite them and see what they did about it, but then I thought... Perhaps it's reverse psychology. If lots of /.ers have the same idea, that's MORE links for Orbitz, and a HIGHER search engine rank!
Cunninger than the United Nations Bureau of Cunning.
Re:maybe we should oblige them (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:maybe we should oblige them (Score:3, Interesting)
If I had more time and money, I'd give their financial data a look to see if there's any money to be made selling them short.
Ok Orbizt, come and get me! (Score:5, Interesting)
I challenge you to try and enforce your new terms and conditions, or drop them.
FYI (Score:2)
Too much of something good? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's why:
Orbitz is a travel site for purchasing tickets, etc. The price and availability of these things changes constantly. Additionally, I would bet they may run into customer service problems if too many people are all trying to view and/or book the same flights at the same time. The system is really designed to be a point in time quote system. The problem comes when someone does a deep link, to a quote for example. Chances are if a link is posted on the web (or sent through email), the page the new visitor sees may be different from the page/price/availability the creator of the link saw.
That all being said, there are technical means to reduce, if not eliminate this problem. Could be they are implementing a technical solution, and are putting this in the TOS so they have something to point to when deep links suddenly stop working and customers complain.
PR wise they could have done this better, but I bet they never thought a place like this would publicize a TOS change.
On the other hand, I could be all wrong about their motives.
-Pete
So give 'em what they want. (Score:2, Interesting)
reading != agreement (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe, _maybe_, if you click 'I agree' you are bound to some parts.
Anyway, if they want to be a little island in cyberspace, then fine by me. If they really want to protect their IP they can pull out the ethernet cable from their webserver's NIC.
Short Orbitz Stock (Score:5, Funny)
Why would anyone need to deep link to a gum that keeps your teeth clean anyway?
Precedent: (Score:2)
GameFAQs [gamefaqs.com] has something similar to this already in place, you're not supposed to link directly to an FAQ [gamefaqs.com], you have to instead link to the page with the FAQ listed on it [gamefaqs.com]. They claim [gamefaqs.com] to have link-blocking countermeasures in place to prevent exactly what I just did above from working (though I didn't find them to be effective when I tried them just now, you may disagree). Then there are infinite [tripod.com] sites [geocities.com] which disallow remote hotlinking to their images.
Anyway my point is that it's foolish to assume people will o
Re:Precedent: (Score:2)
Referer Link Error
On every single HTML page of GameFAQs is the following request:
Feel free to link to this page, but not directly to the FAQs..
You're seeing this error message because it appears that you're linking from an external site directly to one of the text files stored at GameFAQs. GameFAQs is not a free public file server. Bandwidth costs money, and when sites link directly to files stored on the site, it becomes both
Re:Precedent: (Score:2)
Thank you for that: see, it does work!
(Aside: I don't know why I was able to link straight through. Probably because I'd already visited the FAQ moments earlier.)
anti-Phishing boilerplate? (Score:5, Interesting)
But heck, maybe that doesn't make any sense either.
Another possibility is someone slapping together a meta-airline search engine, that runs its own army of accounts and automatically sends requests to Orbitz, Travelocity, Expeida, Opopo (or whatever it is) at once, then returns the data
hey, you know, that sounds like a prtty good Firefox plugin...
Google (Score:2, Insightful)
I smell 46,600 lawsuits coming...
But seriously, this isn't even logical let alone enforceable, it will fail.
W3C say ... (Score:5, Informative)
-- http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/deeplinking [w3.org]
We wouldn't have much of this problem if ... (Score:5, Interesting)
We wouldn't have much of this problem if browsers didn't send the HTTP "Referer" header that gave away the URL that linked to them. So I say let's cut this header out. They don't need to be tracking where we have visited before, anyway. And besides, that header name is misspelled.
And while you're at it, cut out the HTTP "User-Agent" header. With web standards, there's no longer any need for this, either. That will stop the practice of favoring certain browsers.
It's just bidzness. (Score:2)
You write whatever you want on a sheet of paper, pass it for a contract, and hope that suckers will fall for it.
Aren't programmers cheaper than lawyers? (Score:2)
This is too bad... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is too bad... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is too bad... (Score:5, Informative)
"Site" means the www.orbitz.com website and/or the www.orbitzforbusiness.com website, and their respective subsites, together with the respective Content, Marks, Products and Services available from these sites and subsites.
I just saw their website for the first time... (Score:2)
It's bad enough that websites have popups at all, but what stupid web developer thinks it's a good idea to pop up TWO windows with one visit???
"Don't Link to Us!" (Score:5, Interesting)
Although no longer updated, David E Sorkin's Don't Link to Us! [dontlink.com] page is still relevant.
A page like that could be useful for shaming companies into improving their linking policies.
Bibliography References? (Score:3, Insightful)
If that is their argument, then I pose the following:
Could I publish a book that had ad space in it and then disallow references to it? (I'm not asking if this is legally feasible, since there is more than enough legal history to strike down any such attempt. I am simply asking if that would be a valid comparison.
So what (Score:5, Insightful)
wrong technology (Score:5, Insightful)
The WWW was designed to allow for links from one document to the other. It is neither possible nor netiquette to prohibite that. Dumb bitches.
404's... (Score:5, Funny)
Look at me orbitz!!!
http://www.orbitz.com/global/I'm%20deep%20linking
I'll expect my summons in the mail.
A similar case in the Netherlands (Score:3, Informative)
IMHO you can link to whatever you want on the Internet. There are enough ways to prevent your content being accessed by unauthorized people. The content provider is the only one responsible for its authorization management.
screw Orbitz...link to their fare search provider: (Score:3)
PageRank (Score:3, Insightful)
Flash (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now, correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, something like this is enforceable through technical means, which is probably more workable as a solution.
Re:Now, correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:2)
Re:Silly silly people! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry but you can't if they don' want you to.
If they redirect all visitors to their home page, unless the visitor has a recent session cookie of Orbitz.com, you won't be able to access anything without first visiting Orbitz.com.
Re:Silly silly people! (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, do explain.
Re:There is no such thing... (Score:5, Funny)
Congrats to whoever wrote your popup blocker.
Re:Just a small question? (Score:2)
So to answer your question, "yes."
Re:Isn't Orbitz Owned by Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
- American
- Continental
- Delta
- Northwest
- United
Travelocity is a SABRE company. Expedia is the Microsoft controlled travel site.Depends on their goal... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) to maximize their advertising [slashdot.org], they want people to go in through the front page.
2) they're trying to stop screen-scraping aggregators [slashdot.org]
Blocking based on the Referer: header would be effective if their goal was #1, but pretty much useless if their goal is #2.