7 ms·

You need a paper licence to link to the Royal Mail website

60 points by bensummers 17y ago

jonursenbach 17y ago
Asinine.
swombat 17y ago
Do they have any legal right to declare that you need their permission to link to their site? I sure hope not.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- jrockway 17y ago
  Wait, are you saying I can't create a law by making a web page? Damn...
  - _delirium 17y ago
    Oddly, that's been litigated more than you'd think, including in the context of links ("deep linking"): http://www.wilmerhale.com/publications/whPubsDetail.aspx?publication=2636 http://www.wilmerhale.com/publications/whPubsDetail.aspx?pub...
    - swombat 17y ago
      So if I read it right, according to that link, Royal Mail can't enforce any such "deep linking rule" on their website unless they require all their visitors to click through an agreement page before viewing the site, though it is technically possible for Royal Mail to sue businesses who choose to do so (though they will most likely lose).
      - chacha102 17y ago
        They couldn't even do that. I can link to any page in their website without actually visiting their website. Via Google: My Deep Link https://www.royalmail.com/portal/pw/postcodefinder https://www.royalmail.com/portal/pw/postcodefinder
davidw 17y ago
Boring. Someone, somewhere, is doing something stupid. Next...
- bensummers 17y ago
  ... but in a new and amusing way? This is another nice example of what happens when people who don't understand technology make rules about how you use technology.
  - davidw 17y ago
    I guess I'm old enough to have known that already.
elblanco 17y ago
No I don't http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=84200739&mediaId=84200746 http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=84200739&#...
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  I would like to see this tried with a server in Britain...
eli 17y ago
Sure, and the NFL says I need a special contract in order to describe the game I just watched. Organizations assert all kinds of crazy, bogus rights.
- verdant 17y ago
  I believe this is simply to protect them from unauthorized radio broadcasts of their games.
  - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
    Not to mention unauthorized church fundraiser TV viewings of their games.
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    No, it's more that radio broadcasts are the only things that they think they can practically control via their "authorizing". If they thought they could effectively make money shaking down backyard barbecues, they would be "simply protecting themselves" from "unauthorized" backyard barbecues as well... It's a "simple" protection racket...
ratsbane 17y ago
Ha! This article contains five links to the Royal Mail web site.
arethuza 17y ago
Do you think someone should tell the Royal Mail about how to use a robots.txt file? Because I can do a search for: "You may not create a link to any page of this website without Royal Mail's prior written consent." And get back lots of links... ;-) I wonder if Google have one of these licenses to link?
Silhouette 17y ago
Royal Mail also think they have a trademark on the colour red. Seriously. (These days they have had the grace to amend their claim, so it now says that it is only the colour red as used in their logo that is the trademark, but it didn't always do so.)
- teamonkey 17y ago
  You can do that under UK law (probably elsewhere too). If your brand identity has a strong, identifiable colour scheme you can register it. I can't remember if it's a trademark or a designmark, but it falls under trademark law. See also Orange, who have registered their shade of orange. The "Easy" brand (easyJet, easyEverything etc.) use a similar shade of orange across their brands. But Orange were there first and when easyMobile was started it wasn't allowed to use the traditional orange-coloured branding.
  - nkassis 17y ago
    I don't remember where I saw this but I believe IBM has a certain shade of blue trademarked.
  - bobbyi 17y ago
    © 2009 United Parcel Service of America, Inc. UPS, the UPS brandmark, and the color brown are trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All rights reserved.
  - Silhouette 17y ago
    Sure, you can be associated with a certain colour such that anyone else in your field who was using the same colour might be confused with your organisation, and the law might legitimately protect against the misrepresentation in that case. IIRC, this is one of those legal issues where finding a case that actually went to court is quite difficult, because the major cases tend to settle instead, but perhaps there has been the occasional definitive ruling. In any case, though, that is not what Royal Mail's wording used to say. They didn't claim, say, Pantone colour X. They claimed "red".
imajes 17y ago
Their robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: /link/link Disallow: /link/po Disallow: /link/pw Disallow: /link/rmg Disallow: /portal/po Disallow: /portal/pw Disallow: /portal/rmg Disallow: */print? # 2007-04-12 www.royalmail.com robots.txt so i assume anything else is fine?
kjhgfvbhn 17y ago
So a company that makes their money from you buying stamps, has a pointless process that makes you send lots of letters, with lots of stamps. Not so daft really !
FluidDjango 17y ago
Is it part of a UK-US alliance that Royal Mail take it upon themselves to make the USPS look relatively less backward? In any case, this seems another example of a 20th Century operation seeking to function blindly in the 21st Century... with the result that its customers breathlessly await the day when some startup will put the operation (and thus its customers) out of their final misery.
- r7000 17y ago
  Backward? Never. This is the company that changed its name to Consignia and ditched the Crown for a random second-rate swooshy circle thingy.
- teamonkey 17y ago
  The Royal Mail is one of those things that the average Briton will take for granted, moan about and generally dismiss as an ancient, outdated monstrosity, but sorely miss it after moving abroad. See also: the NHS, EU consumer law and the BBC.
harshpotatoes 17y ago
Don't you also need a license to watch live television broadcast via tv or the internet in the uk? Somehow I don't find this license very surprising...
- jdietrich 17y ago
  We do have a Television License but it is effectively a tax on any household that views television. The charge is £142.50 per year, which pays for the BBC, a broadcaster which is funded by, but independent of, the state. Our broadcast media is regulated rather differently than most. Compared to the US media we have incredibly liberal standards of taste and decency, especially past the 9pm watershed. All broadcasters have a legal duty to act with fairness and accuracy, a duty that is quite strictly enforced. The BBC has strict legal responsibilities regarding quality, which many believe leads to a positive halo effect in the broadcast media. Although it is a contentious policy, especially amongst the tabloid press, the system works extremely well. The license fee is guaranteed to the BBC and ensures that they are immune from government interference. The BBC Trust regulates the actions of the BBC and ensures that they act in the public interest. Although I would not wish to cast aspersions, I can say that having scrutinised the broadcast media of most of the developed world I am personally quite happy with our system.
  - detst 17y ago
    > Compared to the US media we have incredibly liberal standards of taste and decency, especially past the 9pm watershed. I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding on this issue. Compared to US broadcast media, sure. But you can find quite distasteful and indecent content on US TV 24/7. You just aren't as likely to find it on broadcast TV or basic cable. The FCC is really only concerned with broadcast TV. You'll find uncensored shows on channels like Comedy Central at night and beyond basic cable, everything is fair game.
  - hexis 17y ago
    "funded by, but independent of" The philosophy of the American teenager is apparently alive and well in the UK.
  - 17y ago
jdietrich 17y ago
Unfortunately, this clause would appear to have legal backing. The Computer Misuse Act 1990 states that a person is guilty of an offence if:- (a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer; (b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and (c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case. The relevant wording is "causes a computer to perform any function". This is deliberately broad in order to cover botnets and the like, but would also amply cover deep linking. There is no requirement for the access to be from a computer you control, nor that you personally initiate the access; only that you caused a computer to perform an action with the intent of accessing data without authorisation. Although unlikely, it is possible that any British website could be prosecuted for ignoring such a T&Cs clause. Prosecutions have been made under the Computer Misuse Act for very vague 'offences'. I hope it isn't petty, but I'd just like to point out that our quaint little island does have it's own laws; I find it rather discourteous that some posters in this thread seem to have assumed that the whole of the internet is subject solely to the jurisdiction of the United States.
- njharman 17y ago
  A link is text, a link does not cause any computer to perform any action, a link does not even "connect" to any computer. It's static data. With proper software "activating" e.g. clicking on a link to uk mail's website may or may not cause one of their computers to perform some function. If anything you'd need a license to click links, not make them. Unless there's even crazier "contributory computer performance" language in that Legislative Misuse Act of 1990
  - jdietrich 17y ago
    One does not need to "connect" to a computer to commit an offence under the act. One does not even need to use a computer. Consider, for instance, an attacker writing out a paper form with an SQL injection, knowing that the form will be OCRed into a database that does not sanitise it's inputs. Nothing but graphite on paper, but clearly computer misuse under the act. I don't agree with the law as it stands, but the law was clearly designed to cover every possible circumstance of unauthorised access to a computer system. As an analogy, imagine yourself walking down a shopping street. You have tacit permission to walk through any of the open shop doors, but that permission ends at the "no entry" sign on the stockroom door. Walking beyond a "no entry" sign is trespass because you are aware that you do not have permission to enter such a place. Likewise with authorisation to access a computer system. Your right to connect to the system ends at the point where the system tells you to go no further.

60 points by bensummers 17y ago

jonursenbach 17y ago

Asinine.

swombat 17y ago

Do they have any legal right to declare that you need their permission to link to their site? I sure hope not.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jrockway 17y ago
Wait, are you saying I can't create a law by making a web page? Damn...
- _delirium 17y ago
  Oddly, that's been litigated more than you'd think, including in the context of links ("deep linking"): http://www.wilmerhale.com/publications/whPubsDetail.aspx?publication=2636 http://www.wilmerhale.com/publications/whPubsDetail.aspx?pub...
  - swombat 17y ago
    So if I read it right, according to that link, Royal Mail can't enforce any such "deep linking rule" on their website unless they require all their visitors to click through an agreement page before viewing the site, though it is technically possible for Royal Mail to sue businesses who choose to do so (though they will most likely lose).
    - chacha102 17y ago
      They couldn't even do that. I can link to any page in their website without actually visiting their website. Via Google: My Deep Link https://www.royalmail.com/portal/pw/postcodefinder https://www.royalmail.com/portal/pw/postcodefinder

davidw 17y ago

Boring. Someone, somewhere, is doing something stupid. Next...

bensummers 17y ago
... but in a new and amusing way? This is another nice example of what happens when people who don't understand technology make rules about how you use technology.
- davidw 17y ago
  I guess I'm old enough to have known that already.

elblanco 17y ago

No I don't http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=84200739&mediaId=84200746 http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=84200739&#...

joe_the_user 17y ago
I would like to see this tried with a server in Britain...

eli 17y ago

Sure, and the NFL says I need a special contract in order to describe the game I just watched. Organizations assert all kinds of crazy, bogus rights.

verdant 17y ago
I believe this is simply to protect them from unauthorized radio broadcasts of their games.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Not to mention unauthorized church fundraiser TV viewings of their games.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  No, it's more that radio broadcasts are the only things that they think they can practically control via their "authorizing". If they thought they could effectively make money shaking down backyard barbecues, they would be "simply protecting themselves" from "unauthorized" backyard barbecues as well... It's a "simple" protection racket...

ratsbane 17y ago

Ha! This article contains five links to the Royal Mail web site.

arethuza 17y ago

Do you think someone should tell the Royal Mail about how to use a robots.txt file? Because I can do a search for: "You may not create a link to any page of this website without Royal Mail's prior written consent." And get back lots of links... ;-) I wonder if Google have one of these licenses to link?

Silhouette 17y ago

Royal Mail also think they have a trademark on the colour red. Seriously. (These days they have had the grace to amend their claim, so it now says that it is only the colour red as used in their logo that is the trademark, but it didn't always do so.)

teamonkey 17y ago
You can do that under UK law (probably elsewhere too). If your brand identity has a strong, identifiable colour scheme you can register it. I can't remember if it's a trademark or a designmark, but it falls under trademark law. See also Orange, who have registered their shade of orange. The "Easy" brand (easyJet, easyEverything etc.) use a similar shade of orange across their brands. But Orange were there first and when easyMobile was started it wasn't allowed to use the traditional orange-coloured branding.
- nkassis 17y ago
  I don't remember where I saw this but I believe IBM has a certain shade of blue trademarked.
- bobbyi 17y ago
  © 2009 United Parcel Service of America, Inc. UPS, the UPS brandmark, and the color brown are trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Silhouette 17y ago
  Sure, you can be associated with a certain colour such that anyone else in your field who was using the same colour might be confused with your organisation, and the law might legitimately protect against the misrepresentation in that case. IIRC, this is one of those legal issues where finding a case that actually went to court is quite difficult, because the major cases tend to settle instead, but perhaps there has been the occasional definitive ruling. In any case, though, that is not what Royal Mail's wording used to say. They didn't claim, say, Pantone colour X. They claimed "red".

imajes 17y ago

Their robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: /link/link Disallow: /link/po Disallow: /link/pw Disallow: /link/rmg Disallow: /portal/po Disallow: /portal/pw Disallow: /portal/rmg Disallow: */print? # 2007-04-12 www.royalmail.com robots.txt so i assume anything else is fine?

kjhgfvbhn 17y ago

So a company that makes their money from you buying stamps, has a pointless process that makes you send lots of letters, with lots of stamps. Not so daft really !

FluidDjango 17y ago

Is it part of a UK-US alliance that Royal Mail take it upon themselves to make the USPS look relatively less backward? In any case, this seems another example of a 20th Century operation seeking to function blindly in the 21st Century... with the result that its customers breathlessly await the day when some startup will put the operation (and thus its customers) out of their final misery.

r7000 17y ago
Backward? Never. This is the company that changed its name to Consignia and ditched the Crown for a random second-rate swooshy circle thingy.
teamonkey 17y ago
The Royal Mail is one of those things that the average Briton will take for granted, moan about and generally dismiss as an ancient, outdated monstrosity, but sorely miss it after moving abroad. See also: the NHS, EU consumer law and the BBC.

harshpotatoes 17y ago

Don't you also need a license to watch live television broadcast via tv or the internet in the uk? Somehow I don't find this license very surprising...

jdietrich 17y ago
We do have a Television License but it is effectively a tax on any household that views television. The charge is £142.50 per year, which pays for the BBC, a broadcaster which is funded by, but independent of, the state. Our broadcast media is regulated rather differently than most. Compared to the US media we have incredibly liberal standards of taste and decency, especially past the 9pm watershed. All broadcasters have a legal duty to act with fairness and accuracy, a duty that is quite strictly enforced. The BBC has strict legal responsibilities regarding quality, which many believe leads to a positive halo effect in the broadcast media. Although it is a contentious policy, especially amongst the tabloid press, the system works extremely well. The license fee is guaranteed to the BBC and ensures that they are immune from government interference. The BBC Trust regulates the actions of the BBC and ensures that they act in the public interest. Although I would not wish to cast aspersions, I can say that having scrutinised the broadcast media of most of the developed world I am personally quite happy with our system.
- detst 17y ago
  > Compared to the US media we have incredibly liberal standards of taste and decency, especially past the 9pm watershed. I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding on this issue. Compared to US broadcast media, sure. But you can find quite distasteful and indecent content on US TV 24/7. You just aren't as likely to find it on broadcast TV or basic cable. The FCC is really only concerned with broadcast TV. You'll find uncensored shows on channels like Comedy Central at night and beyond basic cable, everything is fair game.
- hexis 17y ago
  "funded by, but independent of" The philosophy of the American teenager is apparently alive and well in the UK.
- 17y ago

jdietrich 17y ago

Unfortunately, this clause would appear to have legal backing. The Computer Misuse Act 1990 states that a person is guilty of an offence if:- (a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer; (b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and (c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case. The relevant wording is "causes a computer to perform any function". This is deliberately broad in order to cover botnets and the like, but would also amply cover deep linking. There is no requirement for the access to be from a computer you control, nor that you personally initiate the access; only that you caused a computer to perform an action with the intent of accessing data without authorisation. Although unlikely, it is possible that any British website could be prosecuted for ignoring such a T&Cs clause. Prosecutions have been made under the Computer Misuse Act for very vague 'offences'. I hope it isn't petty, but I'd just like to point out that our quaint little island does have it's own laws; I find it rather discourteous that some posters in this thread seem to have assumed that the whole of the internet is subject solely to the jurisdiction of the United States.

njharman 17y ago
A link is text, a link does not cause any computer to perform any action, a link does not even "connect" to any computer. It's static data. With proper software "activating" e.g. clicking on a link to uk mail's website may or may not cause one of their computers to perform some function. If anything you'd need a license to click links, not make them. Unless there's even crazier "contributory computer performance" language in that Legislative Misuse Act of 1990
- jdietrich 17y ago
  One does not need to "connect" to a computer to commit an offence under the act. One does not even need to use a computer. Consider, for instance, an attacker writing out a paper form with an SQL injection, knowing that the form will be OCRed into a database that does not sanitise it's inputs. Nothing but graphite on paper, but clearly computer misuse under the act. I don't agree with the law as it stands, but the law was clearly designed to cover every possible circumstance of unauthorised access to a computer system. As an analogy, imagine yourself walking down a shopping street. You have tacit permission to walk through any of the open shop doors, but that permission ends at the "no entry" sign on the stockroom door. Walking beyond a "no entry" sign is trespass because you are aware that you do not have permission to enter such a place. Likewise with authorisation to access a computer system. Your right to connect to the system ends at the point where the system tells you to go no further.