Cingular/AT&T Trying To Pull Weight Into the Blogosphere

It's bad enough that some of us Americans have to deal with the new AT&T as a wireless carrier, but to intrude on our right of how we chose to blog and link to content is ridiculous. 

Matt Hickey of MobileCrunch has written a great piece that I came across, thanks to Chris Richardson of EQO.  Apparently, AT&T doesn't like "deep linking" to its web pages other than the homepage.  Deep linking as explained by Wikipedia is "making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on another website, instead of that website's main or home page."

Linking
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.

I applaud Matt's post because of his usage of "deep linking" to Cingular/AT&T's website.  Lol wonder what's going to happen next?  But in all honesty, who are they to swoop in and control linking of any sort?  I can attest to linking to Cingular product pages where info was given on one day and changed the next or even within the hour.  Case in point... the first announcement of the N75 being available.  Yes I linked to the page, but the fact that the status had changed sometime after was their doing, not mine.

In continuation to Matt being link happy, I will post the link to their legal policy and end with these final words... AT&T leave the linking to the bloggers and site owners and worry about how to get your company in order when it comes to releasing devices on time and disabling java!! 

image via MobileCrunch

Comments

[krisse]

If they don't want deep linking, there are plenty of cheap, easy and quick technological solutions they can do at their end which would prevent deep links from working. They could stop deep linking straight away if they really wanted to.

Leaving deep links open AND threatening to prosecute anyone who uses them is an utterly stupid combination. It's like opening a store in a shopping centre, advertising it everywhere, throwing the doors open, and then prosecuting anyone who wanders in as a trespasser.