

You need a paper licence to link to the Royal Mail website - bensummers
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/link-royal-mail/

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elblanco
No I don't
[http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=84200739&#...</a>

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

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eli
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.

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verdant
I believe this is simply to protect them from unauthorized radio broadcasts of
their games.

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RyanMcGreal
Not to mention unauthorized church fundraiser TV viewings of their games.

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FluidDjango
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.

~~~
teamonkey
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granted, moan about and generally dismiss as an ancient, outdated monstrosity,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.

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swombat
Do they have any legal right to declare that you need their permission to link
to their site?

I sure hope not.

~~~
jrockway
Wait, are you saying I can't create a law by making a web page? Damn...

~~~
_delirium
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?pub...](http://www.wilmerhale.com/publications/whPubsDetail.aspx?publication=2636)

~~~
swombat
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
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>

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jdietrich
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.

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njharman
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
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.

~~~
njharman
Your analogy does not follow from your description.

"One does not need to "connect"", "Your right to connect..."

A more apt analogy (of a link) would be posting instructions (or a
floorplan/map) of how to get to the stockroom.

I can believe the statute covers that. The US DRM Copyright law does similar.

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arethuza
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?

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

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kjhgfvbhn
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 !

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imajes
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?

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harshpotatoes
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
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.

~~~
eru
> Our broadcast media is regulated rather differently than most.

Germany seems to operate a similar system. But there the broadcasters
themselves can decide on how high the fee should be. Who does decide on that
in the UK?

~~~
jdietrich
The license fee can never decrease, but any increase has to be negotiated for
with the Government. The fee generally increases at a little above the rate of
inflation.

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Silhouette
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.)

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teamonkey
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.

~~~
Silhouette
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".

~~~
teamonkey
From Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail#1960_to_present>

Contrary to urban myth, Royal Mail does not own the trademark on the colour
red, but a specific shade of the colour red: "Royal Mail, the Royal Mail
Cruciform, the colour red (as part of the Royal Mail logotype) and SmartStamp
are all registered trademarks of Royal Mail Group plc."

~~~
Silhouette
Exactly. That's not what it used to say. I know that, because before I posted
my original comment, I checked some printed matter from about three years ago,
and the parenthesized part wasn't there.

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jonursenbach
Asinine.

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

~~~
bensummers
... 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
I guess I'm old enough to have known that already.

