Japanese newspaper only allows incoming links after approval

The world’s largest business newspaper, the Nikkei from Japan, adopts a stricter policy to sharing news on its website. When sites want to link to an article on the Nikkei’s site, they need to fill out a detailed application, stating among others the reasons they wish to link to the Nikkei. The Nikkei then decides whether an incoming link is allowed or not.

The Nikkei has a long tradition (in Internet terms) of allowing free access only to news and headlines while shielding background information and news archives behind a paywall. This is a common strategy for Japanese newspapers, and it seems to have spared them the problems that papers in the Western hemisphere face.

The goal of the Nikkei’s latest action is to prevent their paywall being breached and to prevent that “inappropriate” sites link to their content. “In some cases, links to individual stories could lead to stories being manipulated for a purpose other than journalism, for example to promote a certain stock,” the Nikkei states in the New York Times. “There is a danger this could inaccurately affect financial markets.”

The move is widely criticised in the blogosphere. Technology writer Toshinao Sasaki says: “Nikkei thinks it can go online, but cut themselves off from the wider Internet. They just don’t get it. The way forward is to link free content with paid content, and links play a big role there.”

Fortunately for us, the New York Times still permits linking.

14 April 2010