Cingular Says You Can Link To Their Site -- But Only If You're Nice

from the legalese dept

The organizers of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens did their part to uphold the games' fine tradition of ridiculousness by instituting one of the most moronic linking policies of all time on their official site. It said you could only link to their site if using "ATHENS 2004" as the anchor text, you couldn't link using a photo (especially the games' logo!), and in the pièce de résistance, it said people had to mail in a written request with details of the link and how it would be used. Stupid linking policies are largely a thing of the past, though some people still get upset when the likes of Google link to their sites. But the stupid link policy isn't completely dead, as mobile operator Cingular illustrates (via Broadband Reports), with its legalese saying "you are granted a limited, nonexclusive right" to link to the site's homepage (that's right, no deep linking!), which can be "revoked" at any time. It also says links can't portray Cingular in a derogatory manner, so things like Cingular sucks or Cingular's cellular coverage isn't so hot are apparently against the rules. Perhaps we'd better stop before we break any more of their rules.