Oh, great. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, now there’s a controversy brewing over “deep linking”: the practice of linking directly to a web page, bypassing the homepage of a content provider. Apparently, not only does it allow people to skip viewing the ads on that homepage, but some people are building revenue-generating sites using deep linking as their only source of content and then not sharing that revenue. It’s like selling a book of compiled short stories and not paying the authors.

So in reaction to that, webmasters are going to start using ways of defeating the practice, like dynamically generated links and passwords. And people like me, who actually lose money on their websites, won’t be able to deep link either. That sucks. Maybe it won’t catch on.

Personally, I like to think that when I do it, I’m drawing attention to a piece that my readers wouldn’t normally find. I’m doing them a favor by increasing their exposure. Of course, I’m not profiting from it, so I guess they shouldn’t mind. As for skipping ads, well, I admit that I will do that every chance I get.

Here’s some observational humor for you:

Old days: If a kid got frostbite on the way to school, it was the neglectful parents’ fault for not dressing the kid properly.

Now days: It’s the school district’s fault for not closing the schools that day.

Old days: Kids had numb fingers from making snowballs.

Now days: It’s repetitive stress and carpal tunnel syndrome from video games.

Hmmm. Maybe that’s just “observations”.