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Behind The Firm List Blog
Mocked by Fate
As fate would have it, not more than a couple hours after I wrote my rant yesterday about
the need for permission when linking to a site, I received a request from a university's career services center which wanted
to know if it was alright to link to The Firm List from their site.
And you know, it made me think about what I said, and tried to see if I was wrong. But I don't think I was. I do think that
there's two approaches to thinking about getting permission to link: 1) seeing it all as what do I HAVE to do in order not to get
into trouble and 2) what SHOULD I do to feel like I've done the best job.
Obviously with the first one, you're gonna ask permission when you think that site may have a problem with your link. In the various
cases that have surfaced in the press, this most often occurs when there is some negative connotation attached to the link (linking in
the context of a slanderous rant perhaps?), when there appears to be an implied partnership/relationship between the two sites which
does not in fact exist, and when the site "deep links" into a site or puts the other's site into their own frames.
None of these cases pertain to the sitation I was ranting about yesterday. Nor do they pertain to the career services center wanting
to link to my site. In that instance, I believe they were acting under the second case, where they were asking permission in order
to do the most thorough and courteous job possible.
Now, asking permission like that is possible when you're talking about a small resources section. Something that's just a part of
what you're offering on your site. But is it realistic when you have more than 7,000 links on your site?
Another thing came to my mind when I was grappling with all this yesterday, and that is my experiences with the press. I have had
The Firm List and other sites mentioned in magazines, on websites and even on TV yet have never known about it until someone who saw
it mentioned it to me. Where was the contact from the author or reporter?
I am not going to say that since they did it that I should, but I just wanted to throw out an example of how this is not a perfect world.
I do try to make efforts towards that second choice above. I do send confirmation emails when submissions are added, when updates are made,
etc. That already makes for 1,000's of emails a year from this site alone. I wouldn't have the time or energy to hunt down and seek
permission from every firm/company.
Besides, I stopped adding firms that I had found, a long time ago. I only have the time to submit firms/resources that others send me.
In 95% of the cases, these are submitted by the firm/resource themselves. And I still believe that in this one particular case, someone
from that resource did submit themselves, but the person who got the confirmation from me had no clue and didn't understand and... well, the
rest is history (see yesterday).
