From mconlon@vpha.ufl.edu Tue Oct 26 15:35:47 1999
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 08:11:00 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: Mike Conlon <mconlon@vpha.ufl.edu>
To: Brian Yandell <yandell@cs.wisc.edu>
Cc: "Fleming, Mary" <Mary@amstat.org>,
    "Yandell, Brian S." <yandell@cs.wisc.edu>,
    "Malliet, Gineva" <GINEVA@amstat.org>,
    "Javins, Linda" <Linda@amstat.org>, "Waller, Ray" <Ray@amstat.org>,
    "Porzio, Steve" <Steve@amstat.org>, Mike Conlon <mconlon@stat.ufl.edu>
Subject: RE: Linking Permission

> On Mon, 23 Aug 1999, Fleming, Mary wrote:
> 
> > Brian,
> > I'm forwarded this sequence of messages to you.  If a policy needs to be
> > developed, please forward it to Lorraine.  Linda J. tells me that many sites
> > link to ours without our permission.  I was under the impression that they
> > wanted us to link to theirs, but I was mistaken.  I don't object to folks
> > linking to our site, but I would object to going the other way if they are
> > charging for a service.  What do you recommend?

Mary,

I would hope that we agree and encourage as many sites link to ours as
possible.  If we want to become "Statistics Central," that is, a portal
for those interested in the science and profession of statistics, then
they should be linking to us (as a technical aside we can't prevent them
from linking to us).

As for us linking to other sites, we should develop a policy.  

There seem to be several cases:

  1. Our banner ads (revenue generators) will link to other sites.
     Advertisers will be charged for these ads and their associated
     links.

  2. Courtesy links.  We may chose to link to our institutional members as
     a courtesy.  There could be tax implications here if the links are
     determined to have economic value.  That is, if we provide a link to
     a donor,
     it could be classified as a quid pro quo and some portion of the 
     gift disallowed to compensate for the value of the link.  I would
     suggest we get a legal opinion on this.  The situation could well
     be different between donors and institutional members.

  3. Links of value to our readers.  We should be providing
     links of value to our readership regardless of whether we have 
     received compensation.  These links would be organized for the
     benefit of the readers, not the organizations linked to. So, for
     example, if we have a list of statistical data sources and some
     of those sources are freely accessible archives of companies that
     happen to be profitable, we have linked for our convenience and 
     to create value for our readers.  So a company may have a link
     from us to them which they did not pay for and I think that's fine --
     we put the link there to create value for our readers.  Yahoo,
     Netscape and other portal sites link to millions of other sites in
     many cases with links generated by automatic processes.
     They only receive compensation for the banner ads. 

     In some cases it may be desirable for us to have a disclaimer that
     indicates that the presence of the link does not consititute an
     endorsement of the product, service or company.

Case number 2 seems to be the murky one.  We should be encouraging
institutional membership and one of the membership benefits could be a
link from our site to the member's site. But there are potential legal
issues to be worked out.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I hope we can have a lot of links.

Mike