<story><title>We’re Being Sued For Linking To Shopzilla</title><url>http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2013/04/18/were-being-sued-for-linking-to-shopzilla/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>grey-area</author><text>I suspect datadial know exactly what they&apos;re doing here - as revenge for this alleged petty act by the lawyers they&apos;re now google-bombing the term shopzilla (by deliberately including so many refs to shopzilla in this new blog post), and hoping to teach them a lesson about who is in control of links. They&apos;re already on the second page for a simple search for shopzilla, and I&apos;d expect them to move up closer to the top if this gets more publicity and links in from other sites. Does it deserve it?&lt;p&gt;A very strange attempt by Shopzilla in the first place to control links to them, so it would be interesting to hear their side of this story. I looked up datadial - they&apos;re a London SEO shop, and their original blog post is typical of SEO blogs - lots of links to random sites strung together into a blog post to boost their blog&apos;s ranking for that topic - ecommerce in this case. I have to wonder if this little storm in a teacup isn&apos;t more beneficial to them the more absurd it sounds and the stormier it gets - even if it dies down later the benefit will still be there for them.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s strange to see the court of public opinion function on sites like reddit and HN - the more controversial and snappier the original post, the more traction it gets, and nuances and truth are lost in the rush to condemn based on a very limited set of facts.</text></comment>
<story><title>We’re Being Sued For Linking To Shopzilla</title><url>http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2013/04/18/were-being-sued-for-linking-to-shopzilla/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>DanBC</author><text>The hyperbole and tone of the article is difficult to read through.&lt;p&gt;Have you thought about writing a simple letter to the solicitors saying something like &quot;Hello, you sent us a letter.  Would you like to review our webpage here to see if we actually are infringing on your client&apos;s trademark?  We seem to have been caught in some automatic system.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Be careful about &apos;no legal reason to take down an url&apos; - there are a few. DMCA requests, anti-deeplinking causes in ToS / AUP, etc etc.  See the Shetland Times vs Shetland News.</text></comment>