a mad tea-party
September 07, 2002
While clicking through news stories on my feed reader, I suddenly got this error message from a feed supplied through News Is Free:
You have exceeded click through limits
This site collects news items from hundreds of news sources and stores them in a database for indexing purposes. This collection of links is copyrighted and our terms of service puts strict limitations on how these links maybe used.
The number of times you seem to have been clicked through links in the last few minutes which is not consistant with what we consider regular web surfing behavior. Please try following this link again in a few minutes.
The goal of RSS syndication services is to provide the ability to flip quickly through news and articles! It's survival of the fittest article: I can scan an article and determine I don't want to read it in under two seconds. I need news! I need free news! And I guess I know why they didn't name it News Is Fast.
Then again, it's the first time I've ever seen a website actually limit link usage instead of merely threaten to do so.
Comments
They have a "bot" in place to detect "bot" usage -
"2.6. You may not use software programs to test the validity of the Links, ..."
and have the limit set too low. Their concern is valid, a few sites checking that all links are valid can constitute a DoS attack, intentional or not, but you can certainly ask what their limit is and whether it could be boosted a bit.
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