In cases they've even sued when they have not liked rival sites linking to them. This model, I have read in recent days, has now advanced so that the main site will give the referring site a commission on all future sales which any lead generates. So a buyer may only use the associate site once but the associate will earn commissions on all subsequent sales. At the recent Rhodes University conference, New Media 2000, I was asked by an executive of one of the large SA publishing houses, if it was ethical to link to other news sites. I replied that all this was was using the new technology to do what journalists have been doing for ages.
Journalists write articles based on a number of sources.
If they acknowledge their sources, it is called journalism, if they don't, it is plagiarism. When we link to other sites, such as we regularly do from both WOZA and headlines.co.za, we provide both full attribution of the news source and a link to the report. In cases, sites such as E-Data , ITWeb and Mbendi, mail us their headlines so that we can put up links to their content. It gives our readers greater choice and the sites more traffic. It probably makes little sense, though, to link to rivals in your own market.