Acceptable or unacceptable isn't what I was talking about -- I merely wanted to point out that I don't think that it is likely that they WOULD do it. I wasn't trying to comment on whether they SHOULD do it. It simply makes for a much better page to have links to the original source. So, yeah - I'm agreeing with you about the "should" part.
-Renegade
Ah ok I misunderstood you then -- my apologies.
I don't think these big sites have much incentive to listen when people like us complain, but I do see a possible long term solution, in the creation of an advocacy organization whose only purpose was to establish guidelines to benefit consumers, and which worked to get SEARCH ENGINES to penalize sites that don't score well on the recommendations.
The search engines are the key because they have an insane amount of power over ranking results and therefore an instantaneous dramatic effect on income for big sites. A search engine could destroy any company on the web in a matter of minutes, and even a tiny change in rankings is likely to result in a very painful loss of income for a company.
So I'm basically suggesting that the most efficient and likely-to-succeed strategy for handling things like this is to set up an organization that establishes fair guidelines and for software sites, and reports on good and bad sites with respect to these guidelines, and then try to get the search engine companies (google, etc.) to treat the adherence to such guidelines as a factor in search engine rankings.
This would also help solve the problem I always rant about, which is companies which build up a reputation and then once they have earned respect and high search engine placement, they start to go rogue and do bad things, and by then their web traffic momentum is enough to keep them from paying a price. Getting search engines to rapidly adjust rankings when a company starts behaving wrongly is the key to stopping these bad behaviors.
This is similar to the idea we discussed regarding
anti-virus program awards.
Anyone at DC feel particularly motivated and qualified to start a new site to establish guidelines for such things and evaluate sites for good behavior? DC could provide the web space.
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