A few years ago, several companies with shiny new websites tried to sue or pressure private individual's sites to prevent them from linking to the Corporate pages. As a friend of Doc Searls famously put it:
The cluetrain stopped there four times a day for ten years and no one ever took delivery.
The Tulsa newspaper that wants to prevent a blogger from quoting and linking to their site hasn't figured out that markets are conversations now. Other companies tried similar moves a while back and gave it up. The Tulsa editors would benefit from a careful read of the Cluetrain Manifesto. It's 5 years old now - an aeon in Internet time - but lots of companies haven't caught up yet.
"We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it."
Indeed. And that can be a GOOD thing for companies that figure it out.
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