Just wanted to elevate this nugget from Jill Walker’s Links and Power article referenced in my previous post.
“Links have a direct value on the Web and can be seen as a pseudo-monetary unit. A Google search on currency of the web shows that this is not a novel idea, though it is little theorised. Conventional thinking has assumed that linking from A to B takes value from B and adds value to A. Lawyers have complained that linking to another site’s news items, for instance, may be a copyright violation, and companies have sued against those who link to their site [1]. Though more sophisticated, Ted Nelson’s concepts of transclusion and transcopyright belong to a similar paradigm where content is value and links are mere mechanics, an outside vehicle for the transmittal of content rather than the item of value itself. In its fully implemented state, transcopyright sees a link from A to B as A using something owned by B, which readers should pay for in the form of a micropayment. This makes perfect sense in a traditional, product oriented economy where content is king. B manufactured a product which A’s readers consumed and should therefore pay for. After Google, it makes no sense at all. The economy of links is not product oriented. It is service oriented, and the service is the link. The link is an action rather than an item; an event, rather than a metaphor.”
bold added for emphasis
Rereading this 5+ years later… brilliant!