Why Linking is Better Than Copying

The "copies" referred to in my copyright notice are mainly intended to be paper. If you're on the web, it would really be better if you link to one of my pages rather than making a copy of it; there are several problems with making your own copy:
  1. I update it occasionally. You don't get the updates, and some of them are important.
  2. People using search engines may find your copy instead of the ``official'' version. In fact, this is rather likely.
  3. People may make links to your copy, and never know they weren't getting the original.
  4. And, of course, a link takes up much less space on your server.
You may even have gotten to a copy yourself; there are a couple out there, that were made before I started strongly urging people not to make them.

Of course, there may be some reasons why you'd prefer to make a copy: you might be located on the far end of a slow link (in which case you consider getting a caching proxy server), or you may want to make some changes (and I'd really rather you didn't, but maybe we can discuss it).


Copyright Notice:

Copyright 1997 by Stephen Savitzky. All rights reserved.

This document may be freely linked to, though I would appreciate a brief note via e-mail so that I can thank you personally and possibly return the favor.

Copies or excerpts of this document may be made and distributed in any physical medium for any non-commercial purpose, provided:

If you wish to copy this document for commercial gain or make it part of a shareware distribution, please contact me at the address below in order to negotiate a license.

If you wish to make an electronic copy, please make a link instead. Here's why linking is better than copying.


<URL: http://Interesting.Places.to/Browse/why-not-copy.html>
$Id: why-not-copy.xh,v 1.3 1999/07/10 05:38:11 steve Exp $
Last modified: Wed Jun 30 06:22:01 1999
Stephen R. Savitzky <steve@theStarport.org>
343 Leigh Ave.
San Jose, CA 95128