The end points are 100% under control of the content owner. They are free to decide who to let in and who not to let in. Why should there be any onus on the linker to do anything whatsoever and not exercise their full rights to use hyperlinks any way that they want to?
It's an unwritten and unofficial rule, no one has to respect that, to me it only fuels the "omg our site that relies on linking to stuff on the internet has been linked somewhere on the internet" victim complex.
This is absurd. If a website wants to block linking it's easy: just use http_referer and/or dynamic urls.
Nobody does that because it's horrible business practice and a easy way to isolate yourself from the rest of the web. Regardless, we certainly don't need the government to enforce a behavior that individuals could easily adopt on their own.
Why are both unacceptable? Server enforcing downloading/viewing measn the user couldn't override its choice, but providing both links avoids that issue.
Anyway, linking to Netflix/others is nice in theory but clutters the interface. Until we find a good solution for that, we won't do it.
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