As far as I know, the ability to link to someone else's page is not something that is earned or is the site owner who is being linked to, to take away. I just came across this little blurb from a New Hampshire Newspaper repriting policy: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031201/ABOUTUS/31201001/-1/ABOUT" I just find it amusing that they act like they can revoke your right to link to their pages. They certainly could block your access if they wanted to, I guess I just find the wording a bit amusing.
If you read the info on linking to the red cross, they have something similar, but I think the issue is more about displaying their logo or banners to stop fraud.
lots of sites have policies against linking to internal pages within the site. Since urls can change all the time, it makes quite a bit of sense - for like news sites, and things of the like.
But cool URIs never change! Seriously, these sorts of legal disclaimers are obviously written by lawyers whose use of the internet extends to the occasional visit to playboy.com. They have no idea what linking is, but that doesn't stop them trying to claim some sort of ownership over it.
Why would anybody turn down links unless there was a legal problem with the site linking to you or other legal offence?
There was a court case that prevented deep linking, framing hotlinking etc, and by and large this is what they talk about. On my rugby forum, I contacted the BBC to ask about us using their content via copy & paste. They said we can use it, but get this lol provided that when we link back we do not use any BBC logo or trademark other than the url? As stated, they are more protective of their brand than their content. They even linked to my site from their sports section
We got a cease & desist letter once from some lamer who didn't want us linking to his site. Why argue?