As I wrote in my last entry, the Australian government requests that all non-government organisations seek permission in order to link to austalia.gov.au. I thought that was ridiculous, so I sent them a request:
Sent: Thursday, 31 August 2006 8:03 PM
To: Australia Gov
Subject: Australia.gov.au General InquiryRequest permission to link to australia.gov.au from a non-government organisation
Howdy,
According to http://www.australia.gov.au/about-this-site non-government websites are required to obtain a permission from Australia.gov.au Manager in order to link to the australia.gov.au site.I hereby request a permission to link to australia.gov.au from my site (http://finnmetal.com/blog).
I understand that by linking to australia.gov.au I must not contravene government policy, use australia.gov.au solely for commercial practices or imply that the Australian Government endorses the website or product.
Sincerely,
Lauri Rantala, FinnMetal.com
I had also sent requests to Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic and other big companies, which all demand that you seek permission prior to establishing a link to their site, but never heard from them. So why do these companies make such demands, if they are never even going to handle your request? Tero Tilus explains: “Why not spray a website with demands if there is not going to be any consequences?”.
I was therefore surprised to actually receive a response from the Australian government:
Hello
Thank you for forwarding your inquiry to www.australia.gov.au.
Yes, you have permission to link to www.australia.gov.au. Please adhere to our linking policy – http://www.australia.gov.au/about-this-site#linking.
Regards
Kathy
Awesome! I may now place a government approved link to australia.gov.au! Ain’t that something. So here goes:
– The government of Australia, Govenment approved link.
That was so cool, I’m going to start collecting government approved links on my website 
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