We've definitely entered an era of experiment when it comes to online content, as a number of publications with a tradition in the print world are testing out approaches like building paywalls, mixing free and paid content, and limiting the amount of content that's indexed by search engines.

But Japan's Nikkei newspaper has taken its attempts to control access to an entirely different level: it now requires a formal request for any inbound links to its site.

The New York Times, which reported on the new policy on Thursday, notes that the newspaper market in Japan is radically different from that in the US. Although some smaller outlets are experimenting with new ways of reaching readers, most papers require subscriptions to access online content, and the barriers have kept circulation of print editions quite high compared to the US.

Nikkei management appears worried that links could provide secret passages to content that should be safely behind the paywall, and this fear has led to the new approval policy.

So far, the rules haven't made it to the default site that's accessible from the US, but they do appear to have made it to the European version. Given the newsworthiness of the policy, it seems safe to risk the Nikkei's aggressive copyright stance by quoting them in full:

Please send an e-mail to e-media@eur.nikkei.com with information about your web site, web site address, aims of the link, your name and contact details etc prior to adding a link taken from our website. Generally, links from one's own website to the front page of our website are acceptable, though we retain the right to reject links to websites and links themselves of which we do not approve.

That text comes from this page. Obviously, we can't guarantee that the link will actually work, since it would be easy for Nikkei to determine that Ars Technica is referring readers to the page, compare our URL to the list of approved linkers, and block access to the content accordingly.

Also, for added irritation, Nikkei has disabled the right-click context menu so that copying links is more difficult. The context blocking takes place, at the moment, only on the Japanese language site; the English site appears unaffected.