There was a poster here a few years ago whose livelihood was somehow tied up to the traffic count on their company's website. This wasn't a retail site, it was a journalistic one. something about ad rates/revenue for the site depending on traffic counts, so when you paste the entire article here, it discourages the traffic to the actual site, which of course lowers the traffic count, which in turn lowers the feasible advertising rate, which then lowers revenue, which ultimately lowers individual income, including that of our fellow board member. IIRC, that was the genesis of the house rule.
It seemed like an entirely reasonable request then,to only post a snippet and a link instead of an entire article, and it still does.