Slashdot Mirror
"Deep Linking" Controversy Renewed in Texas
DaDigz writes "Wired News is reporting on a cease and desist letter sent to an independant news site by Belo, corporate parent of The Dallas Morning News, forbidding them from linking to individual stories within the site. They claim that the author can only link to the site's homepage, and attempting to link to stories within the site violates their copyright."
Next week Time Magazine will require you to read pages 1-36 before reading the article
you want on page 37. Don't complain, it's their copyright ;)
I can't deep link to an article, but I can email it to a friend?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since when does copyright law force you to read anything you don't want to? The example in the post of reading the first 36 pages before you can view page 37 is exactly right. When I go to read a magazine I'm not compelled to read the table of contents (complete with blinking flashy full size ads) before I go to read an article, why would the web be any different?
In other news, footnotes in term papers and publications are now illegal according to these idiots in Texas. hehe.
Two (2) lines in the web server's config file would have solved the problem. Even if they pay they're sysadmin $1000/hour, and he has to read two hours worth of documentation to find that out, it would still be more cost effective - the lawyer fees are probably well above $100/hour, and it won't end in less than 10.
A cease and desist letter should be considered criminal harrassment in this case, and the lawyer behind it should fear being disbarred for sending out such a letter. But there's no chance of that happenning.
Oh well, at least I'm not a US citizen, so it isn't MY taxpayer money that will go down the drain. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about my legal rights.
this just in, "Linux advocate web site slashdot.org (NYSE symbol OSDN) sued for deep linking on an article about deep linking. In other news, ACLU defends rights of deep-link advocates and also defends terrorists rights to burn down ACLU headquarters." *sigh*, what next...
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
The solution for this case is technical, not legal. If you don't want people to link to you, have your server check that their browser sends a referrer url from your site. If it doesn't redirect them to your front page or an error page.
oops
i think i just broke (c) law. aaaah!
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Don't all the search engines 'deep link'? I guess the new search engines will only point to home pages. What a crock!
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
No need to sue...
Maybe instead they should fire their webmaster for being clueless...
And what is a "Deep Link"? Aren't all the documents on a web server stored on a hard drive? Last time I checked, the surface of a hard drive has no depth that would differentiate the height from the bottom of one document from another. So I am lost of the Dallas News argument. As far as I am concerned about my web site, all pages on it are home pages. I don't care if you link to "index.html" or "/news/04-02-02/index.html". Just link. The Internet is about information and making a clear route to it.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Yes, and the web is a hyperlinked medium. If they don't want their copy linked, they shouldn't use the web. A skywriter can't write a poem and sue anybody who looks up, and a mystery book author can't file charges because someone just skipped to the end to see who did it.
And it's copyright, not copy write.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
You're right. Posting their copyrighted material online doesn't mean others can make use of it however they like. However, they're going to be fighting an uphill battle. They're posting their content in an environment in which it can be freely accessed, both by anyone and free of charge (generally). If they're going to try and say people can't link, they're going to have to go against years of Internet standards. If they don't like the fact that the entire PLANET uses hyperlinks as a means of communication, they can pull their content from the web, plain and simple.
One could argue that their beef with linking is analagous to me showing a friend an article from a paper I bought. I paid for it and got the article legally, but showing it to my friend precludes him buying the paper. They got screwed out of another sale, so should I be taken to court? The only difference is that they're not making any sale when I go to their site in the first place. Instead, they're getting ad revenue from me going to the site. When I refer my friend to the site, they're STILL making ad revenue, just maybe not quite as much. Overall, they've made more (relatively) by me sending the link to my friend than by me showing him an article.
It should also be noted that no one is REALLY going to wade through a news source's home page to find information. They have a plethora of articles and other publications. If I send an article to someone, it's probably because I think they'll find it of particular interest to them. They're not prone to say, "Gee, I wonder if Such-And-Such Times has an article on the population growth of Three-Toed Sloths." And yet again, they get more revenue simply because of a link, where someone wouldn't have otherwise gone and viewed an article.
-X
From the article: "When someone provides a link without my permission, which grants a user access to a part of my website without going first to my site's home page, the user may experience something different from what I intended when I established my website," Bruce Sunstein, an intellectual property law attorney, said.
If I read a book backwards, I will have an exerience other than what the author intended. Have I infringed his copyright? No.
If I play a LP at 45 rpm instead of 33 1/3 rpm, I will have a different experience than what the publisher and recording artist intended. Have I infringed their copyright? No.
If I set fire to a piece of sheet music instead of placing it on my music stand, I will have a different experience of the work than if I had used it as the publisher intended. But have I infringed anyone's copyright? No.
If I read a website with a text-to-speech converter (assuming there's plaintext to read in the first place), I will have a different experience of the site than the publisher intended. Have I infringed his copyright? No.
I don't know what is wrong with these "intellectual property" people, but they are creating a new oxymoron, it seems to me. There is very little intellectualism discernable in intellectal property theory.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I'd rather have a site require referrers than have yet another copyright
law passed, or precedent set. If they don't want people coming from
outside sources, they should block them, not go whining to the authorities.
Copyright should deal with *copying and distribution*, not access to freely
available information. Linking does not copy or distribute any of the
site's content, nor does it even circumvent an access control measure.
:wq
One ring to rule them all. The (_O_) in Goatse.cx
Here it is, enjoy!
Edith Keeler Must Die
Belo is the same company that partially funded the braindead CueCat concept back the the dot-com boom "flush money down the toilet, its the way of life" days. And likewise, therefore pushed the lawsuits to stop those evil hackers who are opening our precious free product that you don't really own just because we gave it to you.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
"The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hypertext link is more efficient but changes nothing else. . . . There is no reason to have to ask before making a link to another site."
--Tim Berners-Lee
Amazingly, they do have that right. They choose not to use it. Linking has nothing to do with copyright - you don't alter or reinterpert content, so you aren't creating a derivative work. You certainly aren't duplicating it. Copyright does not, and cannot, apply. Thats just basic sense. If they want to enforce a certain style of presentation, let them do so - it's like printing a book, but claiming you can force people to read it backwards. You can't, if you want people to read it backwards, you print it backwards. If you don't want people linking to content, make it impossible to do. This can be done trivially by not posting it on the web.
Don't forget to visit Stefan Bechtold's Link Controversy Page that has links to legal articles, cases, technical solutions, link license agreements, hyperlink patents and related stuff.
Unselfish actions pay back better
...To get slashdotted?
:)
I refuse to believe that these yahoos both put their content on the net and then expect people to change the way they use the web while viewing their content! Especially since it is in their power to control access to their info while still making it available on the web.
We're supposed to believe that these people are so technically inept and unimaginative that:
They can't figure out how to do this with cookies, hidden data, dynamically changing links (bad idea since people would link to invalid url's), or referrer data? They also can't figure out that the net is inherently a public place unless they take measures to prevent that? They can't understand that a law won't change the way people not subject to the law operate? They can't understand that naive people will continue to deep link to their content until their lawyers contact them, endlessly?
Impossible. No functionally literate human is that stupid. Therefore, this must be a cpublicity stunt.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
"By allowing TV viewers to go directly from Channel 2 to Channel 50, they are denying channels 3 through 49 of valuable 'click-through' advertising opportunities. This will not stand!"
Drink blood - 50 trillion mosquitoes can't be wrong.
I wonder how they would treat thier example. By clicking above, you get a page that has a link to the original article. So, linking to icopyright is just one step removed, and (so far) free. I wonder if icopyright takes this linking-to seriously. By allowing linking to their site, they can generate revenue for themselves, but at the same time, they diminish the "protection" they offer to their customers,
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
You are missing the point here. They are NOT redistributing the content. They are pointing to the content that is in its original distribution point! As someone who defends to the death the rights of a content creator wouldn't you want to open channels that get content exposed to as many people as possible? Or, apparently you want to limit the reach of content creators so that only a small fraction of people see their valuable content.
...well, unfortunately I can't seem to find it, even via www.archive.org's "wayback machine," but I could have sworn that in the old days when the Web meant lynx and lynx by default took you to a CERN page with some introductory material--INCLUDING an EXPLICIT statement that the concept of a "home page" was a completely arbitrary convention, that there were no features distinguishing a "home page" from any other page.
Hyperlinking between pages at ANY level is the essence of the Web.
Aren't there any W3C standards that still say this?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
As the creators of the content, they should have the right to control how and when that content is made available. And to whom.
They are using the wrong medium.
If you don't want an article to be "deep linked", don't put it in a web page! It's freakin' obvious.
Chicago Tribune
New Scientist
CNN
Tech Industry Forum
Slashdot
Keep looking, you'll eventually find it
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
I am linking to your post which contains an "illegal" link. Did I just brake the law too?
It always strikes me as insane that this argument keeps getting trotted out. They're attempting to misuse a law that's not suited to their purpose when there's one that was so kindly gifted to them...
If it's really such an issue, check the HTTP_REFERRER. If it's not your site, bounce them back to the front page. You can do it in a couple of lines and then you get to sue anyone who goes around it under the security circumvention clause of the DMCA. Great, now you can stop wasting everyone's time with nonsensical positions.
Actually, thinking about it, will someone go and patent that suggestion so the media conglomerates can't use it? I won't claim prior art if you use it sensibly.
Furthermore, a link doesn't "grant a user access to a part of [your] website." You grant access to your website. If you don't want people to access it, take it down.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
If I say to you "There's a neat picture in this book Y on page Z" and you go grab book Y and flip to page Z without reading the rest of it, are you somehow redistributing? Are you in violation of copyright? NOT.
Copyright does not enter here as no COPY is made. You are providing a signpost or link (driving directions, a page reference, nothing more) that tells someone where some content is. How you describe that content (if at all) is up to you, but you certainly are NOT redistributing it NOR are you COPYING it.
The visitor must actually visit the other site and the OWNER's web server distributes any information. Therefore how the heck could you be violating a COPYright? Can't can't can't!
I can see objections to mirroring. I _can't_ see this kind of BS attorney-drive goonery as it pertains to linking. There IS no COPY therfore no infringement of COPYright.
Think of another equivalent. I've built a house with murals on all the outside walls. You drive by... I've told you "Gee, the mural on the left wall is neat!" so you go look at it. You don't make a copy.... the only information is provided by the original source. But suddenly you're violating (or so is the bogus claim) copyright because you didn't look at the front wall first?
I think you need to understand what is actually occuring here and understand the actual nature of copyright law to understand why such tactics boil down to lawyer-aided thuggery.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."