Slashdot Mirror
Deep Linking Legal in Germany
BlueWonder writes "German news site Heise Online reports a recent decision of the Bundesgerichtshof, the highest court in Germany: Deep linking is not illegal.
Newspaper company Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt had sued the news search engine Paperboy for deep linking to their articles. According to the Bundesgerichtshof, the public interest in a well-working Internet takes precedence over the commercial interests of the newspaper company, even if the advertizing of the company is bypassed.
The Bundesgerichtshof has clarified that users can access any page if they know the URL, and deep linking is just a technical simplification for entering the URL manually. (Warning: links go to German sites - use the fish...)"
Shouldn't it be from the-no-shit-dept. ?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
It's good to see that theres at least one state in the world that isn't rushing to welfare programs for lawyers with pointless laws.
Imagine if they had ruled deep linking was illegal ? think of the enforcement nightmare.
I've recently started using a news aggregator that takes RSS feeds from various sources and provides deep links straight to the article pages of their sites.
I find myself visiting pages on the Register, The Motley Fool, and loads of other websites that I would never have visited otherwise.
The publishers of these feeds know that, they know that it brings traffic and if they didn't want to do it they could pull the feed and prevent deep linking using any of various hacks.
It is up to them as a publisher to use deep linking to their advantage and stop being so anal about it.
If a site doesn't want anyone to "deep link" to them, why not just check the HTTP_REFERER HTTP header, and send those requests that come frome a "deep link" (anything outside their own site, probably) to the front page?
Sure, you can set your own referer header and fool such things, but "ordinary users" wouldn't bother doing that.
(Or do Big Evil Compaines always try to take legal action first, and if that fails, go for a technical solution?)
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
arresting Google, they provide deep-linking and even CACHE !!!
Oh wait ... you are too lazy to put a robots.txt in your root ?
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
...is that the rulin states that if the owner of a web site wants to prevent deep linking, it may feel free to use technical measures to prevent it. (That could be as simple as using the referrer= tag.) It goes on to state that circumventing technical measures designed to prevent deep-linking very well may be illegal (and that they'd rule on that if and when it comes up.)
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
In fact in some German states ISP are required to use censorship filters to filter content which is showing disrespect to human dignity like infamous rotten or neo nazi propaganda.
Indeed taking the new decision of congress to ensure free, uncensored internet access everywhere on the world, then you'll see very soon that Germany will be besides North Korea, China, Vietman, Iran and Lybia on the list of offenders.
Germany has a long list of incidents of restricting the peoples right to access information and entertainment by claiming to protect youth and society. So sales of Doom, Quake and Command and Conquer 3 are extremely restricted like hardcore bukkakke porn. Furthermore you can't get Hitler's "Main Kampf" or plans for explosives of weapons in stores.
This is a severe restriction of free information access. Free is free and information is information. That doesn't imply a qualitative measurement. So, in a truely free society people would have free access to images of severed head, torn inards and mindless racist propaganda, too.
I think that's a very bad direction for the German society. The public rights are slowly getting more and restricted. In this picture it fits that the limits for consumed alcohol before driving are steadly lowered, speed limits are spreading like salmonella, the weapon laws are more and more restricted and smoking is made illegal in more and more places.
Honestly, I don't know where this leads to. I'm just scared.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
stop burning our karma!
This is the only sane argument about this. Laws or court cases against deep linking are moronic. It is a public network. You have advertised an address, and you knew what that meant when you did it.
You are not being co-erced into putting content on the network, and the consequences of putting up content are obvious to all.
Deep linking illegal under EU law, By Andy McCue, Computing [26-01-2001]
Danish Court Rules Deep Linking Illegal
Some examples of companies who forbid deep linking (the last link is full of stupid examples, some websites which would get a great benefit for their popularity from deep linking
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
I saw the notice at Links&Law.com.
The right to respond is actually a good thing. It is a protection against slander in newspapers and on websites.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Yeah, what would happen if everyone had to cruise the net rather than picking up the important but deep-linked news and information that I post in my .sig?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
what's a vagina?
Deep linking almost always generates only one hit/page impression/whatever you like to call it per user while a visitor that starts out on the homepage is likely to generate more than two clicks.
Remember, most sites use banner ads as a way to earn money and every hit means more money to them. Guess why so many news site just have a teaser of their articles on the homepage? Yes, to make you click on that link that provides you the full story and generates them another hit.
bye,
Settel
I just stumbled out of bed and loaded slashdot... I think maybe I shouldn't be awake yet...
I saw this headline and read it for a moment as "Deep Drinking Legal in Germany"
And my response was... yeah... obviously.. so?
But that one click is one more click than they would have got.
The whole point is that deep linking drives somebody to your site that would never have come by were it not for that deep link - i.e. you do not have the opportunity to generate the 2 clicks that you talk about.
You have the opportunity on the end of that one click to capitalise on it and entice the visitor into the rest of your site.
So they made it OK to steal from advertisers and webmasters in Germany.. What's next, making ad-blocking legal? Scumbags.
---- visit www.antiadblocker.com for all your solutions for theif-proofing your website ---
You know the EU regulations for the import of caramel-drops? 25911 words
...it was ruled illegal. Because they said, because of EU rules. Which of the countries will have to change?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Adding a robots.txt file won't necessarily work. Google's bots do follow the instructions in the robots.txt file but there are lots of sites that don't. Following the instructions in the file is a common convention, not a hard and fast rule/requirement.
Robots.txt is ignored by the more unscrupulous sites and bots so other measures have to be taken in those cases.
Hm. Even if your implicit statement about blacks was true, you are neglecting a few important points:
1) There are plenty of black police, firemen, utility workers, politicians, etc. out there. Your scenario would not happen simply because of this fact.
2) You fail to take into account the fact that the United States does not exist in a vacuum. If this kind of catastrophe were to come about, aid from other countries would come almost immediately (if for no other reason than to stake a claim here politically).
Enforcement "nightmare"? All the most reason for more police. In the new world order, this will be important.
Wouldn't preventing deep-linking destroy the use of search engines? What would Google do - provide a link to the front page and directions?
When did Slashdot become so PC that any reference to the very verifiable lack of certain freedoms in Europe is "Flaimbait?"
Deep linking into an existing site and caching a site without its permission are two totally different things, technically, ethically and legally. Please try to stay on topic.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That could be as simple as using the referrer= tag
Agreed on the general "use technical methods before the law" approach though.
adverts, then don't worry, I use Firebird to block pop-ups and most adverts so I'm not going to see them anyway. even if I did I'd never buy from them or anyone affiliated with them after the b!tches they've been.
[...] and smoking is made illegal in more and more places.
What does smoking have anything to do with a free society at all ? I really hate when people are throwing in their own agenda in an otherwise acceptable argument. Makes the whole argument sound lame.
Isn't it Sowron?
:)
On the same topic, a "Sau" is a pig in German
DRMS
I thought in Europe this question was already answered in court in the Netherlands. Maybe I should add german headlines to my deeplinking galore site krantenkoppen.be now?
No one can accuse Slashdot of being US-centric today, with news from Australia, France and Germany all on the front page!
I love it!
Way to go, i love the way german politics are going.
;-)
DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES please
please tell me which freedom you lack because of right-to-reply?
..), so it actually evens the field a bit.
it exists for decades now and just got extended to cover electronic publishing. it's reasonable, it's not really burdensome (a link to the reply - 80bytes or so - will surely kill you, right?).
you can even ignore it - you're in about the same situation as in the USA then: get sued, publish the reply, probably pay a fine
the only thing you can't do it talk shit about people with much less power than you (money, influence,
of course, if you just want to ensure "freedom" and "rights" for those with the money to pay for them, right-to-reply will be nothing for you.
the german mentality prefers to build a strong set of laws and use the courts as an exception instead of them being the rule.
there also doesn't exist the strong notion of "case law" as it is in the USA. past court decrees _may_ be used as guidelines, esp if one of the sides brings up that case, but usually our laws are enough for a proper decision.
In fact the Bundesgerichtshof is not really the highest court in Germany. It can be overruled by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (www.bverfge.de) which is similiar to the US supreme court i guess.
IAAL
Referrer authorization?
Learn to use the Internet. It's cheaper than learning to use the Courts.
NOTICE=TO_WHOM_IT_MAY_CONCERN_Do_not_send_me_any_c opyrighted_information_other_than_the_document_tha t_I_am_requesting_or_any_of_its_necessary_componen ts._In_particular_do_not_send_me_any_cookies_that_ are_subject_to_a_claim_of_copyright_by_anybody._Ta ke_notice_that_I_refuse_to_be_bound_by_any_license _condition_(copyright_or_otherwise)_applying_to_an y_cookie.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to add one that says, "By sending me data that I requested, you forfeit your right to legal action..." or something?
First, in most cases, the alternative in most cases is not one click (with deep linking) or more (when starting from the home page), but people seeing a page (when news search engines link to it) or not. Most people only read few newspapers completely and would not read articles from other newspapers if there wasn't a link to a topic they're interested in.
But I would also dispute that deep linking necessarily makes people see fewer pages - perhaps there are studies investigating visitors' behaviour. Many good news sites have links to related articles on their pages, and often when I arrive at one page from Google news search (or sometimes Paperboy.de), I look at other pages of the same site, as well. I think news sites should be glad that with deep linking from news search engines, they already know something about the fields of interests of a visitor. If someone goes to the home page, they don't know to which articles to link most prominently.
Some people will only read the page to which the search engine links, but they would hardly explore a news site starting from the home page, anyway. Those who want to read more probably often read more pages when they start with one article that interests them and see links to related articles (and, of course, they always can go to the home page with one click, as well).
Is it just me or are companies that discourage deep linking missing the whole point of the internet. Most web sites have severely limited and dumb search capabilities on their own or no search feature at all. Making me spend more than a minute searching on your website is just going to piss me off. The whole purpose of a website is for people to visit it and glean information from it. Preventing people from doing this is wasted capital. It's kinda like having 10 or 12 entrances to a shopping mall, but only allowing customers to use the main entrance.
If you have a robots.txt entry and somebody ignores it, then you should have a good case to sue them. If you don't have a robots.txt entry and somebody relies on it, you should have no case to sue.
Hopefully, the legal standard will be that when you choose a particular technolgy to disseminate your works, that the documents that define that technology become legally binding. In other words, the law should reinforce the technology.
try "Schwein" there cheif
Try "Chief" there, Schwein.
The attitude of Handelsblatt unfortunately does not seem to be that unusual, at least not in Germany. I remember having to work with a large marketing and design agency on a web project (the small agency I was working for was doing the website, the other agency -- the biggest in our area -- did the print marketing and was trying to also lecture us on how to do the site).
First they criticized the fact that we had a full navigation on every page of the site -- in their view people should page through the site like a magazine.
Secondly they wanted to force people to start at the homepage and work from there.
They apparently thought of websites as being literally just a form of magazine or book -- you start at the beginning and page through to the end. I remember arguing with them vociferously that that was wrong, since it threw away all the advantages of the Web (I said it was akin to putting a radio ad on TV with no video) and also explained the principle of deep linking -- to which they reacted with horror and practically demanded we block deep linking, by lawsuits if necessary (WTF?).
Given that the client's site was for a major German utility company with loads of info for customers, deep linking made all the sense in the world -- much more so than many other sites (since news sites, etc. would link directly to pages with promotions and so on).
In the end we carried the day by arguing our position with the client's marketing director (who seemed to "get it" in general, even if he had some bizarre suggestions, like doing the entire ~1000-page site in Flash -- thank God we didn't do that).
OTOH that other agency was also pretty damned clueless about a lot of other things -- proof that large agencies often aren't large because of the quality of their work, but just because the PHBs have all the right connections. *sigh*
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Which in a way is sensible enough -- if someone really really really doesn't want people to link to individual pages in their site, as copyright holders in a sense it is their right to do so. It's their content and their site. I find it to be idiotic to do that, but if someone is dumb enough to do it that way, well, whatever. I'll just go elsewhere.
Note that preventing deep linking wouldn't keep you from accessing the content -- just adds a (idiotic and unneeded, but still "legal") hurdle that can be overcome by clicking through the site, and you can just copy the text from your browser. BFD. If they want to be idiots, there's no one forcing you to read their site. Go somewhere where they understand what the Web is for instead.
Like others have pointed out, deep linking is actually a great way to get eyeballs onto your site -- people otherwise might not visit it to begin with. Who knows? That one deep link might let Joe User know your site even exists and has content he finds interesting, and so they keep coming back for more. Why make them hunt for the content?
Ah, well. You can't stop site owners from being stupid...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Or rather, from the keine-scheisse department...
Ceci n'est pas une sig
Note the different uses of terms "deep linking not illegal" and "deep linking illegal." The truth is almost always more interesting. Although some early cases in the UK (Shetland Times was it?) seemed to suggest courts might consider deep linking to be a form of IP violation, nobody seems to have taken this point terribly seriously as a general principal.
This does not mean that deep linking is somehow a blessed activity that can not give rise to liability, the HTML:
<A HREF="http://their.support.site">See my support site for further information</A>
or "See the sight of the murderer" or the like might well give rise to claims for unfair competition or defamation under appropriate circumstances. Thus, while deep linking, without more, is probably not actionable in most contexts, there are always going to be contexts where a deep link can be entirely actionable.
I can't even imagine the implications this could have on slashdot if it were in regard to US/UK sites.
How can you get to know your enemy if you are not allowed to access their content?
How can adults keep the memory of the horror alive if they are not allowed to read it and discuss it and above all, use their critical thinking capabilities?
If someone tells me that something is "bad", I feel compelled to go and check by myself. If I am told that something is bad, but I am not allowed to validate that information, then I tend to grow suspicious.
While I wouldn't recommend that this book is allowed to any person younger than 18 without parental/ adult supervision, I would probably make it mandatory reading in every school (particularly in the last year of high school). I would make it a mandatory alert course on the evils of propaganda and the results of racism.
Informed adults make wiser and more matured decissions than people who are ruled by a baby sitter goverment.
The BGH is the highest court in Civil matters. It is the end of any legal argument in civil matters.
There is also the BVerfG, which is the court, who decides about Constitutional and basic rights issues with final authority. But unless the Handelsgruppe can show that the current judgement by the BGH violated their constitutional rights in a serious way, the BVerfG will never have to decide this case.
The American Supreme Court is a combination of the two. Remember the US Constitution was one of the first real constitutions, so the power to decide Constitutional cases was just put in the hands of the highest normal court.
Moritz
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
German advertisers are upset that their annoying popups and advertisements won't be seen if deep linking is allowed.
As a German, I cannot really disagree with that. Still, I find Germany a nice country to live in because enough of us are sane and/or bright.
Historically, some forms of hate speech are forbidden out of a desire not to repeat certain experiences that happened in the 1930s and 1940s. Our allied-approved constitution still says "There is no censorship". Of course it was very silly that KISS have a different logo in Germany because it is forbidden to use the runic SS script, which is also a symbol for the SS murderers.
They may not be advertised nor sold to minors. This is hardly extreme. It is also practically useless in stopping minors to get such stuff.
How are drunk driving and poisoning people public rights? There still is no general speed limit on the motorways and I have no sympathy for people who complain about getting caught for speeding.
I agree, however, with your sentiments for the new weapon law. It is practically impossible to legally own a firearm for self defense in Germany. I can only guess that the public allows this because most people do not feel threatened enough by criminals that they feel in need of a gun. And our violent crime rate is relatively low.
chl
Corporations want to control everything they can, as long as that control makes them more money. And they don't care about human rights or the Constitution or anything else but money.
/. There are also a lot of smart people on /. Here's how to tell the difference.
Imagine you set up a shop on a public street. Then, WTF? People can come to your store from other stores? They can comparison shop? Then, WTF? The can leave your store and go to another store? This must be stopped! Corporations must be able to ensure that, if you want visit their store, they have COMPLETE control over the whole experience.
The only reason you can't do that with real roads is that people would bitch. And the only reason people would bitch about that and not about deep linking is that those people are either unwilling or unable to abstract. Just like some people would be perfectly happy for the police to plant evidence on people who they 'knew' were up to no good, but couldn't prove it. But those people can't abstract that to themselves being a wrongfully prosecuted 'criminal'.
This are a lot of fucking idiots on
If you are able to abstract and say, "This law is no good because of the principle," then you are one of the smart ones. If you are unable to abstract and say things like, "I agree with the law in principle, but it should be used here and here, but not there and there," then you are a fucking idiot. Freedom of speech when you agree with the speech is not freedom of speech. The right to privacy as long as you are in your bedroom is not a right to privacy. The right to freedom from illegal search and seizure except when someone thinks you may be a terrorist is no right.
Why did I parse the headline as "Keep Drinking Legal in Germany"?
you, sir, have stolen my sig.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Yes, but he fixed it for you: Ceci n'est pas une sig. versus Ceci ne pas un sig. You should be thanking him.
This is not part of my post. It's my signature. I bet you're disappointed.
Far as I can tell, it's not even a German issue, but simply an issue of "what happens when you get one PHB, two clueless marketroids and a couple of retarded graphics artists in charge of making the site."
Neither of the types in that mix have half a clue that people go to the site for the information, and not for the bullshit. Taken in random order:
- Graphics artists. A lot of graphics artists see it all as making art. They don't know, nor care, about usability of that site, or about the visitors' need to get to the actual information, or such. They want their work of art reproduced as such at all cost, regardless of how much their favourite colours offend the eye, their font is unreadable, and that funky illogical page arrangement leaves the user disoriented and confused.
Point in case: such a graphics artist turned PHB dictated that a page have dark-ish orange on lighter orange as a colour scheme. He also wanted it displayed in a 640x480 pixel window that the user can't resize. And it had 250K worth of graphics, plus about 150k worth of rollovers. (I'm not making this up!)
We called him "the Antichrist."
- Marketroids. These are often nice people, but are trained to do one thing: get people's attention to a product. E.g., they're great at making posters and brochures and other ads.
But they often fail to understand a very basic thing: web sites are _not_ ads. If people already came to your page, you already _have_ their attention, FFS. Now they want the actual info. If you only force them to wade through more marketing bullshit, they'll go away.
This is usually the kind of people who insist that the user _must_ click through ten marketing bullshit pages before they get to what interests them.
- PHB. Even when he's not really retarded, life as a PHB in a corporation isn't as easy for him as you think. The name of the game is: ass covering. Corporations don't like personal initiative. They like mindless droids who unquestioningly obey the rules and "strategic decisions" from above. Even when the PHB is really a bright guy, to stay a PHB he'll have to convince his superiors that he's a mindless droid.
Whenever said PHB actually makes a decision, he has to have the paper trail and everything to show his superiors that he did everything by the book. Or better yet, that he _didn't_ in fact take any decision himself, and merely supervised that everything be done _exactly_ as someone else decided.
So he'll just take the retarded design from the graphics artists and marketroids, and insist that everything must match those artists' screenshots with pixel accuracy. No PHB ever got fired for counting pixels, as their _only_ contribution to the project.
In case he does actually request a change of his own, it will be an easily defendable decision. E.g., insisting that the web site obeys the same style guidelines as the company's brochure. Never mind that it's a retarded decision, since the two don't serve the same purpose and aren't in the same medium. (The brochure doesn't make the user wait while a megabyte of graphics downloads on dialup.) But it's an easily defensible decision. If any superior questions it, the PHB can argue that he was merely obeying the rules and regulations from above. Noone ever got fired for that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In defense of graphic designers (since I am one): graphic designers are normally trained to understand that good print or web design normally means legibility and ease of use. (I say "normally" because there are always exceptions.)
Yes, there are bad designers out there -- lots of 'em. There are also lots of bad programmers and developers and PHBs. You can't tar all designers (or programmers or for that matter PHBs) with the same brush.
I would also bet that sites that do have trained designers will, by and large, be better and clearer than sites done by someone with no design training. Same goes for UI design -- a designer can be a lot of help in making good icons and suggestions for ease of use. Unfortunately, it often seems that everyone thinks they're a designer, or that design is easy (I'm tired of people telling me "Hey, I'm good at Photoshop, too!", as if that means anything). So many sites don't have honest-to-God designers, or they take just anyone they get their hands on (and pay accordingly).
I generally try to do sites pretty much as you describe -- have a clear and easy-to-use navigation, and legible fonts (on all platforms -- Windows, Mac and UNIX/Linux) without too much cruft. And have the pages be scalable so that they work on pretty much any monitor (though getting sites to look good on, say, a 22" monitor and on a handheld is damned near impossible under most circumstances...). And have the sites be compatible with as many browsers as possible, without plugins (unless there is no way around using them -- sometimes Flash or QuickTime does make sense on a site).
Sometimes, though, sites I work on just don't work out because of unrealistic expectations on the part of the client -- sometimes clients insist on having things (or not having things) regardless of how senseless they might be. And at the end of the day, the customer is always right...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
BGH: function of stands of the hyperlinks over commercial interests
That under other things for author right and competition correctly responsibly 1ST. Civil senate of the federal court (BGH) named declared given expected its basic judgment with tension for the question enmity of the competition of so depth to the left well today. Therein the judges place the general interest into the function technology of the hyperlinks of the internet over commercial interests of single announcement participant.
A quick dictionary search reveals that 'signature' in French is feminine, hence its abbreviation 'sig' should also be feminine, leaving 'une sig' as the correct ending for this particular sig. Now that its grammatical correctness has been established, we may go back to wondering about its twisted logic...
A quick dictionary search reveals that 'signature' in French is feminine, hence its abbreviation 'sig' should also be feminine, leaving 'une sig' as the correct ending for this particular sig. Now that its grammatical correctness has been established, we may go back to wondering about its twisted logic...
Ceci n'est pas une sig
XLNT ps0t!! teh best i've read all DAY!
me too!
Here's a newsflash - more visitors mean more COSTS.