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...)"

Comments

They're nuts. Deep Linking = GREAT traffic source

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

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.

One noteworthy point not mentioned in the /. story

[mkweise]

...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.)

Thank you

[Vryl]

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.

Re:They're nuts. Deep Linking=GREAT traffic source

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

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.

Re:That doesn't solve all problems.

[mkweise]

You might now think that Germany is the land of the sane and bright, but this isn't true.
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 [rotten.com] 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.

As would the United States, if you look at the matter objectively. Please understand that many Germans feel as strongly about neo nazi propaganda as Americans do about kiddie porn...or certain decryption tools, for that matter.

Re:That doesn't solve all problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not correct!

> So sales of Doom, Quake and Command
> and Conquer 3 are extremely restricted

You must be 18 years old or older, thats all.

> 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 [rotten.com] or neo nazi
> propaganda

There are 17 German states, contents are only filtert in North Rhine-Westphalia. (I think that about 10 - 20 sites are filtert.)

There are many people and clubs like CCC against filtering, because it is AGAINST THE GERMAN LAW.

But it is allowed to use other DNS outside NRW.

> Furthermore you can't get Hitler's "Main Kampf"

You can buy the annotated version. But I don't like it too, that you can't read the original book if you want. (The name of the book is "Mein Kampf")

> or plans for explosives of weapons in stores

Oh, I think that's a good law.

This attitude isn't that unusual for some websites

[Ethelred Unraed]

They're nuts. Deep Linking = GREAT traffic source

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