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Judge Rules Against Deep-Linking of Content
An anonymous reader writes "A Texas judge has ruled that, if a copyright owner objects to the linking of content from another web site, that link must be taken down. This case, which may have some far-reaching implications, centered around a motorcross website. The site, run by a Robert Davis, provided links directly to live feeds of 'Supercross' events streaming from the SFX Motor Sports site. The company filed suit, claiming that the direct links were denying it advertising revenue. The article cites previous cases, where sites were prohibited by judges from linking to files which violated copyright law (such as DVD decryption software). From the article: 'But in those lawsuits, the file that was the target of the hyperlink actually violated copyright law. What's unusual in the SFX case is that a copyright holder is trying to prohibit a direct link to its own Web site. (There is no evidence that SFX tried technical countermeasures, such as referrer logging and blocking anyone coming from Davis' site.)'"
This is a "United States District Judge" in Texas, not a Texas judge. Not quite the same thing.
"sights" would reference vision - "sites" references location.
Guess English is a little harder than you thought.
Gotcha back.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
No, actually, they pretty much broke the internet. There are well-established ways of preventing linking from outside pages (using cookies, checking referrer: tags, etc.).
A link isn't a copy of the information it links to. A link is instructions for where to find someone else's server that is willing to give you the information. Outlawing links is like outlawing giving directions.
If someone is linking to your site from outside and that annoys you, the solution isn't to take that person to court -- it's to stop serving data to people coming from outside your site. That's 90% of what the referrer: tag is for.
Copyright grants the holder a limited monopoly on the distribution of his work. Used != Distribution.
Copyright is there to prevent others from selling (unlicensed)copies of the original. Copyright is there to protect the creator's distribution rights, not to protect the supplemental ad revenue.
Example:
You write a comic book and to supplement the income of the comic book, you sell ad space with in it(a half dozen full page ads). I can buy that comic book, rip out ad pages and sell(or give away) the comic book to someone else. I can't make a copies of that comic book and sell them; regardless of whether I keep the ads in it or not.
The ads themselves are under someone else's copyright.
Copyrights, like patents, are supposed to provide motivation to create, by giving limited protection of the rights for commercial exploitation.
HTH. HAND.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem with this line of thinking is that content isn't "up" on the web for anyone to "see". The server is actively responding to requests for that content by serving it up. Sending a 403 when you don't want to distribute your content isn't actively blocking access -- it's merely not distributing it.
If you configure a server to your distribute content to anyone in the world who asks for it, that's exactly what you're going to get. You don't solve this problem with lawsuits. You solve with with a fucking text editor and a couple of brain cells.
This reminds me of a case in 2002, in which the Chicago Cubs sued businesses that sold access to nearby rooftops where people could watch the games without buying tickets at Wrigley Field.
From what I can tell, they eventually settled out of court.
Deep link all you want, this decision doesn't change anything. What it DOES change is that now I get to ask you not to, and you'll be fined if you don't comply. It's basically "don't be a jerk" codified into law. I fail to see the problem.
Ok, let me try the analogy game. It's like somebody is on the street corner handing out packets of information. Some jerk just down the street is telling people, "Just ask for page 7, the rest is all ads". The guy handing out the information doesn't like this and yells at the other guy to stop telling people this, but still gives just page 7 to anybody who asks!
Yelling at the guy is not the solution. Not giving people only page 7 is the solution.
The fact remains, the judge did exactly what judges are supposed to do - he weighed up the arguments as they were presented to him
Actually, the perception I get is that the judge and/or his clerk are extremely lazy... as a former federal clerk, I can tell you we never just cursorily issued a ruling based on, for a lack of better terms, crappy briefs (arguments) by the parties. Sure, with this defendant, I would have had to have researched the law in a hell lot more depth and spent more time on it, but at the end of the day, however my judge would eventually rule, at least both parties could rest assured that we actually thoroughly researched the law and completely analyzed all the arguments.
From the sounds of the article, as said before, the judge issued the prelim injunction without even doing the proper research or thoroughly analyzing the Plaintiff's arguments. Of course, this is only a prelim injunction so at the very least, the case does not appear to have been settled on its merits. Plus, the article may be missing some key facts on what actually transpired.
But, the poster is incorrect, because judges are expected to do more than just "weigh the arguments as they are presented to him" because, even if "Ghengis Khan" is not an argument, this does not mean that the Plaintiff's arguments, no matter how cleverly worded and filled with sanctimonious legalspeak it may be, the argument would need to comport with caselaw and be thoroughly analyzed...and from this case, this particular ruling appears to flawed in light of the Ticketmaster ruling...
Judges should "become" experts in case law on whatever issue is before them and not rely only on the parties' briefs, because the parties may have interpreted the case law incorrectly, applying it incorrectly, or consciously omitting caselaw that teaches against the argument they trying to make. That is why the statement that "judges aren't expected to be case law experts" is patently incorrect.
anyway, I hold the philosophy that judges appointed for life and given anywhere between one to four law clerks should, in the name of justice, fairness...and karma:)..should issue rulings only when both arguments have been completely vetted against the most relevant and on-point caselaw, regardless if one party's arguments are completely moronic.