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Judge Rules Against Deep-Linking of Content

Posted by Zonk on from the this-makes-a-lot-of-sense-honest dept.

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.)'"

2 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow. by Dr.+Zowie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Wow. by croddy · · Score: 5, Informative
    A copyright holder can decide who and how their material is distributed (as it should be). What is this rules does is reverse the rule of thumb of "if you put it on the internet, you are publishing it for anyone to see, unless you protect access to it". Now, instead of having to protect the content through technical measures, they can use lawyers instead.

    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.