Another Publisher Challenges Legality of Links

NewtonsLaw writes: "It seems that the legality of hypertext linkiing has once a gain been called into question according to this story running on Wired.com. As the former online publisher of 7am.com, I was once threatened by the Nando Times in a similar manner when I was linking to their stories. Local TV broadcaster TVNZ also made all sorts of noise about the illegality of linking to their content back in 1966 but have since come to their senses. Over the years I've had similar bitchy complaints from a number of online publishers who simply haven't worked out that links from other sites are something to be encouraged because the drive traffic and boost search-engine ratings. A great resource for those interested in the history, opinions and law on the matter of the legality of linking is the Link Controversy page created and maintained by Stefan Bechtold. Most publishers eventually realize that trying to block linking through the courts is a really dumb thing to do -- but there's always someone who simply doesn't get it."

Fix your F$#%'n webserver then!

[MadCow42]

If they're so paranoid about deep-linking, fix your webserver to check the referrer property of the HTTP request, and direct them to the main page if it wasn't an internal link.

This is TRIVIAL to do on most webservers through cgi scripts... however you now have to deliver all your content through CGI (or SSI, or PHP, or ASP, or whatever), which is pretty common on websites these days anyways.

Stop bitchin if you can fix your own problem with minimal effort.

MadCow.

You're wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same Anonymous Coward speaking---

You're wrong about referrer checking being uncommon. Many sites that use the Adult Check system or other subscription/age verification service have one main page which allows ID checking and keep their artwork and content on other pages. How to protect the artwork? The referrer header is quite commonly used to ensure that only link requests from the same site are honored. Of course this header can be forged by a dedicated pir8, but the forger would have to have prior knowledge of where the artwork was located and probably has a Adult Check subscription anyhow to know that.... the real benefit is that "deep links" cannot be followed by the majority of people out there and cannot therefore consume the Webmaster's bandwidth without paying.

Pr0n has paved the way, and it is time for the rest of the world to follow. People will just have to learn to configure their proxy servers and firewalls to comply with something that is definitely a valid part of HTTP.

Re:Wise up

[Shiny Metal S.]

I would not be happy if some other site linked right to the old material, because they might not put it in context, and lead people into thinking it is current.

Then maybe you should use mod_rewrite [apache.org] with a simple rule:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://your.host/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/old-stuff/(.*)$ /cgi-bin/old-warn?page=$1 [R]

and put there a simple old-warn script displaying "This stuff is old. What do you want? [New] [Old] [Index] [Home] [Whatever]". Or why not include this warning on the old pages in the first place? Or why not to just put "Last modified XXXX-XX-XX, if there's a newer version, it's here." on every page which can be outdated in the future?

Linking is just telling people about your URI. If you don't want them to know about it, don't make it public, you don't have to serve anything if you don't want to. If you want those people to see something before they get what they are looking for, I don't know what's stopping you. The beauty of computers, including web servers, is that they do what you tell them to do.

Re:Wise up

[phliar]

The usual objection to links is that they are out of context. E.g., I have some things on my web site that are out of date, but of historical interest to some people. I'm perfectly happy if people get to the old material after they go to the main page, which tells them that the old material is available, and links to it.

Why not edit the old page and put a notice in front: "This is old stuff! The new stuff is <ahref="some-doc.html"> here</a> -- don't read any further unless you want OLD STUFF!"

I think the answer is that there is no law against stupidity and laziness. Much easier to pay your attack-dog team of lawyers to file stupid lawsuits.