Another Publisher Challenges Legality of Links 288
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."
Why can't they just block it (Score:4, Insightful)
Why can't these fools just do that.
Wise up (Score:2, Insightful)
It may be copyrighted, but that's not the same as 'no public access'.
Deep linkin' (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are they suing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why can't they just block it (Score:4, Insightful)
What if it were books? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sound pretty rediculous when put in terms of a physical medium. Not to mention my 1st amendment right to say "such and shuch information can be found at this and that location."
Re:Clicking links is theft (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone puts a big sign up to tell me that they don't want me to go in and I go in anyway, then I am doing something wrong, but not until.
This is like trying to ban soundbites. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hrm... let me give this a try...
"When the news picks an unapproved soundbite, which provides viewers access to a part of my speech without enduring the other twenty minutes of my doublespeak, those viewers may think something different about me from what I intended when I ran for office."
Ignoring the stunning technical incompetence shown by those trying to ban links, this is just ludicrous. If you make the item & you publish it, you can't then control absolutely how it is used. This is akin to banning bookmarks, reading lists, commercial search & index mechanisms (like Books In Print and Lexis), and so much more. Rappers use music segments, narrow-minded people burn books, artists make montages from media scraps, and satirists and critics deconstruct content every minute of their working day.
Me, I'm all for using this guy's legal opinion for toilet paper:
"I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment, it shall be behind me." -- Max Reger (letter to critic Rudolph Louis, 1906)
Their partially right (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine Slashdot copying every story they link to, and claiming that it's their own story, and charging you 10 cents for their service.
The newspapers don't mind what Slashdot does (well, except slashdotting them of course), because they're still getting the exposure they want.
Well - some of the newspapers that is. Some of them want you to link like this:
"Open a new page and type in http://www.cnn.com
Click on the "U.S." link in the left hand menu.
Click on the "U.S.: Friendly fire pilot reported being fired upon" link in the top right hand corner, right under the picture of a jet fighter.
If it's not there, tough luck."
Others are quite cool with just linking like this:
CNN.com reports - U.S.: Friendly fire pilot reported being fired upon [cnn.com]
Please read "Literary Machines" (Score:1, Insightful)
Basically, it comes to this: either you're part of the web, or you're not. In Xanadu (no pun), if you were to participate and place your works in the Xanadu database, you are implicitly giving people the right to link and cite (and make marginal notes) about your work. If you don't like that, then don't publish. The same is true for the Web. If people don't want to be linked to, they should just get the hell off the Web, plain and simple.
Linking to Images (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a lot of pictures which I've taken myself, and lately I've discovered that they're showing up on other peoples pages, directly inlined from my own.
Myself, I dislike this, as I end up having to pay the bandwidth for someone elses webpage.
Re:Stealing Content and Representing it as Your Ow (Score:2, Insightful)
If the problem is people coming to your website, downloading the images, and posting them on their website, make sure that the image comment (most image files have an editable comment field) contains "Copyright © 2002 Your Site, Inc." and sue them for copyright infringment.
In no case do you need to sue someone for linking to your site. If they're linking to an
Re:Stealing Content and Representing it as Your Ow (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, because you and your company came along -- and a bunch of others like you and your company -- and you've decided that you don't like the way things are done on the net -- the way they've always been done on the net, the way that was essential to the net's success -- you want to punish all of US and destroy the internet WE'VE worked so hard to create.
Corporations are ruining the internet with their corporatization, spam, pop-ups, pop-unders, banner ads (yes, that includes slashdot -- there's a reason I block these fucking ads), promotional materials, and high-glitter low content web-pages.
Even "respectable" sites like the Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) are sickening in their lack of ethics. I pay money to get access to the Wall Street Journal online. And for paying that good money to them, what do I get? ADS. Fucking ads. I have to use an ad-blocking hosts file for wsj.com, a site which I PAY TO HAVE FULL ACCESS TO!!!!
People act like companies have brought the internet to life. No, companies are to the internet as street-trash whores are to city-dwellers: sure, they're fun for a while; but then you get sick.
Corporate websites are a plague to the internet, a plague that comes in a candy-coated package. Companies are like the white man that came over to America and pretended to be nice-nice to the Native Americans while offering them virus-loaded blankets and "firewater".
We need to resist this corporatization of the net.
Re:Stealing Content and Representing it as Your Ow (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn right! Corporations are a disease of the Internet. In e-mail, people get more spam and viruses than any other kind of message. On the web, the ads take longer to download than the content. Cookies and spyware are being secretly loaded onto thousands of machines. We made the Internet, and the corporations are trying to kill it for profit.
It doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to live in the world they would like to create. All we need are the right skills and the determination to use them. Let's make it happen!