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        20070124   

Michael considered fate at 17:52   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Deep linking illegal?
A court in Dallas, Texas has found a website operator liable for copyright infringement because his site linked to an 'audio webcast' without permission.
This is akin to calling the act of pulling a library book off the shelf, which isn't in the card catalog, "illegal". Sorta.

For those not in the know, deep linking refers to posting a link directly to a work (text, audio, what have you) as opposed to the webpage that refers to it. Nevertheless, the content is freely accessible on an open and public webserver regardless of whether the location was meant to be published or accessed directly. Think of a phone number that isn't printer in the white pages. Is it illegal to call that phone number? As one might guess, I think deep linking is legal.

In the end, it wouldn't be too difficult to restrict content access to only those coming from the webpage that refers to it, putting the onus on the content's creator to decide how it is available (though perhaps it would incur an annoying amount of maintenance overhead)..

Best part though? The sub-headline on the article I linked punirifically refers to Google's dislike of the ruling: "Deeply disturbing, Google lawyer says". In 2000, a law suit seemingly found deep linking legal:
Tickets.com, a seller of tickets, was sued for linking to pages on Ticketmaster's website where users could find tickets not available at Tickets.com. The US District Court for the Central District of California concluded: "hypertext linking [without framing] does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act ... since no copying is involved."
At the end of the day, this all comes down to how we define "copying". If I publish and/or give you a phone number which you can call in order to hear a song, is that "copying" the song? I should think not. If I display content directly on my site (either accessed each time from another server or literally copied) then is that "copying"? I should think so. If I display a link that refers to content on another server, which - if accessed - is done so through that other server, is that "copying"?

I don't think so. Do you?


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