Re: Legality of Linking (long)

Hi.

>Date: Fri, 06 Aug 1999 15:35:01 -0400
>From: "C. A. Milton" <camilton(at)icx.net>
>Subject: Legality of Linking
>
>Can anyone tell me if this a sign of the future, or just a flash in the
>pan?
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/08/cyber/cyberlaw/06law.html

This is a good question - Just where do you draw the line on linking to
other sites?

Personally, I prefer that links go to the index page of my hobby site,
although specific permission requests are normally granted, if someone
wishes to 'deep link' to the content. It's a netiquette thing.

Never the less, were someone to ask about my *professional* site, I'd always
want them to link to the index page, regardless, as that affects my earning
potential, IMHO. I can see what Universal were thinking, as it affected
their earning potential, and copyright issues, i.e., if they hadn't pursued
this, their IPR/copyright ownership rights would have been open to question.
You do have, unfortunately, to defend such rights, or you lose them.

Link rights, however, are not that easy a problem to resolve, as there's no
clear legal precedent (as I'm sure Ivan Hoffmann will be the first to point
out, won't you?!); about a year ago, I had a problem with my hobby pages,
where an individual had deep linked to it. Now, on all my hobby pages,
there's a note at the bottom of the page noting that the content is
copyright to me (and on another site, to a group of us), and that the only
site that particular content should be present on, is my site. I received an
e-mail from a visitor, informing me that not only had the deep link been
established, but that it now appeared in someone's framed site, giving the
impression of ownership of the material. Not good.

After several e-mails to the owner of the site that was deep-linked to mine,
I had no option but to completely re-structure the site, changing the link
url, since the person in question wasn't responding to my messages.

I feel certain that even legal action (which I didn't really want to
initiate - it's for a hobby, after all) woldn't have made much difference,
only adding to my costs, which I didn't (and don't) really need.

I did, however, fire off a stinking complaint to the hosting ISP.

Oddly enough, I finally got an apology from the person in question after
that, and a *very* polite and almost crawling request to deep link to my
content. He even agreed never to pull such a stupid stunt ever again with my
material, which was nice - it gives me a legal evidentiary trail, should he
ever pull that again!

Needless to say, I'm not vindictive (well, not normally <grin>), so the
content is now deep-linked again, but with a disclaimer on the link, now,
and all is fine again.

Still, it highlights a grey area in our field of expertise: What *do* we do
when our content is hijacked like that?

Not an easy one, really, is it?


HTH!


Best regards,


Roger Stenning
Intelligent Web Design Services
http://homepages.enterprise.net/isgwds00000/index.html
(Contact me for my PGP Public Key).
----------------------------------------------------
Member of the HTML Writers Guild
http://www.hwg.org/

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