[no subject]

A ruling that robs the public domain
A landmark copyright case threatens to render illegal all links on the
web
Patti Waldmeir
Published : Apr 03 2002 16:34:19 GMT | Last Updated : Apr 03 2002
16:53:38 GMT

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The ninth circuit US court of appeals is being lobbied to reconsider a
dangerous if little noticed decision handed down in February. The case
involves the quintessential web practice of linking. Critics say it
could turn almost every web link into an act of copyright
infringement, threatening the unique value of the web as a tool of
knowledge by preventing people from finding their way around it.

The case, Kelly v Arriba Soft Corp, involves a "visual search engine"
located at www.ditto.com. Ditto (formerly known as Arriba) trawls the
web to produce "thumbnail" images of millions of photographs including
those of Les Kelly, a photographer of the American West, who sued them
for reproducing miniatures of his images without his permission, and
using them to link to his original photos.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court rebuffed Kelly on his
thumbnail claim, ruling that it was legal "fair use" for Ditto to
display the tiny images.

But in a much more far-reaching ruling, the court said Ditto could not
also send users to the original photo through a link. It was the first
time an appellate court had ruled on the issue of "in-line linking" or
"framing", the practice followed by many search engines of providing a
link that opens a browser window displaying material from another
website. . .

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