Politech mailing list archives
FC: Journalists at risk from linking bans, from the New Republic
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 00:21:39 -0400
---Julie Cohen of Georgetown University law school has a companion piece on the same topic:
http://www.tnr.com/online/cohen052300.html --- http://www.tnr.com/online/mccullagh052300.html The New Republic By Declan McCullagh (declan () well com) May 23, 2000 Just when you thought there wasn't anyone left in the computer business for Microsoft to try to intimidate, the world's biggest software company has found a new target: Geekdom. Microsoft's legal department recently fired off a nastygram to Slashdot, the über-geek destination so popular with the cramped-cubicle crowd that it won a write-in Webby award for best online community earlier this month. Redmond's beef? Simple: Some eleven posts on Slashdot's notoriously free-wheeling discussion areas included information critical of Microsoft that the company deemed illegal. The lawyer letter, from one J.K. Weston, demanded that Slashdot delete the posts or else. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) mandated it, Weston explained. Ironically, the messages were part of an obscure discussion only a C programmer could love--a kvetch-fest about how Windows 2000 includes a version of Kerberos, an MIT-developed security standard, that's partially incompatible with the rest of the computing universe. To Bill Gates-loathing Slashdot regulars, the news was an example of Gates's assimilate-at-all-costs strategy that's approximately as vile as Red China's forcible takeover of Tibet. Microsoft's nastygram in response was by and large the usual lawyerly fare, except for one demand. "Included on http://www.slashdot.org are comments that now appear in your Archives, which include unauthorized reproductions of Microsoft's copyrighted work," Weston wrote. "In addition, some comments include links to unauthorized reproductions of the Specification." In other words, it wasn't enough for Slashdot to remove posts containing copyrighted information: hyperlinks to copies of the Microsoft/Kerberos documents elsewhere on the Web had to go, too. Now, it's one thing to demand that verbatim copies of copyrighted material be deleted from a website. If a website somewhere on the Internet is violating Microsoft's copyright by handing out free copies of Microsoft Word, Gates's team of natty attorneys would be justified in suing to pull the plug. But claiming that hyperlinks to potentially illegal materials are themselves illegal? That's contrary to the openness upon which the World Wide Web was built. The principle has always been this: You don't need someone's permission to link to their website, and in return you're not liable for what they say. A hypertext link is like a number in a library card catalog--it provides you only with a destination address. If linking becomes criminal, though, anyone doing it could be a target: from a disgruntled Slashdotter to a journalist covering the story--which is to say, me. The Slashdot incident was a provocative Microsoft-versus-Linux tale, and I wrote an article about it for Wired's website that day. Under the DMCA, Wired articles about something like the Slashdot incident could be just as much a violation of the law as the posts themselves. Microsoft's lawyers could go after me, or any other journalist, next. [...remainder snipped...] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- FC: Journalists at risk from linking bans, from the New Republic Declan McCullagh (May 23)