FC: Churches sue critic for linking; EFF Arriba framing brief

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

The relevant excerpt from the complaint alleges that Tony Begonja "publishes
links to the Plaintiffs' registered copyrighted material and non-registered 
copyrighted material," and also that he is "publishing deceptively named 
links which misrepresent and cast the target copyrighted material of the 
Plaintiffs into a false light."

Background on the right to link freely (or not):
http://www.tnr.com/online/mccullagh052300.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,40850,00.html

-Declan

---

Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 00:31:08 -0600
From: "The Rev. Tony Begonja" <tbegonja () earthlink net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: FYI: CJ3 finally actually sued me

Declan,
CJ3 finally actually sued me.
See http://www.ind-movement.org/lawsuit/ for info.
The EFF helped me get a lawyer.
Tony

---

[EFF says in its press release below that it is defending the right to link 
and that the recent Ninth Circuit court decision threatens that right. I 
respectfully disagree. You can believe strongly in the right to create [a 
href=""] hyperlinks without applauding Arriba/Ditto.com's custom of 
displaying remote images from another site via [img src=""] tags. The two 
concepts are logically distinct. [a href=""] hyperlinking is the backbone 
of the web; [img src=""] importing and displaying is antisocial. It is 
possible to limit the latter without affecting the former. I do not claim 
that all antisocial behaviors of this type should necessarily rise to the 
level of a copyright infringement, but the Ninth Circuit's reasoning seems 
reasonably persuasive given current copyright law. Also, there seems to be 
little reason for Arriba/Ditto.com to import and display the remote image; 
an [a href=""] hyperlink from the fair-use thumbnail to the original page 
should suffice. Read the decision at: 
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0055521p.pdf --Declan]


Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, February 27, 2002

Electronic Frontier Foundation Defends Internet Linking

Asks Court to Rehear Ditto.com Case

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
today filed a brief on behalf of Ditto.com, urging the U.S.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling that
threatens to make all linking on the World Wide Web a
copyright infringement.

In order to hold Ditto.com liable for copyright
infringement, the Ninth Circuit created a novel legal
rationale. It found that linking to a website without
permission infringes the public display rights of the
website owner.

"Extending copyright law to all linking on the Web would
be a nightmare," said EFF Senior Intellectual Policy
Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "A whole new flurry of lawyer
letters would chill linking on the Web, striking at the
heart of free expression on the Internet."

Ditto.com is a search engine that helps people find publicly
available image files on the Web. So, for example, by
entering "sailboat" into the Ditto website, the searcher
would be shown a selection of images of sailboats from
around the Web. Ditto both presented the images in reduced
form, known as thumbnails, and also provided links that
would allow the searcher to open the full-size image in a
new web browser window.

Ditto was sued by Les Kelly, a photographer, after Kelly
discovered that Ditto had indexed his website and the
images found there. Ditto.com prevailed before the trial
court, but suffered a defeat on appeal before the Ninth
Circuit in San Francisco. Although the Ninth Circuit found
that Ditto.com's use of thumbnail images was allowed under
the copyright law doctrine of "fair use," it held Ditto.com
liable for copyright infringement for opening a new window
to display the image. This technique is known as "in-line
linking" or "framing" and is commonly used by numerous other
Web search engines, including Lycos, Google, and Altavista.
By concluding that these common linking techniques infringe
copyright law, the Ninth Circuit has seriously threatened
linking on the Web.

EFF filed an amicus brief on Ditto.com's behalf, asking the
Ninth Circuit to reconsider its decision. The case title is
Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., No. 00-55521, decided on
February 6, 2002.

For documents related to the Ditto.com case:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Linking/Kelly_v_Arriba_Soft/

For this media release:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Linking/Kelly_v_Arriba_Soft/20020227_eff_pr.html




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