FC: SearchEngineWatch.com on "Deep Linking Lunacy"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

We've covered this in some detail:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=linking

---

Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2002 14:55:29 -0400
From: "Paul Levy" <PLEVY () citizen org>
To: <declan () well com>
Subject: Deep Linking Lunacy

Today's issue of Search Day has a cogent discussion of the deep linking issue.

The editor, Chris Sherman, has given permission to circulate the article on 
the condition that I provide the authorship and copyright attribution from 
the top of the newsletter, and include a link to the article on the web, at
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0709-deeplink.html


Deep Linking Lunacy

A Danish court has ruled that "deep linking" is illegal, and pundits say
this decision spells doom for the Net.  Should you be worried?  Hardly.

By Chris Sherman
Associate Editor, Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/
Copyright (c) 2002 INT Media Group, Inc.

SNIP


At issue is the practice of so-called "deep linking," creating links
directly to individual web pages within a site, rather than to the home
page.  Deep linking is a time-honored practice that has existed since the
very beginning of the web.  Indeed, deep linking was one of the
fundamental design principles that helped the web grow as quickly as it
did, by making it easy for people to directly access individual web pages.

Your bookmarks or favorites are typically deep links.  So are search
engine results.

Deep links are nothing more than a URL and some words describing that URL.
 In other words: facts.  Facts are not copyrightable.  And yet the Danish
court has somehow managed to interpret the law in a way that disregards
both the un-copyrightable nature of facts and the fundamental operation of
the web.

The recent deep linking court case was brought by the Danish Newspaper
Publishers Association against Newsbooster.com.  Newsbooster "scrapes"
news from thousands of newspapers, extracting direct links to these
stories using headlines as the link text.  Unlike search engines, which
also crawl and index the full text of web pages, Newsbooster and other
"scrapers" extract only links and titles.

When users click on these links, they go directly to the page on the
newspaper's web site.  There are no frames or other devices used to "trap"
viewers on Newsbooster's site.  Newsbooster links are similar to the news
links in SearchDay (below), provided by Moreover.com.

The Newspaper Publishers Association argued that in bypassing their front
pages, Newsbooster's deep links deprive them of advertising revenue.
Further, they asserted that Newsbooster is in direct competition with
newspapers.

In other words, in offering a service that makes it easy to find and
access news stories (with their accompanying ads) directly on a newspaper
web site, Newsbooster is somehow both competing with and diminishing the
revenues from users viewing ads accompanying those stories.  The court, in
a stupefying interpretation of the Danish Copyright Act, agreed.

Let's follow the logic of the decision further.  If deep linking is
illegal, search engines are the worst offenders, because they create deep
links to the entire web.  Let's put them out of business.

Next up, online phone directories because they offer addresses and
telephone numbers that allow you to directly contact individuals or
businesses.  Likewise mapping services, because they graphically display
locations and provide driving directions.

TV listings.  Price-comparison shopping engines.  Weblogs.  All
theoretically illegal due to their rampant practice of deep linking.

But why stop with the web?  How about those sneaky academics, citing the
work of fellow scholars with footnotes to specific articles using exact
page numbers in the journals that published them?  And just think of the
worst offenders of all -- librarians, who not only help patrons find
books, magazines and other materials but often even show them where to
find specific information, sometimes even down to the paragraph or
sentence level!

Sites that prohibit deep linking suffer from malignant stupidity, driven
by a fundamental misunderstanding of the web and user needs.  The whole
point of having a public web site is to encourage users to visit, and deep
links make finding and visiting sites easy. Home pages, typically offering
cluttered design and feeble excuses for site search tools, make finding
content much more difficult.

And as any webmaster who has even a whit of experience knows, it's
incredibly easy to force pages to "redirect" with just a simple snippet of
code.  Don't want a visitor entering your site through a given page?  Add
a redirect command and they'll automatically -- and instantly -- be
viewing any page of your choosing, regardless of the link they clicked on.
 It's child's play.

The newspapers celebrating this decision will likely find that the court's
agreeing with their idiotic deep linking policies is a Pyhrric victory.
This decision, if upheld, won't destroy the web -- it will Balkanize it.
Sites that prohibit deep linking will likely encounter a backlash among
the web community, and find that people don't link to them at all.

Search engines will also be wary of these sites.  In other words, sites
enjoining access by any route other than their home page will find that
they are isolated and cut off from the web community.  They may have loyal
users, but the web community as a whole will either ignore or be ignorant
of their existence.

Not exactly a winning strategy to attract advertisers, potential
subscribers, or other sources of revenue.

This isn't the first time a court has ruled on the legality of deep
linking, and likely won't be the last.  Apart from creating a (likely
temporary) inconvenience for Newsbooster, the ruling isn't likely to have
any significant ongoing impact.

If you want to learn more about this issue, including elegantly reasoned
essays on the legality of linking, check out the links below.  And please
note: According to Danish law, most of the deep links offered below can be
considered illegal.

Deep Link Foes Get Another Win
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53697,00.html
A Danish company can no longer link to content within the website of a
Danish newspaper, in the latest test on whether deep linking is legally
permissible.

Newsbooster
http://www.newsbooster.com/
With subtle irony, Newsbooster's front page offers links to numerous
sources of information on the current deep linking controversy, including
background, commentary and a transcript of the Danish's court's decision.

Deep Linking
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/deeplinking.html
Links to articles and commentary about deep linking, selected by the
American Library Association.

Links and Law
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkLaw
Myths about Links
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkMyths.html
Comments from Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web, about the legality of
links and common myths that tend to persist about linking.

The Link Controversy Page
http://www.jura.uni-tuebingen.de/~s-bes1/lcp.html
Though somewhat dated, this page offers a comprehensive set of links to
the legal issues, precedent and problems of using hyperlinks on the web.

Search Engines and Legal Issues
http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/legal.html
As search engines have grown as an industry, a number of lawsuits and
legal issues have arisen in relation to them. This collection of articles
from Search Engine Watch is organized by type of dispute,including many
articles on issues related to linking and crawling.




Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/litigation/litigation.html




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