Re: [OS:N:] [OT]: is deep linking illegal?

[Jeremy Hogan <jhogan@redhat.com>]

Marco, 

Many sites have a policy against it, particularly those with ads they'd
like you to see, or would like you to create a log-in before seeing the
content. Or in cases where you are using their info for commercial gain,
ie deep linking to a book review on Amazon, when you intend the user to
buy the book from you. 

Some of these sites even make it harder for you to do so by redirecting
links not referred from their own pages, with cookies and sessions or
URL masking.

The only thing illegal, however, would be to pull their content into
your site without attribution, and in some cases even with attribution
if their are terms of use on top of copyright. 

A common, but illegal, deep link would be having a thumbnail on your
site, that deep links to the source image on their site, effectively
stealing their image as well as their bandwidth. You can't represent
someone else's work as your own as always.

Sites such as NewsForge ask that you post the article's parent URL as
well as the article's URL itself as a compromise.

If deep linking *had* been outlawed here, Slashdot (for example) would
already have been besieged by thugs.

--jeremy

On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 05:06, M. Fioretti wrote:
> Not directly related to Open Source, but judging from past discussions
> here I'm sure that some member will have pointers, and several others
> will be interested anyway.
> 
> Deep linking is pointing straight to a web page instead of the
> corresponding home page. As in writing, in my weblog or full blown
> online magazine/portal:
> 
> 3)       XYZ has an interesting article on topic foo, read it at
>        http://www.xyz.com/articles/article_about_foo.html
> 
> instead of:
> 
> 2)     XYZ has an interesting article on topic foo, go to
>        http://www.xyz.com/ and search for that story from there
> 
> I have just read in an italian newsgroup that in USA only method 2)
> would be legal now, on the ground that method 1) would damage XYZ by
> diminishing banner hits, and violate their branding, corporate image,
> intellectual property rights, and so on. Because it shortcuts the path
> from the home page, hence giving of XYZ a view/user experience
> different from what they want to convey.
> 
> This seems really absurd to me (**): apart from obvious issues of
> common sense, internet useability, freedom of speech and so on (so we
> are at least partially on topic here) I don't see how Google or any
> other search engine could survive in that scenario. Or how anybody
> could quickly ever find anything online for that matter.
> 
> May I ask to all list members, be they USA citizens or not, how things
> actually are in their country?
> 
> Whatever the situation is, I would like to answer providing official
> online resources saying "Law in this country says so and so" or "there
> is no law whatsoever about this yet"
> 
> TIA,
> 	Marco Fioretti
> 
> (**) the only possible meaningful exception being, as I see it,
> framing: if I put http://www.xyz.com/articles/article_about_foo.html
> in a frame of www.mysite.com/news/ then it does steal banners, confuse
> readers, and give the impression that I am the author.


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