Can anyone recommend useful sources of info on deep linking and other legal issues (such
as jurisdiction)?

I see that the Association of Online Publishers have issued a book but it costs £30 so I
would rather find some free info.

Way down deep in the middle of the congo, Studs Murphy and a hippo took an
apricot a guava and a mango. Stuck it with the others and he danced a dainty
tango...

This is bad practice and is thought to contravene copyright law as it passes
somebody else's data off as original content.

--
Dale,
www.oxygenkiosk.net
Now playing: Adam Freeland - Reality 3D

Saint Firk wrote:

seemed a tad patronising.

So your useful source of legal info is that deep linking "is thought to contravene
copyright law". That's settled that then. Do you charge for such insights?

Saint Firk wrote:

I think you might be confusing "deep linking" (to link to a page of a site
which is not the homepage, e.g. Learn how to <a
href="http://dorward.me.uk/www/css/">centre with css</a>), with "hot
linking" (to link to a file in such a way that it appears to be part of
your site: <a href="http://example.com/magic.exe">Download Magic Magic</a>,
<img src="http://example.com/magic-screenshot.jpeg" alt="">).

I don't believe there are any legal implications for deep linking, although
I seem to recall reading about a case in Germany (a few years ago) where
company X tried to stop company Y from doing so. I _think_ company X lost.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07...nks_are_legal/
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35306,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53697,00.html

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

The message <c8pkge$n8$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>
from David Dorward <dorward@yahoo.com> contains these words:

It can be a bit of a minefield as we found out here in Shetland back in
1996 in the case of the Shetland Times Vs Shetland News. I've no
connection with either news agencies/newspapers. If you Google 'Shetland
Times Vs Shetland News' there are numerous articles on what I think was
a test case. The excerpt below is from an American site -
http://www.patentperfect.com/hyper.htm. The case was brought under
Scottish Law of course.

--------

"Since the Internet is, after all, a world-wide network, hyperlinking
has not been an issue solely addressed in the United States. The United
Kingdom is presently dealing with this matter in the Shetland Times Ltd.
v. Dr. Jonathan Wills and Zetnews Ltd.5 (Shetland Times). In Shetland
Times, Lord Hamilton granted an interim interdict, similar to a U.S.
preliminary injunction, on October 24th 1996, to stop the Shetland News
from making free links to the Shetland Times Web site. The plaintiffs
own and publish The Shetland Times, a newspaper which carries local,
national and international news, while the defendants provide a news
reporting service called The Shetland News. Both parties accordingly
created Web sites based on their news reports. The defendant's Web site,
however, contained a number of headlines which served as hyperlinks,
that previously appeared in issues of the Shetland Times. These
hyperlinks provided direct access (i.e., "deep" links) to the
corresponding text that was published on the plaintiffs' Web site
without the user having to go through the plaintiffs' homepage. The
plaintiffs also utilized advertising on their homepage as a source of
revenue, but due to the defendants' deep hyperlinks, such advertisements
were never seen, leading to a potential loss of revenue.

In granting the interim interdict on copyright grounds, Lord Hamilton
stated that it was crucial that all access to the substantive material
on the plaintiffs' Web site should be obtained exclusively by accessing
their Web site through the homepage (i.e., no "deep" linking), and that
there was no materiality to the defendants' defense that the plaintiffs
were benefiting from their newspaper items being made more available to
the public by being disclosed on the defendants' Web site."

--------

Hyperlinking and deep linking <also mentions Shetland case> -
http://www.vs.com.hk/vs-3312.htm

And this excerpt below from another American site -
http://wb270.com/intelprp.htm - Copyrights, Intellectual Property and
the Internet:

-------
"Almost incredibly, a court in Scotland granted a preliminary injunction
banning the use of certain links in the now infamous "Shetland Islands
case." Although a preliminary injunction in this case means little and
establishes no precident, and no decision by a Scottish court would be
binding on any American court, the very thought strikes at the entire
fabric of the WWW and represents another case of greedy commercial
barbarians, newcomers to the Internet, trying to invent or finagle new
and unsound law to take over the net for their own commercial advantage.
The Shetland Times Ltd have obtained a temporary court order preventing
The Shetland News from making free HTML links to pages on their website.
If this were to become accepted law, then it would strike at hundreds of
thousands of pages now on the WWW, and particularly at sites like Yahoo,
that are almost entirely links.

The Shetland Island Case has now been settled, by an agreement between
the parties."
-------

Fiona

Fiona Cope wrote:


Brilliant! Thanks very much for that.

Way down deep in the middle of the congo, David Dorward and a hippo took an
apricot a guava and a mango. Stuck it with the others and he danced a dainty
tango...

I still think it is very much a grey area, it is certainly frowned up on from
my experience.

But if Murphy uses a search engine I'm sure he'll be able to find a few cases.
IIRC there was one with the BBC and NTL not so long ago, and it got settled out
of court. There's a few other cases too.


--
Dale,
www.oxygenkiosk.net
Now playing: Winamp stopped

Way down deep in the middle of the congo, Studs Murphy and a hippo took an
apricot a guava and a mango. Stuck it with the others and he danced a dainty
tango...

In other words I did not spoon feed you all the answers you wanted.

Saint Firk wrote:

In other words, if you can't say anything sensible, sometimes it's better to say nothing
at all.

As Abe said: "Better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt!"

"Studs Murphy" <pleasedonntspamme@cos.dont> wrote in message
news:H25sc.141$2V2.49@newsfe1-gui.server.ntli.net...
Some times when you are asking for free information, when others give up
their free time and good will, it is better to say nothing if you don't like
what information has been given - the next time you need help the person you
have slagged off might just be the person who gets you out of $hite street,
or I should really say, the person who would have done so if only you hadn't
slagged them off in public.....