No deep links, says judge


Did you know I was breaking the every day? Neither did I. Do I intend to stop? Not even.
John Dvorak is the bearer of bad news.

This column, for example, is a deep link. So apparently in Texas you cannot send the URL for it to a friend, and Digg or Slashdot cannot link to it, despite the fact that everyone benefits from these direct (aka deep) links.

A link is a link. Banning deep linking is a step towards banning all linking, and what does that do for the Google business model? Where are the Google attorneys helping out in this case? Are they helping out on the appeal? If not, then why not?

How do we even use the Internet if deep linking is illegal for some reason? We don't, that's how. Goodbye, Amazon. Hey Jeff, did you help out on this case?

Let's look at the case. Essentially, SFX Motorsports, a Supercross motorcycle promoter asked some small-time operator — Supercrosslive.com — to stop poaching its videos with deep links. The guy said no, so they sued him in court.

This all sounds fine on paper, since jillions of advertising dollars are lost because someone deep-linked a video, stealing both bandwidth and big money. Yeah, right.

Let's start with practicality here. If you don't want your videos poached, then lock the door, dummy.

There are plenty of server mechanisms that can be employed that will prevent anyone from deep-linking into areas of a site where you do not want them deep linking. It's cheaper than suing, less risky to the future of the Web, and works better!

But realistically, in this instance, who are we kidding? Most Web pages might pay out $1 per 1,000 page views. SFX Motorsports might be losing at most all of $10 to 20, since the Supercross Live site has very little traffic. The actual damages are probably under $5.

A big problem in this debate is the naïve set of people who think that linking to a copyrighted image or article is somehow a violation of copyright. Some of them will argue that the link itself is copyrighted and cannot be used without permission.

Where do these people come from? Mars? This is like saying my phone number or street address is copyrighted and cannot be distributed ever without my permission. These people do not go away.

He's called it right. This blog depends heavily on newsbots and web searches for the day to day articles. So do thousands of others. And that doesn't even count the commercial news sites.

I'm not going to stop.

Hat tip Wendy McElroy.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - January 17, 2007 at 12:18 PM  Tag


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