On Thu, 31 May 2001 14:38:45 +0100 Laurence Bebbington
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I agree with Charles - who I think made some excellent points especially re: why people should not have to resort to all sorts of technological fixes to protect their site and its content when a legal framework already exists which people should respect. If the LIS "profession" does not encourage respect for IP and other information-based rights we undermine our own status.
>
> I still think that some types of sites are less vulnerable to action than others. But "look before you link" has been standard legal advice since Shetland Times case in 1997.
>
> Laurence
>
>
> Laurence W. Bebbington
> Law Librarian (Hallward Library)
> The University of Nottingham
> University Park
> Nottingham
> NG7 2RD
>
These excessively cautious arguments are a good example of
how the law far from protecting our freedoms increasingly
does the opposite. The whole point of the web is to make
information available. A link is like a bibliographic
reference. Nobody would write simply "The Times" without
also giving the date and the page number. Why should it be
any different on the web? OK, you may miss advertisements
if you do not enter a site via the home page, but a reader
who turns straight to a particular page in a printed
journal might also thereby skip the adverts. It is not our
job to force people to look at advertisments. Saving the
time of the reader is much more important.
In the long run this approach may even help advertisers. If
someone finds a particular site useful then he or she is
quite likely to use it again at some stage. If, however,
they spend ages trying to find what they want because a
link leads only to the home page then they may give up and
not bother again.
It may be courteous to ask before linking but many website
owners would probably regard it as unneccessary and some of
them probably get quite enough e-mail messages as it is.
Also it is not always easy to find out who to ask in the
first place. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper who was
responsible for the development of the COBOL programming
language said "it's much easier to apologize than to ask
permission." That sometimes applies to deep linking too.
Obviously there are good reasons for not using links from
frames in such a way that makes someone else's material
look like your own. If done deliberately that would
tantamount to plagiarism and would quite likely be an
infringement of copyright even if no definite precedent
exists yet in this country.
However, provided that people use their common sense it
should be possible to keep lawyers in their place.
----------
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University Library
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