>Emma Blagg's email asked about the *legal* position on deep- >linking. "AFAIKs" and "IMHOs" are fine for a discussion but >Charles Oppenheim summed up what I think is understood to be >the legal position. Yes, to quote from Charles Oppenheim's posting: "Deep linking is legally dubious, and some court cases (US ones -none in the UK so far) have found it to be illegal, but others have not. It all very much depends on the particular circumstances and interpretations of the law." ie, if I understand correctly, there isn't effectively any clear legal position in the UK at present. I don't differ from Professor Oppenheim except in response to the situation. I don't see the point in acting in a way which assumes there is pointless and restrictive legislation (which ignores the whole point of the medium) in place when there isn't. It's like not breathing in case someone might bring in a law against it at some point. If you read TBL's article as referenced previously you will find that he advises caution WRT links for the purposes of defamation etc. Defamation is covered by defamation legislation, it's nothing to do with linking ("deep" or otherwise) per se. Ordinary linking which is not for defamatory purposes and doesn't involve pretending that someone else's content is your own (ie embedding etc) doesn't imply anything other than a link to a web resource. As I said previously, if you don't want someone to link to something, design your site accordingly. >The Shetland Times dispute, and the Stepstone and Haymarket >disputes in December/January showed that there is commercial >sensitivity about this. It seems to me that "commercial" is >the key word here. Possibly many companies will not object to - >for example - academic institutions deep-linking or possibly >even embedding content. Many of the cases on this subject (in >the US, Germany, Netherlands etc.) relate to commercial >competition. Hence my remark about corporate lawyers being keen to restrict deep linking. I don't know enough about the latter cases to comment, but IIRC the Shetland Times one was about *embedding* their content in a competitor's pages or frames, not *linking*. Whatever: as I keep pointing out, if you want to prevent links to certain pages, it's entirely achieveable. But it's the responsibility of the site designer: if you don't want it to be linked to, don't put it on the web or apply appropriate access controls. >Having said that, cavalier attitudes to what is or is not >permissible could lead to a case which could make "bad law", >which then affects everybody. There is nothing cavalier about the stance adopted by TBL, which is pretty much where I'm coming from. He advocates responsibility WRT linking, as do I. >Oppenheim is, therefore, right to encourage everyone to think >about what they are linking to and why I couldn't agree more. >and certainly >permission should be sought in some circumstances. Here I disagree. Putting something on the web without access control mechanisms in place implies it's there to be linked to. The whole thing would grind to a halt if everyone sought permission for every link. If only from the quantity of email generated. If you embed other people's material in your site (rather than linking) then you are in a different position. Again, see TBL's article. BTW he expressly *doesn't* give permission if asked, on the grounds that you don't need it. >The increasing availability of sites to use programs to audit >who is linking to their sites will be used by many companies >precisely because they *are* bothered about deep linking. Then they are misguided. The increasing availability of privacy settings within browsers and in add-on software which enables you to block or replace the referrer address in the request header (in the latter case usually replacing it with the address of the page you are requesting) renders such audits pointless as the information ceases to be meaningful. TTFN John Whalley -- * John Whalley, Crewe Site Library, Manchester Metropolitan University * email: [log in to unmask] * Phone: (+44) 161 247 5220 (UK) * Usual disclaimer applies...........