HRoth - 11:03 pm on Jan 9, 2008 (gmt 0)

Maybe you could explain to them that the reason you have adsense on the page is to pay the domain bill. Maybe you could even let them know exactly how much you make, because I'll bet the real root of their objection to your link is that they think you are making a lot of money off adsense.

There is no way that linking to a site can be prevented because of copyright issues. Otherwise, every time someone did a search on Google, copyrights would be violated en masse. And has Google ever asked anyone their permission to include them in their results? No. These folks should be gently reminded that Google itself makes money off its search results because of its ads, and that is the only way that anyone can find them outside of a direct link.

I seriously doubt they are going to take you to court. To be sure, you could always cruise around copyright.gov and see if you can find anything about urls being copyrightable. It seems ridiculous to me, but like I said, I think their real issue is the fact that you are profiting off what they see as their work with animals. Most of these orgs operate real close to the bone, as you know. I think more communication would resolve this with them.

Also, I think you should not remove the link. That would be spiteful.

[edited by: HRoth at 11:03 pm (utc) on Jan. 9, 2008]