Deep linking: an infringement of copyright?

[troels nybo nielsen]

Back in 2002 I took part in some heated discussions on a Danish forum about deep linking. A number of Danish newspapers were demonstrating their ignorance about the nature of the net by forbidding a search engine to link to their sub pages.

I believe that this discussion also reached WebmasterWorld, but that was before I was a member.

It seems that some websites still will forbid other webmasters to link to their subpages:

http*://www.hca2005.com/HCA2005+Foundation/copyright

explicitly forbids deep linking.

I have delinked the page. Certainly not out of respect for their copyright notice but because I did not want to boost their PR.

Sometimes I'm almost embarassed to be Danish.

[John_Shaw]

I certainly don't know about Danish law, and, not being an attorney, don't know about U.S. law. However, the subject of deep linking is important. From what I can learn, it is not settled completely in the U. S.

One court case, Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.Com. Inc ruled in favor of deep linking.

More information can be found at Nolo.Com (publisher of books about law for lay people, U. S. based):

[nolo.com...]

The above is a deep link. Based on what they say in the article, they should not be able to sue me.

Of course, the usual reminder: with legal advice as with other things, keep in mind what you paid for it.

[mgream]

It seems to me, after reading on this topic and studying some case law, that deep linking can be a problem in certain circumstances, but there's no hard and fast rule, as the specific facts of the linking need to be looked at.

The two main considerations seem to be:

(1) does the deep link "evade" the normal structure of the website, so as to avoid content that is normally present when the content is otherwise viewed while "normally" navigating around the site? does the linking cause confusion or inappropratiately display the content (e.g. in frames or via inline links, to confuse the real source)?

(2) is there an explicit provision against deep linking in the terms and conditions of use of the site? but if so, does this provision attempt to go further than what should be allowed as "fair dealing" (i.e. references to works), or could be be considered anti-competitive in some way?