In this blog post, I am going to talk
about the old (for the internet) tradition of deep-linking, one of the simplest
forms of mashups. Deep-linking is the act of reposting all or some of the data
from a web-page on a separate site, with a link to the original source of the
data at the bottom. As with screen-scraping, this is basically taking data from
another website and using it in another, just without the help of automated
scripts (usually), which makes it a type of mashup. Unfortunately, deep linking
is not without its controversies and legal detractors; there are a number of
organizations and sites that would like the practice made illegal so as to
force traffic to their home page and protect what they believe is their
property. As such, there are a number of court cases about deep-linking that
date back over many years.
The article I have posted above is about
a recent court case where one website, Righthaven, decided to sue those who
deep-linked to their articles, attempting to force those sites they were suing
to pay hefty fines and revoke their domain name in the process. This is helps illustrate
one of the key legal questions that deep linking faces: is taking large numbers
of quotes from an article and posting it on another site with a link back to
the original site stealing or fair use? The court in the article claims that it
isn’t based on fair use grounds, that facts cannot be copyrighted, and that so
long as the entire article is not re-posted in its entirety it is legal. This
case helps to set precedent for others and helps to provide an avenue of
defense for anyone who finds themselves sued over such grounds.
In my own opinion, deep-linking is a
practice that should stay legal. While I understand why many different sites
would have issue with the practice, I don’t agree with them that it is wrong.
Deep-linking is a fairly non-invasive way of distributing information and still
provides a link back to the site itself. Yes, it might not provide as much add-revenue,
but it is not plagiarism either. As such, I find myself siding with the
bloggers over the big corporations, here.
So, what do others think of
deep linking? Are some of the issues raised against it valid? What should
bloggers to do reference and comment on information and articles if not through
deep linking?
-Noel Hansen.
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