[thelist] Linking license?

[Luther, Ron]

FayeC asked:


>>At my day job I have been asked to place a link to an
>>online newspaper article on our public site.

>>My question is regarding the licensing.


Hi Faye,


Sounds like you might be asking techie folks for legal advice.  We may not be the best resource for that.  ;-)

While *I* may not have any problem with your link, every couple of years it seems as if some online resource (domestic and/or international) decides to object to this behavior.  Google 'deep linking' or 'deep linking lawsuit' to see (among others I probably missed) examples from Scotland in '97, the Ticketmaster case started in '97 and ending in '00, Runner's World in '02, a German news service in '03, and Baidu (linking to MP3 files) in '08.

Now, to the best of my extremely limited knowledge the linkee has always lost these lawsuits, but that doesn't seem to stop clueless folks from trying yet again to ban linking.

If it was me, I would probably build the link ... but before doing so I would send a brief CYA memo to a selected internal audience informing them of the [probably very very small] potential risk.


HTH,
RonL.