Subject: WWW & Copyright - is _linking_ illegal?
Date: 15 May 1995 13:35:40 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway

I have had some of my web pages closed after a letter from some lawyers
in the USA alleging various things: copyright breach, mostly. (um, don't
want to talk about the rest of it)

I don't have any copyrighted stuff (other than my own) on my pages, but I
did link to things on other people's sites that were copyrighted (eg.
song lyrics) , and I am now told that to link to such things could make
me a co-defendant in the charge of copyright breach. How is this? The
stuff wasn't on my site, it wasn't even on this continent, so....?

Wouldn't this kill any web-crawling search engine, as it is virtually
guaranteed to come up with dodgy stuff if you look for it? Aren't then
Lycos, Webcrawler, and all the others doomed...?

Can anyone clarify the issue?

mike blanche
mab23@cam.ac.uk