Subject: Re: WWW & Copyright - is _linking_ illegal?
Date: 17 May 1995 21:19:55 GMT
Organization: Oracle Corporation. Redwood Shores, CA
References:
<3p8hbb$f86@clark.net>

<3p90q3$a45@clark.net>

Bob Keller writes:

>brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>
>>Now comes the tricky part that only a judge can answer ...
>
>>What if somebody puts up their own material on their own page, but says,
>>"The only way people are to download this is coming in through my pages,
>>because I have put up ads to pay for it that way. Don't link directly to
>>the good stuff."
>
>>At first I felt there was nothing (legal) they could do to stop you, but the
>>more I think about contributory infringement, the less I would be willing
>>to bet the farm on that.
>
>>Does that mean you can't put the good stuff on your hot list? Well,
>>technically, yes. But nobody is going to sue you for that. They might sue
>>you if you put up a public link, though.
>
>If you mean hot list, as in a personal hot list in the browser menu, and
>_not_ a list of "other neat places" on a public web page, then I suspect
>we are getting into an interesting area of possible (probable?) fair use.

The analogy I'd probably try to hold is that a URL is an identifier,
like a phone number. It is non-copyrightable information. You are
absolutely free to publish your own collections of phone numbers in
books. I can't for the life of me see why you could be prohibited
from publishing a collection of URLs, or be found to be in any way
infringing for doing so, under the same rules as phone books.

The "contributory infringement" argument seems like a Heffalump. The
URL is not the infringing material, period. The server providing it
is the infringer.

IMHO, the only way for providers to prevent other indexes from linking
into "protected" pages is to do some sort of dynamic scheme that makes
static links unusable. It think it is purely a practical issue, not
a legal one.

Not that I'd want to be the test case...

-dB

--
"Is handing over your crypto keys self-incrimination?" daveb@acm.org
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