Links restricted? How legal and enforceable? (Full Version)

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Steve Board -> Links restricted? How legal and enforceable? (4/25/2003 20:17:56)

One of the sites I manage has a list of links dealing with a certain topic. A visitor to my site pointed out that the link landed on a page with the following assertion:

" Please note: This is a copyrighted web domain. If you have reached this page through a site other than Authorlink.com, chances are the information is being used without our permission or compensation to our writers. All articles below are copyrighted, and most authors have been paid by us for their contributions. Please help us protect our writers by reporting infringements. We welcome links to our main index (http://www.authorlink.com). However, individual pages within the site may NOT be linked or re-distributed without written permission."

For the record, the site linked to is called " Authorlink.com" and the page involved is dealing with agents in book publishing. I really
doubt the legitimacy for that site' s rule that links to pages on their site are " infringement." What would be illegitimate would be for us to copy a page on their site and make it part of ours. But a simple address would be OK, since the Web is public by definition. Also what difference would it be for someone like us to post a web link and say " once you arrive at their home page, click on their page reference that says ' agents' " ? That seems the same as www.homepage.com/agents.htm.

I welcome feedback and enlightenment.





pageoneresults -> RE: Links restricted? How legal and enforceable? (4/25/2003 20:36:24)

Hello Steve Board, welcome to Outfront!

Actually they do have legal ground to stand on. Do a search on Google for the term " deep linking" and I think you' ll find a few interesting pieces of information concerning this.

From an SEO standpoint, that company is shooting themselves in the foot. From an authors standpoint, they are protecting the work.

In forcing everyone to link to one page of their site, they are funneling PageRank (when it comes to Google) and then in turn funneling that PageRank within their site. It is actually a rather interesting concept.

Here is a great article to start with...

[url=" http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Association/Offices/ALA_Washington/Issues2/Copyright1/Copyright_Articles/Hypertext_Linking_and_Copyright_Issues.htm" ]Hypertext Linking and Copyright Issues[/url]

quote:

The law is not yet clear on what constitutes acceptable practice in linking to other people' s Web sites. In most instances, however, it appears that linking in itself (whether deep linking or not) should not create legal problems unless there are extenuating circumstances.



Gil -> RE: Links restricted? How legal and enforceable? (4/25/2003 20:57:31)

quote:

But a simple address would be OK, since the Web is public by definition.


Not. There have been a few court xases upholding the right to restrict linking.



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