[LINK] permission required to link?

[Roger Clarke]

marghanita@ramin.com.au:
>The point I was trying to make, is that Website owners may object to a
>link for a myriad of reasons - I don't think you can give blanket
>approval for a link to a webpage. I wouldn't see it as fair use, for one
>of my papers to be displayed in a frame of a competing consultants
>website, with their logo at the top of the screen.

There are (at least) three contexts that need to be separated out:

1.  copying / mirroring.  Agreed, that is within the basket of rights
     that make up copyright, so any of us can declare a policy on such
     things.  As I mentioned, I do;

2.  framing.  This hadn't been raised by the original query, nor by any
     of the posters, until you mentioned it in your email this afternoon.

     There's no doubt that framing *can* be applied in an unreasonable
     fashion, which can infringe in at least a moral sense, and quite
     conceivably in a legal sense.  The infringement might be of copyright,
     but might be easier to attack as fraudulent misrepresentation.

     But part of the solution to that lies in the hands of the publisher.
     If you frame my papers, for example, you'll still see the title, the
     author, the author's affiliation, and the copyright notice and link,
     all within the first window of the framed page;

3.  linking.  That's what the question was about, and what my answer was
     about.  And we have a disagreement on this point.

     You said "I don't think you can give blanket approval for a link to a
     webpage".

     My claim is that the concept 'approve' and the concept 'link' have
     nothing to do with one another.  None of us have any ability to
     approve or disapprove of a link to a page in whose content we own
     copyright.  It simply isn't a right that the law gives us.

     From a policy viewpoint, I'm arguing that we should never, ever *have*
     such a right, because it would be a seriously dangerous expansion of
     the notion of copyright, and greatly against the public interest.
     (It would, however, advantage large publishing corporations).

-- 
Roger Clarke              http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

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