[LINK] Legality of Linking, incl. 'Deep Linking'

[Ivan Trundle]

On Tuesday, April 1, 2003, at 05:48  PM, Eric Scheid wrote:

>> If it *IS* possible to 'bypass' such important pages, then the site 
>> has failed
>> from both a user perspective, and from a business-rules perspective.
>
> Fully agree here, from a UCD web developer POV.
>
> On the other hand, could your argument be twisted to say that if you 
> don't
> implement *technological* measures which prevent me copying and 
> reproducing
> your content, that I could then freely ignore your copyright statement?
>
> (yes, I am mixing linking and copyright, and yes, they are not 
> equivalent)

Not quite. Whilst ignorance of the law of copyright is no defence, I 
can see situations where the circumstances of associated guilt (or not) 
are unclear through a deep link - whatever it might mean.

To make myself clearer: a link found through a search engine, or indeed 
by any other source for that matter, might lead someone to a page on a 
website that circumvents the 'technology' to get to that point, but 
will be none the wiser as to the 'offence' of bypassing certain 
conditions.

On the other hand, as some advocates wish us to believe, if following a 
link (ANY link) other than a link to the home page of a given TLD was 
illegal, then we would all be better off, no?

Of course, the spin-off would be a deleterious impact on the usefulness 
of the world wide web, but would appease some sections of the 
community. A middle ground? I can't see that one can be found that 
actually works, but you never know...

>> My view is that it is entirely possible to construct failsafe pages 
>> that only
>> deliver upon a display (reading and comprehension is another matter 
>> entirely!)
>> of the 'conditions' of entry.
>
> It is possible, though a tad trickier than simply slapping pages onto 
> a web
> server*. It may not be possible under some third party hosting 
> contexts, and
> the details would differ from host to host depending on what the 
> backend is.
> In practice, not really an option for the mug punter and his website.

True, but do mug punters need such a device? And if so, why are they 
still then mug punters? If it is vital that material is only delivered 
AFTER clicking through a consent form, then surely that data warrants 
some 'protection'?

The process doesn't need  javascript, or cookies, or Flash (though I 
agree that each of these presents a solution). All it takes is 
something as simple as a .htaccess file, with usernames and passwords 
that can even be placed in the click-through button as an image file 
(I've done this, and it works - and is simple). OR if the material is 
served through a db, then equally simpler methods are available.
>
> Is protection against deep linking therefore only available to those 
> with
> deep pockets, and not as a general principle?

In any event, and getting back to the topic - expecting a linear 
progression through a series of freely-accessible static web pages is a 
big ask, IMHO. Technology aside, the existing structure of much of the 
web is not well suited to such an activity. Not that legal judges will 
see it that way, though...

iT