Comments on: The Legal Kerfuffle Over Website Linking

By: MadMolecule

MadMolecule — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:51:48 +0000

I'm a lawyer, though I don't practice in intellectual property, and in law school I took a course in Cyberlaw. Many, many Web sites say, in those legalese-filled "Terms & Conditions" pages that no one reads, that you're only allowed to link to the site's homepage and not to any other pages. Example from NFL.com: "You may link to the home page of the Service without obtaining our permission provided that you do so only through a plain-text link. For any other type of link to the Service, you must obtain our permission." The (rather flimsy, IMO) legal argument they base this on is copyright: They say they own the copyright in each individual URL on the site, and that by putting one of those URLs in the link on your page and posting it, you're copying their URL and thereby infringing their copyright. It's a weak argument and I doubt they'd win in court, but who wants to go to court over something like this?

By: amberae

amberae — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:47:18 +0000

utterly ridiculous. Man, if you don't link to a page these days, that's when you get in trouble.

By: Video Game Dork

Video Game Dork — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:26:50 +0000

This should be titled "The Sheboygan Kerfuffle" ! lol

By: Neatoramawontsendmeapassword

Neatoramawontsendmeapassword — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:47:02 +0000

Don't most websites want people to link to them so they get more traffic? I don't get this.

By: Gail Pink

Gail Pink — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:07:32 +0000

Yawn City.

By: Christophe

Christophe — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:15:23 +0000

if Neatorama is hyperlinked on a nazi/porn website, does it make it nazi/porn?
It's a waste of taxpayers money.

By: Amish Warlord

Amish Warlord — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:36:40 +0000

http://www.sheboyganpolice.com/

By: darelparker

darelparker — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:44:22 +0000

The article says that after she hired an attorney, the city withdrew its demand.

Nevertheless, the fact that anyone in any government agency, be it federal, state, or municipal, believes that they have the authority to issue such a demand speaks volumes about how little these people understand the Internet or for that matter, the Bill of Rights.

The city attorney could have spent five minutes with Google and determined that there was absolutely nothing wrong or illegal about the link. Instead, the city wasted time and resources, ultimately launching a police investigation against this woman. Truly sad.

Every city employee who took part in this act of shameless ignorance should issue a formal apology.

And although many may consider it frivolous, I would really like to see her lawsuit move forward, and have the the city and the police department held publicly accountable for their actions.

Whether people realize it or not, this sort of poor judgment has far reaching implications, not the least of which is our right to free speech. If the very people responsible for protecting us do not understand our rights, then how can they be trusted to defend them?

By: Jill

Jill — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:00:28 +0000

Where's the link to the police website? That's what I want to see in every story about this.

By: Evil Pundit

Evil Pundit — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:33:26 +0000

Clearly this is a harrassment tactic, with no legal or ethical basis.

By: Edward

Edward — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:20:07 +0000

I was an expert witness in a similar case, so it is not a first. We prevailed, BTW.

In essence, I argued that posting a website is the equivalent of opening a shop on Main Street. If you do not want everybody to come in, you need to give keys to the ones that you do want. Unless you do, you cannot prevent someone from sending her friends to your place of business.

By: Miss Cellania

Miss Cellania — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:36:57 +0000

On the one hand, why have a website if you don't want anyone to know about it? And why should a government agency have a "secret" but accessible website?

If it's an internal site, it can be passsword-protected. Otherwise, its silly to hide it.

By: CheeseDuck

CheeseDuck — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:31:53 +0000

What? It's a public website. It's not like a personal page, like a MySpace or Facebook.