Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Deep Linking

Author:Jacob Lyles
Posted:8/10/1999; 2:55:45 AM
Topic:Deep Linking
Msg #:9293 (In response to 9277)
Prev/Next:9292 / 9294

I believe that the majority of the pieces written about this have glossed over what actually seemed to have been happening. Here's how I understand it;

1) Jean-Pierre was selling CD-ROMs of Universal Trailers (Big no-no)

2) Jean-Pierre's website contained ...mostly links to movie trailer pages or the clips themselves deep within the Web sites of movie studios, sometimes making the actual source of the trailer unclear. It also links directly to trailers on some popular movie fan sites like Hollywood.com, which has permission from the studios to post trailers.
- NYtimes.com http://www10.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/08/cyber/cyberlaw/06law.html

As I see it, there are 2 types of very separate linkages going on here;

There is [A] what should rightfully be the authoritative definition of "deep linking";

A link bypassing the homepage to some other page on this site. This is linking a la TicketMaster vs. Microsoft. This is what I believe to be the linkages which form the basis of the WWW.

There is also, falling under category [B]

The use of others' content representing it in a manner that it may be construed as your own. This includes links to such resources as audio, video, images, etc. served from ANOTHER server. Also under this category would be framing others' content to represent it as your own. This is tantamount to fraud and is easy picking for copyright violation suits. This is removing content from its intended context.

In my opinion, Microsoft's cowardice blew it big time (Typical). They rolled over and played dead and set a dubious precedent that the links that built the web are illegal.

This case (Jean-Pierre), while portrayed as an important "Cyber Law" case, comes up short without the ingredients for a strong precedent (as did TicketMaster vs. Microsoft) and is, in reality, more a clear case of copyright infringement than anything else.


There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:51:48 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.