Re: LAW: Legality of deep linking to Web sites

From: Chuck Kuecker (
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 20:52:20 MST

At 01:47 PM 1/18/01 -0800, you wrote:
> >
> > What if the magazine sent you a Cease and Desist letter, and told
> > you that it did not permitting linking to its content (which is
> > freely open to the public), only to its main page?
>This situation seems to me to be very simply and obviously
>covered by the First Amendment. When you link to someone else,
>you are publishing that link. The linkee has no right to
>control how you link in your documents that you publish.
>Then again, I'm not a lawyer. But I have received such orders
>to remove a link to someone else's content in the past. I
>explained that if they wanted to break the link, they could do
>so by removing their content, but that they had no right to
>alter my documents that I was publishing myself. No one has
>ever sued me over this.
>Eric Forste <>

How is "publishing" a link on one webpage any different than recommending a
book on one's webpage? You have not copied the link target's content, only
given a short cut for others to see what is publicly available anyway.

To infringe copyright, you need to actually copy the material in question
for your own use. If "publishing" a link is infringement, every search
engine out there is illegal.

Chuck Kuecker
