I saw this on friday and couldn’t belive my eyes, and I have been using the time since I saw the news about the Danish Court decision to make a pre-luminary injunction against the search engine Newsbooster.com for the use of direct linking to try to find words of how stupid I think the whole thing is.
I am afraid I need to resort to using bad language to state how it makes me feel.
Its fucking stupid. Its ignorant, it screams of ignorance to how the web really works. And it makes me feel like telling the danish newspapers behind the lawsuit to get off the fucking web, because obviously they do not want to be a part of it.
The whole web is based on links. Or deep links that they prefer to call them. I am right there with Dave Winer when he calls “deep linking” an oxymoron. You only have one type of linking on the web – and that is linking directly to web pages.
What makes the court decision even more ridiculous is that there exists a number of ways to make sure that search engines does not index your content (after all this was a case against a search engines actually doing its job indexing web pages), there also exists ways of redirecting visitors coming from external sites to your own homepage if you are allergic to “deep links”:
I really hope this doesn’t catch on.
[Via Dave Winer]
I agree, pretty dumb. It not only shows how ignorant that particular danish newspaper is but also how ignorant the courts are.
Its a part of a trend that I think we need to undo. DMCA has done a lot of damage in the US, and it seems like we are getting the same kind of thought-system implemented in Europe now too.
To me it seems like a struggle over information,a struggle that has been going on since before Gutenberg and continues now with new technologies becoming available to the masses. As Gutenberg revolutionized access to information in his age, the internet and its technologies has revolutionized access to information in our age. And everytime something like that happens we see a struggle from those that used to have control over the information that is made available.
Hey, I know I am ranting, just let me state that I do not think that access to information equals the right to take away the creators ownership to their creations. (Since I mentioned the DMCA and since it might look like a defence of people thinking that stealing is ok).
However, I think that the danish newspapers should look at the linking to their content as free publisity and marketing. And I think the record companies and media giants should open their eyes and see the oportunities that this new technology has given them, instead of painting the devil on the wall and trying to kill the oportunity off. (As they tried with the Digital Audio Tapes, the VCR, and audio tapes and basically all other technology that could be presived to be bad for them when being as paranoid that they have been).
Well, thats what you get for your quarter today ;-)
Yea, that ‘deep linking’ stuff is pretty serious. I think ‘deep linking’ should be outlawed all over. I mean, I would hate for someone to ‘deep link’ to a page on my website. That’s a serious offense in my book. Dude, all web designers should be put in jail – for life. Just you try ‘deep linking’ in solitary confinement. HA!
Just kidding. But you knew that, right? :)
JD … completely agree with you. This is fucking insane. What exactly do the courts and this new paper think they are going to achieve by this. By getting some old fart of a judge (who clearly thinks the web is just full of spotty pre-pubescent perverts and techo geeks) to believe they’re side of the story all they’ve done is harm them selves.
But surely this will just backfire on them. They’re revenu is based on advertsing so if nobody can link to their site’s content how do they think people are going to find content on it ????
Following this total piece of morribund shite (as that is clearly all this judge has for brains) is it now illegal in Denmark to prepare a report/paper/thessis/essay/article/book etc.. and quote any other source that you do not have express permission to use. Is that not linking ?
Total W**K is all I can say.
Wow. It looks like Ticketmaster went after Microsoft in 1997 in a case involving ‘deep linking’ here in the U.S.
Microsoft was linking to pages deep within Ticketmaster.com, and Ticketmaster argued that Microsoft’s practices devalued Ticketmaster’s site by bypassing its homepage.
The case was settled in 1999. Microsoft agreed not to provide any deep links, but rather link to ticketmaster.com’s homepage. Ticketmaster now only allows certain websites (Yahoo, Knight-Ridder) to deep link, but only after an agreement.
Check it out here: http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000-all/kubiszyn-2000-05b-all.html
Or here: http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/1999/08/12/deep_links/
Oh No! http://www.salon.com has some illegal links on that page. Be vewey vewey cawefull. :)