Danish Court Rules Deep Linking Illegal 382
Jstein writes "In a court ruling today Friday, the court in Copenhagen, Denmark ruled in favor of the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association against the online news aggregator Newsbooster. Thereby deep linking has been ruled illegal for the first time." Currently the story is
only in Danish (from Computerworld Denmark, Online).
Update: 07/05 23:15 GMT by T : ttyp writes "Here is a link to an
English language story about the Danish deep linking case."
Deep L:inking Defined (Score:5, Informative)
This lawsuit is pretty deep.
More info (Score:1, Informative)
Texas, and now Denmark (Score:5, Informative)
Temporary ruling only... (Score:5, Informative)
Newsbooster has a press release [newsbooster.com] on the matter.
Re:Deep linking implications (Score:2, Informative)
For more reading... (Score:2, Informative)
deep linking or data mining? (Score:3, Informative)
For instance, we should be able to send a browser to any page 'within' a site, but what about aggregating information or links in a way the designer of the website never intended, or publishing the information in a new media. Is there much difference between data mining a web site and publishing public comments on a site such as /. in dead tree form? I certainly do not know, but it seems to be a relevant question.
There are clearly limits to deep linking. Jakob Nielson gives the example of a quiz [useit.com] on his site. Going to anywhere but the first page of the quiz renders the process meaningless. It is true that in most cases you want as much help as possible to get a user to an 'inner' page, as this appears to one of the greatest impediment to usability, but do we really want people to pull, for example, images or frames from our sites and display them as their own content. As the previous NPR discussion [slashdot.org]illustated, there are times when this will unfairly transfer hosting costs
Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
I was present at the court (yup, I'm a Dane) - and let me clarify the matter:
First of all, this is only the first part of the case, whether Newsbooster should be temporarily prohibited until the case is settled. Todays case wasn't settled by a judge, only a "bailiff" (according to my Danish/English translator :)
Second, the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association weren't concerned about search engines like Google or just a few deep links. Newsbooster did a systematic index and furthermore sold services for update-information whenever your predefined search words matched any news article.
Third, the case is very specific and isn't as much about technical details as it is of legal matter. It was concluded that Newsbooster was in violation of Danish law of marketing ("good ethics", mainly concerning not gaining/harvesting of other companies products and services) and Danish law of intellectual property, since the articles at the Danish newspapers' sites were to be considered as a database, an index. Databases are also covered by the law of intellectual property (as a simple example: A name and an address wouldn't itself be protected by the law, but an index like a phone book would as a whole) - and since Newsbooster copied what would be considered as a database, the ruling was against Newsbooster.
Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association is obligated to present the case in court in less than two weeks. There wouldn't be created a precedent until that case is ruled.
And some personal comments: My hope was that Newsbooster wouldn't be prohibited, but the following meeting at FDIH [www.fdih.dk] (Foreningen for Dansk Internet Handel / The Danish eBusiness Association) mostly concerned techniques like robots.txt, usage of Referer and stuff like that.
I believe it's important to notice that the violation might have nothing to do with links, search engines and other tools, and as such the problem shouldn't be solved with technology.
Re:breakin the law (Score:3, Informative)
Furthermore, since the case is under private prosecution, Computerworld would have to run their own case against
And let me emphasize: We don't have a final ruling yet.
Precisely... (Score:3, Informative)
This is not entirely new. Before this (1996) the Germans were able to raid an address in the Netherlands over the magazine Radikal. Read about it here. [216.239.39.100]
The fact is that anywhere in Europe that absurd laws are passed, the practical effect now is that the law is simultaneously passed everywhere , for all people. This is A Bad Thing.
Re:breakin the law (Score:1, Informative)
It's a preliminary injunction against one company.
Re:Deep L:inking Defined (Score:3, Informative)
Let me just quickly say, scripts like that is the stupidest abuse of referrers I've ever come across. The referrer is a great tool for following the flow of traffic, not to police flow of traffic. The referrer is set in the browser (client side), it is not something that any browser has to use. And it can be easily spoofed or disabled. If 10% of the websites blocked my traffic based on my referrer, I'd just find a browser that let me turn off the referrer. And I'm sure I'm not alone. So by abusing the referrer, it's more than possible for browsers to just stop sending it, and hurt websites that are trying to watch flow of traffic to help the users out.
Re:What exactly is a Deep Link? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Europe has the Database Directive, which grants certain sui generis rights to people who create collections of otherwise uncopyrightable information. These rights are analagous to copyright's restrictions on derivative works, called "extraction" in the database case, and on redistribution, called "re-utilization". These rights last for 15 years.
The UK and Australia simply grant copyrights to these collections.
The US doesn't have anything at all like this -- indeed, it's been explicitly ruled many times in the last decade that the constitution doesn't provide any authority to grant such rights. See Feist v. Rural Telephone Service for the specific phone book case, and ADC v. Hamilton for maps.
A translation..Well sort of......... (Score:1, Informative)
By : Kim Elmose
It is a upset managing director by Newsbooster , Anders Lautrup , there has received the ruling from Copenhagen's court. The judge Michael Kistrup that agrees with Danish Dagblades Forening (DDF) that a injunction agains newsboosters news letter with deep links. The ruling and its premises fills 38 pages.
- I am deeply choked. We lost at all points , however it is certain , that we will appeal to High court , he says.
At the courtmeeting monday the 24. june, Newsbooster themselves hit on that deep links is a integral part of the internet's nature and that the service just sents the readers to the others newspapers articles.
DDF on the otherhand says that Newsbooster steals the work of others. DDF lead two vidner , partly consultant from DDF Holger Rosendal , and president from Berlingske Official Lasse Bolander.
Last-mentioned tells about about a service that , Berlingske Tidende, Politiken and Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten is on their way with - A service that will allow others too scan from their newspapers.
Newsbooster lead only one witness in there argumentation , Anders Lautrup. That surprise several media , that newsboosters did no had call in others witness's like from others Netservices and webcatalogs like Jubii (Jubii.dk).
To that says Anders Lautrup:
- You have too be cautions with having a lot of Witness, however looking back at it now, maybe we should have called in a witness from a search service. He said from Copenhagen's newscourt.
Lawyer: Only first instans settlement
Lawer from Bender.dk - concern with speciality in IT-Court - Per Meier is participant in a meeting with FDIH friday about the case. He repeatedly says that this is a first instant settlement.
He has not seen the premisses for the ruling and can therefore not say whether the ruling is surprising or not.
Hyperlinks is a part of the traditional structure on the internettet , so if the definite settlement too goes agains Newsbooster to, that will presumably get the consequence that several news services will have too reconstruct there shops. So it'll get major importance both legal and convenient , says Per Meier.
Let's Put This Into English-Direct from Copenhagen (Score:2, Informative)
7am.com versus Nando Times (Score:4, Informative)
I consider myself to be one of the pioneers of news aggregation and linking -- having done this on a number of my own sites since 1995.
Back in 1998 I came into conflict with the Nando Times [nando.net] when my 7am.com [7am.com] news site over the use of their headlines and links on the syndicated Java news ticker and news-aggregation pages.
Nando tried to claim that use of its headlines and links to its pages were a breach of copyright and that anyone wishing to do this would have to pay $100/month [com.com] for
the privilege.
I told them to go take a hike and they threatened to sue for breach of copyright. Suffice to say that once they checked with their legal department as to the validity of their claims they decided to back down.
Although they were one of the first news sites on the Web, Nando simply didn't get the concept that links drive traffic and traffic generates ad revenues -- or at least it did when there were advertisers willing to pay for placements.
The stupid thing about this whole situation was that the 7am.com News Ticker became so popular and drove so much traffic to the various sites included on it that if I decided to remove the links to a particular news site I'd often get an email complaining that I *wasn't* linking.
Around the same time I had similar problems with my Aardvark [aardvark.co.nz] site and found myself battling a long list of local news publishers who threatened legal action if I continued to deep link to the stories they were carrying.
As with Nando, these sites eventually worked out that traffic = revenues and withdrew their stupid threats.
I should make it clear that I have a very ethical and honest linking policy [aardvark.co.nz] which I advertise on my sites so that both the linkers and linkees know what I expect and offer. It's a shame that more sites don't do the same so as to avoid confusion and conflict.
I've been deep linking for some seven years, been threatened with law suits over my linking activities by much bigger publishers on no less than six occasions -- but never had to spend a day in court and never backed down.
Some people just take longer to learn that the WWW is *made* from deep links and that to disallow them will effectively destroy the fabric of the web.
Re:Precisely... (Score:3, Informative)
There is nothing that a UK judge can do to stop this, there is no extradition review; this is the problem.
In France, you have to prove that you are innocent when you are accused of something; there is no notion of "innocent until proven guilty" under the French legal system.
The new pan European arrest warrant, and the EEC in general is eroding the notion of jurisdiction. This is terrible because Europeans have completely different notions of justice to each other.
All laws in the EEC are now a sickening hodge podge of the worst legislation of each country. The Lowest Common Denominator if you like.