Re: URIs, deep linking, framing, adapting and related concerns

Nick Gall
Phone: +1.781.608.5871
Twitter: ironick
AOL IM: Nicholas Gall
Yahoo IM: nick_gall_1117
MSN IM: (same as email)
Google Talk: (same as email)
Email: nick.gall AT-SIGN gmail DOT com
Weblog: http://ironick.typepad.com/ironick/


On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>wrote:

> ...This seems very similar to your example #1 of image
> inclusion. If so a court may very well one day find <img> links to
> unlicensed material to be infringing.
>

The US Ninth Circuit  has already decided the issue of inline linking: "While
in-line linking and framing may cause some computer users to believe they
are viewing a single Google webpage, the Copyright Act...does not protect a
copyright holder against [such] acts..." See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking#Copyright_law_issues_that_inline_linking_raises
for
more details.

I'm not sure the other circuits or SCOTUS will agree with the ruling, but it
is out there.

Wikipedia has some great resources collected around the issues of deep
linking and inline linking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_hyperlinking_and_framing

Speaking as a former intellectual property litigator, I'd say that when you
strip away all the technological details, the fundamental issue comes down
to "fair use". So if the W3C, or anyone else, wants to take a position of
the copyright aspects of various kinds of hyperlinking (whether inline or
not), it should be couched in the four factor framework of US fair use law.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use .

-- Nick