RE: [deepLinking-25] What to say in defense of principle that deep linking is not an illegal act?

> If a person breaks into your house and steals your jewelry,
> is it theft when they entered through an unlocked door?

I think the analogy is more like "if you give a person your jewelry, and
they take it, is that theft?"

> You are influencing social policy.   Otherwise, you would not
> have to comment at all because the mechanisms are already in place.

Well, personally I would try to be agnostic to the politics end of it,
even if the statements were meant to influence political decision
making.  The way I see it, the problem and solution are more general:

Problem: a few people, including media and possibly political
decision-makers, have become confused about some very basic principles.

Solution:  Reiterate the principles.

1) A URL is given to a page so that people can hyperlink globally and
directly to it.
2) This is the only purpose of a URL.  "Deep Linking" is the *only* kind
of linking.
3) If someone does not want a page to be linked globally or directly,
that is fine.  Nobody forces them to give the page a URL.
4) By design and in practice, assigning a URL to a web page is a
contract with the world which says "please hyperlink to me".
5) This contract can be revoked at any time by a page owner.  If the
page owner wishes to opt out of deep linking, he can simply un-assign
the URL.  Nobody is forcing the page owner to perpetually expose their
page publicly.
6) If a person wishes to provide content in a manner that does not
involve direct and global linking, there are plenty of options available
besides URLs.

Received on Thursday, 25 July 2002 16:42:35 UTC