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Hyperlinking and Legal rights/duties
Hi,
A bit off topic, but I was wondering if someone could advise me or share some reference links to know and understand how much it's perfectly legal to have an hyperlink to a 3rd party online article.
I understand that content and images can be under copyright, but what about linking to them? Can someone really forbid this?
Thanks for your thoughts
Comments
Nah, I don't think is a problem o_O
In the sense that... if the link is public, then you can share it, (and probably Google and other search engines have links to it).
in practice they can't really stop you but it's more of a "our tos covers everything or legal will get mad" type of thing
That's exactly my "sad" point (in that beautiful world :-) ): If that 3rd party is big enough, they can threat you with legal perspective while having no real right.
I'm still hoping and looking for legal reference....
Which legal system are you talking about? And for which do you want legal reference? Because there are quite many different legal systems on this little planet.
I used to prevent a specific website from linking to one of my old websites because the users it brought were of the unsavory kind and wasted a lot of my time and money.
I didn't bother going the legal route (since I didn't think there was one and because of the nature of the website it didn't matter), .htaccess redirect did the trick!
You are so right :-)
I grew up, and I am not anymore a young guy, believing that hyperlink was one of the "corner stone" of internet. I am "discovering" that some have an opposite idea.
What about the other way around?
What do you mean?
;~) Sometimes I believe I should work on my english skills!!
Would you accept to be forbidden to add a link (and link only) from your own blog (for example) to some online vps tutorial, or one article in your national online newspaper, or anything else?
Got this on college, in The Netherlands it's perfectly fine to quote a small piece of the article and then linking to it so your viewers will read the whole article at the source.
Source should also be visible in the end of your article.
Still, when you copy the whole article and they get mad, they still can't really hurt you if you just remove it right away.
Nobody can prevent you from linking to a website unless it is a non-public website and you signed a contract (NDA) stating you would not reveal it.
Well, if it's a non-public website, it shouldn't be available on the public internet to being with...
I know of a few websites that are accessible via the internet but I can get in legal trouble by telling people about them. Some are sites in development where I signed an NDA to assist with, others are sites that are for internal use by certain companies. Most of them are only IP addresses but are still websites none-the-less.
I believe the poster is either thinking about linking to downloadable content wink wink or something along the lines of how folks will link to an article on another site.
I'm quickly running out of time so you get my answers to the second one since I went looking for references.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking
http://www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law/
What I tell my clients is to provide two links, one to the front page of the site you're linking to and another to the article being referenced.
For example: Dr. Mike said Akismet sucks.
(Yes, I know I need my content back.)
That is a perfect summary.
It is the same as saying that you can quote anyone in the world, except those with whom you have signed a NDA agreement (or similar) stating you will not share the information they tell you.
This use to apply to photography, but now restrictive countries (and even the UK) are messing with a lot of gray areas in this field. Basically, you can photograph something unless you can't - Don't ever photograph something you can't!
Yes, exactly. And not only in Netherland I believe. It's the same as quoting part of a science article from books, etc.. for thesis and other science research. It's allowed as long you properly state source.
side note. When I quote someone from lets say LEB at WHT (and opposite) I always mention nick/name of quoted person with direct link to the thread.
These companies are doing it wrong then. Sites that are not meant for the public should, at the very least, be password protected, unless the mere existence of the site is confidential, in which case it should be served only on the local network (with VPN access to the local network for those who aren't directly connected to it, but still need access).
Waaa, waaa! I don't like you seeing my public site! I'm going to sue you!
It's so sad how pathetic humans act. It's as bad as people suing restaurants for serving hot coffee just because it hurts their mouth when they are dumb enough to drink it without thinking.
The head admin of Librarything has comments a couple of times that he's gotten DMCA requests for listing books on their site.
The same info Amazon or any other online book store would have.
DMCA is gay ¬¬
The company websites I am talking about are password protected but just because they are password protected doesn't mean I am allowed to post them publicly. The reason for a lot of the websites are for those employees/clients who cannot access the corporate VPN (i.e. help desk, webmail, etc...).
Thanks all for your input
As you may not know, here in Thailand, exchanging political ideas may sometimes be dangerous. Some organizations are just trying to hide their affiliation behind fake internet rules.
Happily, proper deep-linking any publicly available source is still and will probably ever be allowed.