Texas and Austrailia Court Ruling about Linking

[zero5854]

Wikipedia defines Web as a collection of documents and resources linked by hyperlinks and URLs. A user views Web pages using a browser and navigates between them using hyperlinks.

When you create a website on the internet in pubic domain, you want visitors to come and explore your site. If they enjoy your content, they may write about it on their own sites and link to your webpages.

That's how things work. If you don't want the internet crowd to discover your "secret" content, either use password protected pages or don't upload stuff on the web at all.

But two recent court rulings, one in the US and other one in Australia, could have some impact on the nature of internet and the way we link to content stored on other web-servers.

In both the cases, judges have agreed that direct linking to copyright content (like music or webcasts) posted elsewhere online without permission can be illegal. Say you find some video or MP3 files on a website, you cannot link to that file directly as per the ruling.

Is this ruling evil and the judges dumb to take such a decision ? Well, if we think from the content owner's perspective, he has the right reasons to file a complaint.

If people deep-link to your media files, your page-views reduce and there's significant loss of advertising revenue as well because people will get your content even without paying a visiting to your site. And you still have to pay the bandwidth bills when people directly download content off your web servers. So the court ruling sounds pretty reasonable but am sure a majority of influential minds won't agree here.

Infact, a similar issue happened with Digg podcasting as well when they allowed people to watch videos or listen to podcasts without even leaving the Digg website as they were deep-linking to the MP3 and MOV files of video bloggers and podcasters. Maybe some content owners didn't like the idea and so Digg slightly changed their linking policy - now podcasters can decide whether Digg should deep-link to their content or not.

Source:Directly Linking to Copyrighted Files On the Web Is Now Illegal - Weird but True at Digital Inspiration Technology Guide
Edit:
BUMP

So basically so far Texas and Audstrailia currently have somewhat a law on copyright infringement about "directly" linking to Webcast since the owner objected. SO...what does this mean? This means that there will probably be a chain reaction of states that will actually make laws that will make linking to legal AND illegal software, games, clips, movies, music, etc ILLEGAL!

WOW watch out everyone because the internet is going to be losing some freedoms real soon!

So much for the "free Speech" law!

[Derek]

So we can't link like to imeem songs??

[zero5854]

they didnt make any laws for other states YET.....but I think this may start a trend of bad events that will lead to that...so maybe yea.

[Joker Boy]

I'm in texas and I don't give a damn, I'll link to what I want lol

Ps. How will they know that the content is in texas?

[zero5854]

Well actually if you click the "USA" link in the post youll see so far the're only saying it for people who say they dont want their work posted. I think these judges are doing it to help them get elected for their next term.

[YamiKaitou]

Something funny that I just realized, x10's host is located in Texas. Now, x10 has a definite legal reason why people can't link to copyrighted material on the sites they host, not saying they didn't before.

[zero5854]

well its still NOT against the law to link to a legal file host. Its illegal for other to use it if they dont own the software, music, etc

[lambada]

Personally, I think that once the copyright owner has posted it on the internet and if they haven't taken adequate measures to stop it from being 'deeplinked' then they effectively allow it to be linked to in any way shape or form.

If you ask me this is another way that governments are trying to regulate the internet and hence go against everything the internet (In my opinion) stands for.

[cointoss]

In America, Judges are NOT elected. Once a Judge has been appointed, he's there for life.

And I can sympathize with companies that wouldn't mind you linking to them, just not directly to their files/download links/etc. Most everyone who creates a website hopes to one day profit from it. Besides, when we create a page we hope somebody will see it.