More than enough to keep the courts busy.
These cases seem to come from all over, but not necessarily in all shapes and
sizes. Quite the opposite, they seem to be clones of each other. In Denmark, the
Newspaper Publishing Association is requesting that the court restrain a news
service, NewsBooster, from deep linking to articles in the papers affiliated with
the association. Articles on the case are available here,
and here. In Texas,
the Dallas Morning News is playing out the same scenario against what is more
or less a muckraker with a web site. More details are available here,
here, and here.
And the Rodale Press, well known for numerous health related publications, is
pressing charges against a couple of brothers with a web-site, running enthusiasts,
for deep linking to one of its sites. Want more? Try here,
and here.
That's a lot of links for an issue that seems to repeat itself without much variation. Why read them? Of course nobody is required to do so, but frankly, they're quite interesting for one basic reason. Though the whole issue seems simplistic, with the good guys on white horses and the bad guys on black, the linked articles give a broader perspective, if for no other reason than that the bad guys have some good things to say. It's also worth noting that there appear to be simpler, not to mention more polite, ways of getting people to view your main page, and quite a bit of reader opinion on the matter - some of it predictable, some provocative.
What may not be the most interesting, but certainly the most fun, of this spate of cases is from the end of 2001. I'll quote from the already linked-to article:
In a letter to a consultant in Britain who runs a personal website that has not been especially nice to KPMG, the company said it had discovered a link on his site to www.kpmg.com, and that the website owner, Chris Raettig, should "please be aware such links require that a formal Agreement exist between our two parties, as mandated by our organization's Web Link Policy."
That letter, and Raettig's response, are available on Raettig's web site. Raettig wrote:
my own organisation's web link policy requires no
such formal agreement.
But of course things didn't stop there. People who read Raettig's web journal decided to get in on the fun, and many (but not me) linked to the KPMG site. It's definitely a fitting sort of web punishment.
Go to: How Deep is My Linking?