[Air-l] Deep Linking

Jennifer Stromer-Galley jstromer at asc.upenn.edu
Fri Feb 15 13:40:16 PST 2002


I wasn't aware that deep linking might leave one legally vulnerable. (and
thanks for the description, John)

It's hard for me to imagine how deep linking could be illegal. Take the case
of Ticketmaster, as Amanda suggested. It sounds like Ticketmaster was able
to successfully sue someone who found a way to get to internal pages,
bypassing the advertisements. That would be like suing Tevo for allowing
people to watch TV and skip the advertisements. 

I just don't see how it could be illegal to enable people to link from, say,
my website to another website, even if it bypasses the top level pages. I
could see a problem if I were somehow able to bypass a "members-only" or
"private" area of the website, enabling people who weren't members to access
that private or exclusive information. But, for public information,
including advertisements, I don't follow the logic that it would be illegal
to link deeply into a site. Perhaps, I'm using the wrong metaphor (i.e.
Tevo). But, if I am, than what's a better one?

~Jenny




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