Deep Linking

(Get your minds out of the gutter.)

Not sure how I feel about this court ruling out of Texas. I guess I\’d need to see the site in question to comment specifically. If he were linking to an audio file without explanation, or worse, passing the file off as his own, then I think the plantiff has a real leg to stand on. I suspect that loss of ad revenue may be enough of a leg just on its own.

Still, I\’m torn. I\’m wary of handing a blank check of sorts to anyone with enough money to litigate, which I fear would cut down on the collaborative power of the internet. And yet at the same time we here at SP use a technology here to prevent other sites from linking directly to our images, for example, and we have no concerns about ad revenue or any of that – we\’d just appreciate a more direct citation. So I can understand the concern over deep linking. I just think this might be a bit of a dangerous precedent.