Deep Linking
Legal experts say that deep linking can violate U.S. and European copyright and trademark laws.
“When someone provides a link without my permission, which grants a user access to a part of my website without going first to my site’s home page, the user may experience something different from what I intended when I established my website,” Bruce Sunstein, an intellectual property law attorney, said.
If the user experiences something different from what you intended when you established your website, you didn’t think very long about the user, now did you? (via Tomalak’s Realm)
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Comments
Um, yes, sometimes you don’t want someone to deep link specifically because you HAVE spent a long time thinking about the user.
As a webhead, I understand that people will link where ever they want. And that’s good - a link means someone found something valuable on your site.
But as an artist, I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about experience design - crafting the site narrative from beginning to end. And it bugs me when someone links into the middle of a {fray} story, instead of the beginning. Stories are an experience with a beginning, middle, and end. I think it’s an insult to the author to not respect that.
Of course, I don’t want the justice or patent systems involved. I’d settle for a little social awareness and netiquette.
Derek on 19 Apr 02
Good points Derek. Linking to the middle of a storey can be an insult to the author, but to say that it’s always an insult is to deny the Web as a research tool. If I want users to only read a short section of an article, and not all of it, why shouldn’t I be able to link to that section? If experience design is your goal, then take control of your website. Granted, it’s not easy to do and so it may not be worth the effort, but a truly well crafted experience closes all loopholes, especially if it’s as simple as a hyperlink.
Joshua on 19 Apr 02
It’s true - I could use javascript or server-side techniques to make sure stories are read in the proper order, but introducting that stuff always introduces other problems, and in the end, I have more faith in humans than computers.
My mantra for the web is “it depends.” I’d never say that anything was always anything. I just wanted to bring up a case where deep linking might be uncool….
Derek on 19 Apr 02
Isn’t the solution, at some point, to trust the audience? And to trust the story? I think that any given Fray story that gets linked, even in the middle, will be compelling enough to induce someone to start at the top, won’t it?
Anil on 19 Apr 02
It’s true that it can complicate things to add a cookie on the front page and then check/redirect on each subsequent page, particularly for a publication with as many stories as the { fray }, but that’s not half so much a hassle, I would think, as enforcing any law that prohibited deep linking.
In my opinion, if one chooses to create art in this medium, then one should develop art that embraces the idiosyncracies of the medium, or at least accept that the medium means no offense. That’s just my opinion, though.
More to the point, I can’t see Sunstein’s assertion holding water, even applied to “real world” standards. What about the common practice of quotations? Must we now present all of the speech/work/book, rather than the particularly stirring or relevant quotation, for fear of it existing out of context?
It’s not that I don’t sympathize - I do - but the idea that any rights have been violated by the practice seems a little silly to me.
Alex on 19 Apr 02
I usually offer a link to what ever the beginning the item is, so to give context, but in a blockquote or other element I will link deep link to point others to what really intrigued me.
Those thinking laws will help have me in fear of taking direct access to scenes on DVDs.
vanderwal on 19 Apr 02
Grrr I’m getting madder and madder at intellectual laws. Open source KNOWLEDGE baby…
Let me link to what I want. Make people accountable for their content…
Aaron Shafovaloff on 19 Apr 02