More here on the Deep Linking Controversy. Links to my earlier comments on this legal quagmire, or use the Calendar to jump to Aug 4th, July 16 or 10.
The Link Controversy Page provides an overview of the legal problems of using hyperlinks, inline images and frames on the WWW, covering problems in the area of copyright, trademark, trespass law as well as unfair competition law. The links are grouped using the national flag of the nation whose language is being used. The organizer of this wants to be informed of any articles missing from his directory.
[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE Another article on deep linking, another heavy sigh. Somebody call a timeout. And motion for Congress to send some eager beaver who likes to create new laws. Say, Berman, get over here. You want to introduce some Internet legislation? Okay, here's what you do. Introduce a bill that says the law doesn't recognize any cause of action based on someone linking to another person's site (after all that's what the Web was created to allow). But this law isn't there to protect people from their own stupidity, so if people want to use technical means to frustrate deep linking then they're allowed to do that. Now that would be a law that makes sense. So what are the odds of that getting passed? UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney]
Ernie's first link, to British Register, lets us know that Europe has lots of law suits by News Media against search engines and news aggregators for linking to them. Apparently these media do not want people finding out about their stories thanks to search engines and links based on the content of what they are doing, and they claim that deep links constitute violation of copyright. I could understand the copyright complaint if someone reprinted their material and made it look like the reprinting person was the writer.
News Club offers a search engine by news category, in which hits go directly to the articles of 100 different news sources. The user receives the page directly from the publisher's server, with everything that is on the publisher's site, including contents, links, advertising. But one of the publishers is suing News Club for copyright infringement. They do not want search engines like this giving consumers access to their news paper. Under German copyright law, the owners of content do have the right to block access by other people. What I do not understand is why the publishers put their stuff on the Internet if they do not want people looking at it.
Germany Legislators are seeking to adjust their copyright law to legalize the kind of access that is provided by Search Engines, but it is not clear whether other kinds of deep linking could be argued is something German sites may argue is a copyright that other people are violating. German copyright law is also murky on the legality of someone viewing something on the Internet. The act of copying it from the web site to our browser you see is something that the German Legislature never considered before. There are meta tags on the publisher's web site declaring that they want to be found by search engines, so it sounds like the newspaper is using software in which they have no idea what their software is doing.
In 2000, News Club took measures to remove this publisher from their software, so no one using their search engine would find them through News Club, after they got a cease and desist order, but the law suit for copyright infringement is still going forwards.
8:53:48 PM 
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