Links

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

=======================

"Deep linking" lawsuits threaten everything that makes the Web work
right.

Scott Rosenberg 
Salon.com


Links are the Web's essence and its genius. Every public Web page's
URL, its address, is available to all; we can point any Web page to
any other. That's why the Web keeps growing -- and everyone from
Yahoo to you can slice new paths through its vastness and recombine
its pieces in new ways.

In 1999 this is almost too obvious to restate in intelligent company,
right?

That isn't stopping a still small but growing list of companies from
contending that certain kinds of links are actually illegal. Go ahead
and link to our sites, they're saying, but only if you link the way
we tell you to. Otherwise, you'll hear from our lawyers.

Ticketmaster started all this back in 1997. Miffed after Microsoft's
Sidewalk sites started linking directly to its ticket sales pages
rather than to its home page or "front door," the ticketing giant --
which had a deal with Sidewalk competitor CitySearch -- sued
Microsoft. (The companies settled in February.) Since then,
Ticketmaster merged its online operations with CitySearch, and that
company swallowed up Microsoft's city guide.

This new, engorged Ticketmaster is now at it again: It has sued
Tickets.com, complaining that the rival firm is bypassing its home
page and linking directly to "inside" pages. (The suit also alleges
that Tickets.com stole Ticketmaster content and provided inaccurate
information on the availability of Ticketmaster tickets.)

In a similar case, Universal Studios recently sent its lawyers after
the proprietor of a site called Movie-List, which compiles links to
online movie trailers, demanding that he stop linking to the movie
previews the studio posts on its own sites. The operator of the site
put up a page compiling his correspondence with Universal's lawyers
and his own Internet service provider -- which, among other things,
complained to him that he was not a "registered search engine,"
whatever that is. 

The practice that bugs Ticketmaster and Universal has become known
-- in what sounds like some sort of homage to both Watergate and the
porn industry -- as "deep linking." That term carries some sinister
overtones, but in truth "deep linking" comes naturally on the Web:
I've already done it several times in this story, linking "deep"
into other sites' content and file structure. That serves you, the
reader, a lot better than telling you to go to Wired News or the New
York Times' home pages and search for "Ticketmaster AND lawsuits" to
find the articles I'm referring to. I did that work for you already;
you just have to follow my "deep link."

Ticketmaster argues that since it sells ads on its home page, "deep
links" hurt its business by bypassing those ads -- so it maintains
that if you want to "deep link" to its site, you have to negotiate a
deal with it first. According to Ticketmaster, I guess, this link is
illegal: If I want to send you to where you can buy tickets to a Tom
Petty concert next weekend, I'd better do it Ticketmaster's way, or
not at all.

Of course, there are ads on that Tom Petty ticket page, too. And
you'd think that Ticketmaster -- which, after all, is in the
business of selling tickets -- would welcome the additional Web
traffic and business generated by "deep linkers," whoever they might
be. Similarly, Universal posts trailers to its movies on the Web
because, presumably, it wants as many people as possible to see them.
If Movie-List sends more people its way, why complain? 

Web site operators who don't want anyone to link to them -- or who
want to limit visitors to some preselected group -- always have the
option of building a gate in front of their pages, an authentication
routine that checks to make sure that the visitor is a registered
user. But outside of sites that charge subscription fees for access,
such schemes are rare on the Web, for good reason: From the early
days of HotWired -- which originally required visitors to register
for access -- to the present, Web sites have learned the hard way
that users tend to go away when they hit any kind of barrier. And the
Web business remains a numbers game, so why hobble yourself? 

The most successful companies online understand that the more people
who link to you, the better. Amazon.com's associates program, which
lets any Web site that points visitors to Amazon's bookstore collect
a small slice of the sale, is the embodiment of this principle -- but
you don't need to sign up with anyone or get permission to link
"deep" to any page in Amazon's catalog you choose.

Objectors to "deep linking," like Ticketmaster and Universal, want
to have their Web businesses both ways: They put their services and
content out on the public Web to attract users, but they also expect
to be able to control every facet of how those users access their
services and content. They want their pages to be openly available
to individual visitors but not to other sites -- a division rendered
nearly impossible by the very technical structure of the Web.

Of course, what software can't do, maybe the courts can accomplish.
Right now there is no legal precedent to establish either the "right
to link" or, alternately, a Web site's right to prohibit links. Sooner
or later, though, one of these disputes will wind up in court.

I'd like to think that would be a good thing, and that the legal
system would understand and honor the Web's essential openness, while
leaving room for the law to crack down on truly parasitical behavior
(like one site's "framing" another's content with its own ads). But
it's just as likely that we'll end up with a decision that extends
special privileges to some kinds of commercial Web sites and declares
certain kinds of linking to be verboten.

If that happens, the consequences could be grim. As it is, we've
only barely scratched the surface of the new kinds of communication
that the Web might enable. Linking today remains primitive; we need
new elaborations of the Web's interface and underlying protocols that
allow, for instance, links to contain more information -- so that
they become less like unmarked doorways and more like well-mapped
paths. 

But if we are headed for a climate in which every Web author needs to
check with every link target before putting up a page, then forget
such innovation; forget new services and search sites, forget the
continued growth of Web use. Instead, consider the morass of
confusion we will enter: If "deep linking" becomes regulated or
illegal, who do the rules apply to? All Web sites or just "big
commercial" Web sites? Who would draw that line? What about
individual users -- is "deep bookmarking" to become a problem too?
How about passing around a "deep link" on a mailing list? 

Let's pray for some deep sanity to prevail here, or we will find
ourselves in deep, uh, trouble.

Copyright c 1999 Salon.com






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