Newspaper hacked off by deep linking

Legal heavies from the Dallas Morning News are demanding that a website removes so-called deep links to its stories.

Self-confessed muckraker Avi Adelman, who runs BarkingDogs.org, a "proactive" news website that unearths dodgy political dealings in Texas, has been ordered to remove the links which enable users to access content while bypassing a site's home page.

However, Adelman claims that the newspaper is just trying to protect its advertising revenue.

At issue is an article that Adelman wrote on 14 February which linked directly to two Morning News articles.

The Dallas paper said that the links "can result in a viewer not understanding that the content is on our client's site" and, more importantly, "allows the viewer to avoid the advertising on the home page".

It is the first time that this bone of contention between the rights of copyright holders and the public has appeared, after deep linking was declared legal by a federal judge two years ago.

The Danish Newspaper Publishers' Association recently asked a court to ban Newsbooster, a website that links to news articles, from deep linking to Danish newspaper stories.

But Adelman is not letting the demand for a ban on deep linking get him down.

Besides making it his front page story this week, he has also printed a picture of recently deceased Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace with the comment: "Before deep linking there was Linda."

See also:

Deep-linking in deep trouble

Publishers take legal action under US Copyright Act  17 May 2002

Deep linking illegal under EU law

UK online recruiter StepStone has obtained an injunction under European Union copyright and database law to prevent a German rival from having deep hypertext links to its site.  26 Jan 2001

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