yet-more-smeggle

Yet More Smeggle

And Again

Here is an interesting piece on copyright of links (specifically looking at "deep links"). It concludes that with certain well-defined exceptions, no permission is required to link: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/linking/linking/link1.html
Here is the judges opinion on the Ticketmaster v Tickets.com case: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/tickemaster.pdf
And some commentary: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/headlines/content/2000040401.html

Now, as a gesture of good faith, and because it is now rather uninteresting, I've removed the deep link (the one to the article previously about the IRA bank robbery). Ordinary links to the site (as in http://blogireland.ie) remain.

Literary references, and references in general, including telephone numbers, are not protected by copyright, which only protects original works, and not basic facts. So, for instance, you are perfectly at liberty to say "The food at John's Restaurant, Blah Street, Dublin is revolting", (but not "the food at John's Restaurant, Blah Street, Dublin contains dead cats" unless you can prove that it does; that would be libel). You can say "JK Rowling's Harry Potter book is tedious"; you can even provide ISBN numbers, Library of Congress references and so on if you feel like it. (Note that tedious and revolting are subjectice opinions, hence not covered under libel law). Similarly telephone numbers are allowed. This is quite important; if these things were in themselves considered copyright violations (making reference to a copyright work) that would severely impede free speech; if someone said something you didn't like about your copyright work, you could stop them doing so.

The argument in the few cases that have been taken based on basic linking (framing and inline images are a separate issue) has been that where website A which links to website B makes a link to website B, A is reproducing B. This has never been accepted in these cases.

Now, as regards, "my starting it"; if you were offended by the talk about your websites on that message board, I really, truely do apologise; that wasn't my intention and I don't think it was the intention of anyone on the thread. I did take severe exception, however, to your talk of my criminality (if you recall, you essentially accused my of trying to break into your system; in this country, the onus would be on you to prove that this was the case). By the way, don't worry, I'm not actually considering suing for libel; that would be absolutely crazy. And I really don't accept the argument that because you know I have "dangerous knowledge", I was naturally going to use it to attack your website. I talk about that subject a lot because it's a very common mistake made by beginning database programmers; I want to inform people about it. In any case, you are using a mature open-source blogging platform which is presumably not vulnerable.

In this case then, you have linked to my material, even after I understood we had agreed (And my apoligies if I am mistaken here) in private that we would keep away from eachother and our respective sites. I even requested that we remove the idiocy that we had each published but you refused that even though I had shown grace by allready removing what I had written.

I agreed to stop linking to my commentary on your original accusations from a forum; that is all. (You should still have the message; please re-read). I have no intention of letting you call me a criminal and then wiping the slate clean.

As to "Grouper" by the way, although it would be rather difficult to convict someone based on their use of it, it is clearly illegal for use with most files unless the user has broadcast rights for those files; for commercially purchased items has almost certainly do not. Like any P2P software, it is not in itself illegal, a large part of its use is illegal.

By the way, you can, of course, stop people going to your page from a link here. Here's a client-side solution: http://fraser.cc/utilities/Bozo/Bozo.html; apparently a server-side solution for IIS is non-trivial after all, but certainly feasable.