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Belo tells BD - Deep six the deep links
Dog bites Belo
Public Citizen providing pro bono services to BD;
replies to Belo’s Cease & Desistletter
Related links - click here
May 25: The Deep Links controversy - May it rest in peace
May 1, 2002
In an attempt to muzzle the BarkingDogs and confuse visitors to Belo’s recently redesigned websites even more than they already are, Belo - the parent company of the Dallas Morning News and WFAA TV - has delivered a Cease & Desist letter to BD, demanding that he not allow users of BarkingDogs to deep link to the Belo website without prior written permission.
Belo’s attornies justified this demand in two words - advertising revenue.
Deep linking, as the name implies,is the practice of linking to a page deep inside another Web site, bypassing its home page.
According to WiredNews -
Deep links, also called hyperlinks, typically bypass the front page of a website. The
problem, many webmasters say, is that deep linking allows viewers to skip over the prime-area advertising that is typically placed on a website’s start page.
And, in the worst-case scenario, viewers may not even realize they’ve been whisked off to another page.
BD provided links about the Go Lounge fire in February directly to the News’ and WFAA’s articles about that fire. Copies of this article were included in the package sent with the cease and desist demand letter, all of which was dated April 24, 2002.
BD was also chastised for including a map and photo from the Belo site about the fire,
even though there was a proper credit, on his site. Those images have since been removed.
BD’s Terms of Use Policy allows other sites to deep link to this site - click here for the complete text.
Let loose the legal mumbley gook
According to the letter from Belo’s attorney at Jenkens
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Belo’s Terms of Service
policy re linking
Links to, and frames of, the Site. If you operate a Web site and wish to link to this Site, you
may link only to the home page of the Site and not to any other page or subdomain of us.
You may not frame or utilize framing
techniques that involve any Marks, copyrighted material or other proprietary information (including images, text, page layout, or form) of any portion of the Site or suggest any relationship between our Site and you without our express written consent.
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The Fort-Worth Star Telegram Policy
Links. We may provide links from our site as a convenience to our visitors. We have no control over
linked sites and make no representations about any content or material available at these locations. Links
are not intended to imply sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement. If you believe that we have provided a link to a site that contains infringing or illegal content or which makes available cracker tools or other circumvention devices, we ask that you notify us so that we may evaluate whether (in our sole discretion) to disable it.
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& Gilchrist, Kevin Gray -
As you may know, the Belo Content (various news articles) is protected by copyright laws of the United States. In order to ensure that its
rights are protected, Belo routinely monitors the use of its content and contacts users accordingly to request that they cease and desist their unauthorized use of such content.
Accordingly, we must request that you cease and desist from any unauthorized use of the Belo Content, including without limitation,
allowing users of BarkingDogs.org to deep link directly to the Belo Content or from posting, without prior written permission, any other Belo Content on BarkingDogs.org.
Any proper links to the Belo Content should be directly hyperlinked to The Dallas Morning News homepage located at www.dallasnews.com.
The letter asks for all active links to be redirected to the News’ front page and that a written reply be submitted no later than May 15, 2002. No one from Belo attempted to
contact BD before this letter was sent.
After BD queried the Belo attorney about the letter, he received this reply -
Regarding your point of clarification, we are not demanding that you do not provide links from your site to the Dallas Morning News site,
or any other site for that matter.
We are requesting that you do not “deep” link (i.e., provide a link to any other page in the site but the home page (www.dallasnews.com) <http://www.dallasnews.com)>).
By providing any direct links to content within the site, you allow visitors to avoid the homepage, which:
- can result in a viewer not understanding that the content is on our client's site; and
- allows the viewer to avoid the advertising, etc., on the homepage (which places our client in a bad position with respect to its advertisers, etc.).
Therefore, while we encourage links to the Dallas Morning News site, we must request that they all go to the homepage of the site, and not
directly to any interior content.
If needed, you can provide with your link info on how to find the specific article of interest once they are on the homepage.
We trust that this clarifies our position. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this matter.
As of this writing, no other local webmasters have been sent a similar letter. One wrote to BD and asked -
You should call him and ask if they are requiring the same restrictions from The Drudge Report or other websites that refer
readers to articles in other publications.
Allen Gwinn, publisher of Dallas.org, told BD -
The Dallas Morning News' website can be convoluted and confusing. I don't blame people for wanting to bypass as much of it as possible. In
addition, they plaster you with annoying ads regardless of the page you visit. Perhaps the editors have nothing better to do but pick on Barkingdogs.org.
Another neighborhood leader commented -
As hard as it is to find anything on the News’ website now (since the redesign last month), they should be thanking you for helping people
read stories on their site.
Deep linking is a deep mess
In the past, deep linking has been associated with commercial uses of company websites by outsiders.
[Warning - this section of the story uses deep links]
- In November, 1999, eBay blocked access to its computers from AuctionWatch.com, a company featuring a Web site search engine that finds
items on about 300 other auction websites (San Jose Business Journal).
- TicketMaster.com accused Tickets.com of deep linking and claimed that it was losing advertising revenue. (ComputerWorld).
- Ditto.com (formerly Arriba Soft) was sued by a professional photographer who discovered that after his site had been indexed, the images were thumbnailed in
Ditto.com’s search engine.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that image search engines can use thumbnails of images so long as they link directly to the main page of the
website, not deep link to the full sized image nor frame the deep linked image. There is no requirement imposed by this decision that a normal link to the front
page of a website can only be used by prior permission in order to avoid legal action (NetCopyrightLaw.com)
In the Ticketmaster case, according to WiredNews, U.S. District Judge Harry Hupp rulled that websites can legally provide links to any pages on any other sites.
The judge wrote in his opinion -
Hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act. There is no deception in what is happening.
This is analogous to using a library’s card index to get reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently.
 Deep links and the media
The issue of deep links has been raised by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times against
FreeRepublic.com, a self-described conservative news forum.
Free Republic is an online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to
roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!
According to their website, the suit was filed in 1998 -
The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post has brought suit against us in federal court for alleged copyright infringement and unfair competition.
The trial judge in the case erroneously disallowed our fair use and first amendment defenses, basing her ruling on the false assumption
that Free Republic is a commercial enterprise.
We have appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals where we hope to prevail.
In stories found using MSN’s search engine, the deep link issue was usually a dispute between two commercial parties, and did not include individuals or not-for-profit
websites like BarkingDogs.org.
Here we go again?
This is not the first incident where outside parties have considered legal action to muzzle this or other NetActivist websites.
In late 2000, the City of Dallas’ City Attorney, acting on the orders of unnamed council members, spent nearly $4,000 to to research the relationship between the
First Amendment and Internet sites.
It was determined by outside counsel that they could not sue websites for trademark infringement or win an Internet libel suit, even if charges were brought up in a
foreign country (Freedom Forum).
Earlier that same year, a Lower Greenville bar owner and her attorney solicited other
bar owners to join a proposed lawsuit against BarkingDogs.org in an effort to shut the site down. The entry fee per litigant was only $750, a number BD thought was way too low for his own tastes.
That suit was never filed.
Tell Belo what you think
If you have an opinion about Belo’s threats of legal action against BD (and a Cease & Desist letter counts as the first shot over the defendant’s head) then tell them what
you think.
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