# How is linking to a website "copyright infringement"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 16, 2005, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308 "2005-02-16T02:57:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/1 "2005-02-16T02:57:12Z")
In reference to [this letter](http://www.batesline.com/archives/001274.html) received by and posted on a friend-of-a-friend’s blog
> [@](#):
>
> The Tulsa World copyrights its entire newspaper and specifically each of the articles and/or editorials at issue. The reproduction of any articles and/or editorials (in whole or in part) on your website or linking your website to Tulsa World content is without the permission of the Tulsa World and constitutes an intentional infringement of the Tulsa World’s copyright and other rights to the exclusive use and distribution of the copyrighted materials.
>
> Therefore, we hereby demand that you immediately remove any… unauthorizedlinks to our website,
Can the owner of a website legally restrict linkage? (I thought that was the whole point of having a website, actually- people logging on and all).
Also, isn’t quoting from newspapers covered in “fair use” so long as it’s an excerpt and fully credited for use in a review or commentary?
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### Author:  [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/2 "2005-02-16T03:08:37Z")
Linking is considered re-publishing, and done without permission is illegal and a breach of copyright. There’s no legal doubt on this at all.
Linkage and logging on are not the same thing.
Fair use means short quotes from one article relevant to the one you are writing. If they quotes are excessively long for the purpose, or from more than one article, then fair use would not apply. Linking would not count as fair use at all.
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### Author:  [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/3 "2005-02-16T03:11:44Z")
Many people post many links on this Board every day … infringement?
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### Author:  [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/4 "2005-02-16T03:17:06Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#):
>
> Many people post many links on this Board every day … infringement?
Technically, … yes.
But there are many paranoid types out there who want to control their content to the inth degree.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/5 "2005-02-16T03:19:52Z")
**Askance** : Do you have a cite for that?
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### Author:  [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/6 "2005-02-16T03:29:01Z")
[http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html](http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html)
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### Author:  [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/7 "2005-02-16T03:39:09Z")
> [@Askance](#):
>
> Linking is considered re-publishing, and done without permission is illegal and a breach of copyright. There’s no legal doubt on this at all.
Cite? I don’t believe this is true, in the US at least. There have been lawsuits in several countries touching on various aspects of “deep linking” (linking to content deep within a website rather than to the home page); some courts have ruled against the deep-linkers but others have ruled for them. Here is the [ALA’s summary](http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Intellectual_Freedom_Issues&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=25306) of the legal issues; Google “deep linking” for lots of articles (most themselves, of course, deep-linked via Google’s spiders, so click at your own risk, I suppose). Many of the decisions seem to indicate that it’s not the linking itself (pointing to your content) at issue but the misrepresentation (representing your content as my own). As far as I can tell it’s not at all a settled matter.
Personally I think that making a thorny legal issue where extremely simple technical solutions exist is rather silly. If you don’t want people to deep-link in, then just tell your webserver not to allow it!
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/8 "2005-02-16T03:41:44Z")
[This](http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/headlines/content/2000040401.html) seems to say the opposite (as near as I can read legalese).
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/9 "2005-02-16T03:44:48Z")
> [@Reeder](#):
>
> [http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html](http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html)
Except that from what I’ve gleaned, it doesn’t touch at all on the linking aspect of copyright.
Personally, if you insert an image from my website on yours (with an image source tag of img=“[ownwebsite.](http://mywebsite.com/myimage.jpg)”), I would of course consider that a copyright violation. You are clearly republishing my work on your page. If you simply include a URL link to it, I really don’t see how that would constitute a copyright violation, anymore than a bibliographic footnote.
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### Author:  [@cstamets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cstamets)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/10 "2005-02-16T03:45:05Z")
> [@Reeder](#):
>
> [http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html](http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html)
And the [page](http://www.templetons.com/brad/linkright.html) from the same website that discusses linking and why it may be a violation of copyright.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/11 "2005-02-16T03:49:43Z")
> [@cstamets](#):
>
> And the [page](http://www.templetons.com/brad/linkright.html) from the same website that discusses linking and why it may be a violation of copyright.
Yay! A relevant cite. It does seem like a somewhat thorny issue, and I can see it being a problem with the bandwith costs that may be accrued from the website linked to. But most websites linked to are public, are they not? I don’t see any functional difference from this and from publishing a magazine and then telling someone that they can’t read it without their permission.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/12 "2005-02-16T03:51:51Z")
I don’t believe it’s ever been tested in court, but on the face of it, no, it’s not infringement.
Copyright is _the right to make copies_. If no copy is made, then copyright doesn’t apply. A link to a website does not make a copy of the original.
There are still some gray areas as to whether a site can forbid linking as part of their terms of use, but there’s no difference between making a live link to a web page and putting the URL in your page so people have to cut and paste it. The latter is clearly not a violation (otherwise, it would be illegal to cite a web page in a research paper), and I doubt the former would be judged to be, either.
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/13 "2005-02-16T03:53:05Z")
> [@Askance](#):
>
> Linking is considered re-publishing, and done without permission is illegal and a breach of copyright. There’s no legal doubt on this at all.
It’s not really useful to make authoritative legal statements on this message board without some hard cites and qualifiers of jurisdiction and application. You also need to differentiate between normal linking and deep linking, the issues of confusion of authorship, framing, and so forth. So…cites as to actual court cases which ruled against simple web links, and the upholding of said cases by higher courts?
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### Author:  [@cstamets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cstamets)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/14 "2005-02-16T03:57:15Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
I don’t believe it’s ever been tested in court, but on the face of it, no, it’s not infringement.
/QUOTE]
It has been tested in court. See the link to the page I gave previously. [Tickets.com](http://Tickets.com) won their case. 2600 lost theirs.
For the moment, the issue is still undecided. Until a case gets far enough up the court system to apply to everyone, it will remain a cloudy issue.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/15 "2005-02-16T04:33:05Z")
Ugh. That page that Templeton links to is about the ugliest mess I’ve seen from a tech-oriented site.
Trying to wade through it without drowning, I have some very tentative conclusions.
The 2600 case. It appears that it was not about hyperlinking per se, but about trademark violation, and in any case has had a later decision.
[http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/915](http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/915)
> [@](#):
>
> The judge’s decision reaffirms the right of domain name holders to point their websites where they choose.
Although the article is obviously biased, it appears to be accurate based on the injunction to be found at: [http://www.2600.com/news/122201-files/ford-dec.html](http://www.2600.com/news/122201-files/ford-dec.html)
That was in 2001. Therefore Hupp’s decision in the 2000 [tickets.com](http://tickets.com) case appears to be controlling U.S. case law on the narrow issue of hyperlinking.
I’m using a lot of “it appears” because a) IANAL and b) there may be something more recent not listed on that site.
Five years is a very long time for the Internet. That no new cases have be decided to supersede Hupp’s decision is important. That the Tulsa World’s lawyers send out threatening letters to scare people who either don’t know the current state of the law or couldn’t fight if they did is a whole different issue.
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### Author:  [@Huerta88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huerta88)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/16 "2005-02-16T06:05:37Z")
[A reasonably extensive and well-cited discussion of U.S. and other cases.](http://www.bakerbotts.com/news/printpage.asp?pubid=1633221102005)
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### Author:  [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/17 "2005-02-16T19:13:25Z")
So would there be a difference between [Linking](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=302631) and just typing an internet address ([boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=302631](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=302631)) on your page?
Small side - How the heck do you disable the linking/coding on this board? It kept trying to make my second example a link.
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### Author:  [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/18 "2005-02-16T19:55:06Z")
Uncheck the option that says “Automatically parse links in text”. It’s in the “Additional Options” section just below the text entry area. To see it, you may have to click on the double down arrows in a circle to the far right of the “Additional Options” text.
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### Author:  [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/19 "2005-02-16T22:25:05Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#):
>
> …you may have to click on the **double down** arrows in a circle to the far right of the “Additional Options” text.
Nonono, you’re looking for the [blackjack thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=301254). 😃
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### Author:  [@633squadron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/633squadron)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2005, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308/20 "2005-02-16T22:35:31Z")
> [@Sampiro](#):
>
> Can the owner of a website legally restrict linkage? (I thought that was the whole point of having a website, actually- people logging on and all).
Many of the replies speak about the right to link or not to link. My reading of the court cases and decisions is that linkage rights are still cloudy. One way to be safe might be to post the URL _without_ a link, which you could then argue is a cite and not a hyperlink. You might be even safer if you post the URL in a separate “documentation” section.
**However** , I don’t think that’s the question Sampiro asked! Given the specifics of his original question, Sampiro is asking if an _owner_ can legally restrict links to his site? Again, reading the material cited in this thread, I think the answer is “yes”. It seems that the owner of a material has power to restrict how the material is used.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-linking-to-a-website-copyright-infringement/290308.md?page=2)