Deep Linking Lunacy

from the just-how-stupid-is-it? dept

Last week we spoke about the ridiculousness of a Danish court saying a news search site couldn't "deep link" to specific articles on the websites of a Danish newspaper. However, SearchEngineWatch has written a much better and much more elegant trashing of that ruling. The article takes a more in-depth look at exactly what the ruling means, and points out that (in effect) the ruling not only bans most of what the web is, but also phone directories and mapping services (because they point you directly to an end result, as opposed to forcing you to find them yourselves by aimlessly wandering). Worst of all, clearly, it bans librarians, who (gasp!) will help you find a specific piece of information within a book within an entire library. According to the Danish ruling, publishers should be able to force library patrons to read through every page of every book in the library until they happen to come across the information they need. Pointing them directly at the info clearly takes away from the rights of all those other books to be read.

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