Judge Says No Deep Linking To Videos
from the that's-a-problem dept
Deep linking is apparently an issue that just won’t die. You would think, by now, people would realize that if you put something on the web, people can link to it. If you don’t want them to link to it, then don’t put it online, or put in place one of the incredibly easy technical methods to redirect traffic that comes into the content you want to hide. It’s really not that difficult — but too many people still haven’t figured it out, and unfortunately some of them are judges. In the latest case, a federal judge in Texas has said that it’s illegal to deep link to a video on another site if that site objects. The fact that linking is the core of the internet and the other site can easily put in place technical measures to stop it apparently isn’t particularly important. Admittedly, part of the problem may be that the guy who did the linking also chose to defend himself rather than hire a lawyer, and apparently part of his legal strategy was to accuse the company suing him of “acting like Genghis Khan.” You’d have to hope that a lawyer would be able to better defend the case and explain to the judge why this ruling doesn’t make much sense — but in the meantime, beware of linking directly to videos on other sites.
Comments on “Judge Says No Deep Linking To Videos”
Fine Then
If they don’t want me “deep linking” then I’ll just have to download whatever content they have, host it on one of the various free file or video hosting sites and link from there. Of course I wouldn’t even bother until they somehow make it impossible to link to files.
Ah the answer to google’s billion dollar question, how to make money off of youtube?
1. Get judge to make wacky law
2. “obect” to users deep linking youtube videos and sue users for all the bandwidth that was used from your deep link
3. Profit!
Re: Re:
Only, youtube encourages ‘deep linking’ with their “Embed on site” HTML code they put in a box and ask you to copy.
You can’t give someone your wallet, tell them they can do whatever they want with the money inside, and then sue them for losses.
Re: Re: Re:
Sure you can! You just need to argue it properly! Seems you haven’t yet figured out how the American legal system works.
Re: Re:
QUOTE:
by Paul on Dec 22nd, 2006 @ 12:53am
Ah the answer to google’s billion dollar question, how to make money off of youtube?
1. Get judge to make wacky law
2. “obect” to users deep linking youtube videos and sue users for all the bandwidth that was used from your deep link
3. Profit!
END QUOTE
The problem here is this comment listed as #1 is the main reason we have some of the problems with the legal system today.
For one, most people who read Pauls comment he has labeled #1 do not even realize how wrong this comment is.
Second, the sad truth is that most Judges do believe in Pauls comment #1.
Last time I looked the three branches of the US Government have distinct jobs.
Judges DO NOT make law, the Congress makes law!!
OMG! Imagine that.
Please read your Constitution of the US and understand it.
Re: Re: Re:
In practice, judges _do_ make law. In the US there is statuary law (made by congress) and case law. Case law is basically what the judges have said that the statuary means and this is where they get to make up their own laws on the back of the statuary laws because they can make up just about whatever they want so long as it’s “politically correct”. If it isn’t politically correct then a higher ranking judge will eventually override them. The final arbiter of political correctness in the US is the Supreme Court.
So if a law is passed that says it is illegal to spit on the sidewalk and judge “interprets” that to mean that we all have to start driving on the left-hand side of the road, then so be it. At least until a higher ranking judge overturns it.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I meant “statutary” instead of “statuary”.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So you say case law is legal and constitutional?
Please state the very first case that this happened with and the reasons given as to why this could be done at the time.
If you can answer this question, other than the recycling of things that you have been brainwashed with, I will be impressed.
Then explain how this is constitutional in the first place
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So you say case law is legal and constitutional?
Please state the very first case that this happened with and the reasons given as to why this could be done at the time.
If you can answer this question, other than the recycling of things that you have been brainwashed with, I will be impressed.
Then explain how this is constitutional in the first place
But... huh?
I only want to say that this is further proof that old men need to be removed from any time of legal or political power. I just don’t know how to write my congressman and bring it up if the age limitation will effect him. Bleh.
Thanks.
Re: But... huh?
Age is not the problem is it Joe. If anything age should bring ever more wisdom from experience and an increasingly more balanced view of life.
So, how does one explain the mountain of terrible, uninformed decisions by judges? I find it hard to believe that there are no educated judges. Somewhere there must surely be a few that are qualified to preside over technology affairs, that perhaps even own a computer or have family that work in IT – hell, maybe there’s even a judge or two out there running Linux!
I’m not going to answer my own question, because it’s tiresome and we all know the answer – it’s just a question of how bad and when we are all prepared to change it, but I’m sure that age and technical ignorance are neither synonymous nor the root of the problem.
Bloody DMCA again
Website: Wah my front door is open! Judge make them stop coming in here!!
Judge: Ok
Public: Can’t he just lock his door?
Judge: I said Good DAY!
Re: Bloody DMCA again
Website: Wah my front door is open! Judge make them stop coming in here!!
Public: He didn’t just leave his door open, he gave us directions on how to get there!
Website: But now they’re inviting their friends, and I don’t like that.
Judge: Ok, I’ll make them stop.
Public: Can’t he just lock his door?
Other Public: Or at least close it. And remove the “Welcome” mat.
Judge: I said Good DAY!
Re: Bloody DMCA again
I agree… still it is illegal to enter somebody else’s house.
Now, if you leave the door open you prolly won’t complain about people entering if they don’t do damage. You will if you close the door and they break in.
This time I don’t think the judge should be blamed as much as the site… Isn’t it harder to sue everyone who links directly to videos instead of just putting some workaround to avoid it?
Hire a Lawyer for $500 per Hour over a Link????
_________________________________________
‘less we forget, that is JUST ONE JUDGE’S RULING!
Ask 100 judges accross the nation how they would have ruled given the same facts and there will surely be many diverse opionions.
Even, the state appellite and court of appeals often do not agree unanimously, and decisions are often split, and differ depending on which state the action is started.
But, of course if one does NOT want a video to be linked to, a Webmaster can easily get around this by adding a cut and paste non-hyperlinked url….
http://www.techdirt.com/
Without a direct link to the ruling itself (would that now be illegal?), it would appear that the court was simply biased in favor of the wealthier party. Expect to see the courts flipflop when the shoe is on the other foot. Such bias ultimately makes the courts illegitimate.
Beware of linking to _anything_ without written, signed permission.
I’ll write and sign any permissions you need.
Re:Mathew
“Website: Wah my front door is open! Judge make them stop coming in here!!
Judge: Ok
Public: Can’t he just lock his door?
Judge: I said Good DAY!”
ROFLMAO!
dont be hatin
yall need to stop frontin on dis shit he was just makin a visit u no seein how they iz so chill out nd quit snitchin
“The infamous Joe” , Give me a break, you can’t be for age discrimination? Your reasoning would mean that anyone over a certain age is senile, and thier judgement can not be trusted. Hmmmm, I suppose we shouldn’t trust the court that gave us brown vs. the Board of education either? Oh, you might want to work on on your English grammmar usage, otherwise, how can we trust you?
RE: RE: BUT… Huh? What a great idea. Require judges to have some experince with the type of cases thier deciding in complex commercial litigation or business matters. No if we could only fix the jury system we wouldn’t ever have to see O.J. wearing an expensive suit or swinging a golf club!
I’m old enough to have started a dot-com in the bubble years and young enough not to wear ties (except at weddings and funerals). As such, there needs to be something better than “if it can be linked to, it may be linked to” (can = technically possible; may = permissable).
If a site says that you can’t do something with content it owns, then that should be respected. Face it — when you link to a bandwidth-intensive resource like a video, you are making the host expend money for no benefit, yet you get benefit for no expense. That’s not fair. Nor is it sensible to permit from a business perspective (and, notice to all the kiddies out there, if it weren’t for _businesses_, who are trying to make money, the Internet wouldn’t be accessible today by anyone outside a research university).
This is very much like plugging your space heater into your neighbor’s electrical outlet without asking them and even after they’ve said you may not do that. Is that right? Is that the type of me-first-to-hell-with-the-rest society we want?
If a site wants to let people link to stuff, it certainly should be able to. But it should _NOT_ be OK to take someone else’s bandwidth and content if they don’t want us to.
RE: Craig
If you had started a dot com in the bubble years then you should know that there are at least three diffrent ways (work arounds) to prevent an item from being linked to. Alternatly, as my 13 year old nephew just pointed out, you coould read about those same work arounds in the previous post on this subject. Perhaps you might read the entire thread before posting? Do we really need the government via the courts to police / decide every issue for us? If so, that is quite sad!
Re: RE: Craig
“If you had started a dot com in the bubble years then you should know that there are at least three diffrent ways (work arounds) to prevent an item from being linked to. Alternatly, as my 13 year old nephew just pointed out, you coould read about those same work arounds in the previous post on this subject. Perhaps you might read the entire thread before posting? Do we really need the government via the courts to police / decide every issue for us? If so, that is quite sad!”
Yes, I do know about the supposed work-arounds. All those do is force me, the site owner, to expend more effort and resources to further protect something that is already rightfully mine. That is, they are just another lock on the door.
The problem with that approach is that technological restrictions are rarely good solutions to bad social behavior. That’s why DRM doesn’t work. That’s why few will ever willingly buy a car that doesn’t let them speed. Etc., etc.
If people respected others’ property and expenses, including the cost associated with hosting and serving a 30MB video file, then we wouldn’t need to get the courts/police involved at all. Yes, that would be ideal, but it’s certainly not realistic.
Re: Re: RE: Craig
When you leave something out in public it is your responsibility to exercise due diligence in protecting it. For instance, it is illegal to leave your car parked with the keys in it on public property.
Age discrimi-nation??
There is a lower limit to the age you have to be to hold certain offices. Why is an upper limit so hard to fathom?
Ask yourself this: Out of an 18 year old and a 86 year old, which do you think can make a better judgement about the internet? Someone who, no doubt, can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a world wide web, or someone who is wondering what happens when the internet tubes get clogged and if he needs some type of internet flood insurance?
We are being lead by men and woman who are one or two generations ahead of us– people who are disconnected from the current times and views of society.
I’m not saying that all old people are senile or slow– or that their input to the legal and political world isn’t useful and valid– but I don’t need a judge who needs his secretary to show him how to check his email making decisions on things he doesn’t understand, like IP address and deep linking.
and, as low as it is, I need to point out that before you knock someone’s grammar, you should check your own spelling. 😛
Merry Christmas, folks.
Re: Age discrimi-nation??
That would depend on the individuals, now wouldn’t it? I know of many 18 year olds who have very poor judgment despite knowing how to surf the web. The problem is with judges who think that they know everything just because they _are_ judges, and so refuse to seek and heed competent technical advice on technical matters. What we need is someway to get arrogant, ignorant individuals like that off the bench.
If you read the article, the guy was linking direct to the media file, NOT to the website with the video or whatever in it.
It’s not like he was linking to their site, which would be the friendly thing to do (so they could make their money off their sponsors and such). He really was just jacking their content (according to the article) for his own site. You clicked on the links, and your media player opened up with the copyrighted material in it, coming from their server out of their pocket. Lame.
So, regardless of what technical steps the copyright owners could or would take to stop it, I still think the defendant is a bit of a pud.
RE: Age Discrimination
Well Joe, you miss the point yet again. Good juris prudence does not require age discrimination. Rather, as I point out, quite eloquently, I might add, we should discriminate based on technical expertise in the choice for judges in complex litigation. This is called “merit based” and is a revered concept in our democracy. Oh , and yes, my spelling is quite horrific without a spell checker. However, I am able to string together a lucid thought in an enjoyable, grammitacly correct, and lucid manner. Cheers !
httpd.ini and .htaccess
With Apache you use mod_rewrite and .htaccess files.
With Windows you can use ISAPI_Rewrite, this is what I use on my servers. It is a commercial program and costs a little money but the syntax is very similar to mod_rewrite and it’s worth it IMHO.
Eric
http://www.mapvisitors.com
What Gives? is very wrong!!!
Judges do make some laws in this country. It is called precedent. The power to make law by precedent is a hallowed and old idea brought to this continent from Great Britain. You may have heard the expression “common law wife”. That is where this comes from. Countries like the U.S., the U.K., South Africa, and Australia all practice commoin law and attorneys trained in that system of juris prudence are commonly accepted to the several bars of the various countries without further training. e.g. An attorney trained in London can practice in the U.S. The law made by the legislature is called statutory law and may be ruled unconstitutional by the various state and federal courts. Might I reccomend a college level Poly Sci class?
Maybe I *am* confused!
I didn’t think we got to pick which judge got which case… I assumed it was based on things like location and workload.
Do you suggest, then, that we give a judge a little pre-trial quiz to check if he is up to snuff on the subject? If he isn’t does he get a chance to study and try again? Perhaps extra credit if he knows the answer to the bonus question? Who will decide if a judge knows enough? Me? You? Another judge? Bill Gates?
The laws don’t change, more or less, but how they are interperated does change– how does your grandfather feel about pre-marital sex? How does a 25 year old feel about it? Not the same, I imagine.
Sure, I do like the merit based concept, really. It just seems a lot harder to implement and control than a banket age limit, is all.
And if this ‘merit based’ concept you cling to is so great– why are there drinking limits and driving limits on age? Why not implement this concept there?
Maybe I *am* confused!
Joe, I congradulate you on a well framed argument. You are correct! You are confused. The age limits you speak of are allowed, even if they are discriminatory, because as the courts have ruled, tyhat the government may discriminate where there is a “compelling need” and no other reasonable option exist. In the cases you mention the compelling need is to save lives.
As to your other point. In this country all attorneys have an undergrad degree. Many are computer enthusiast. It is not difficult to find one who is qaulified in a particular area. Some attorneys even practice in the technology area and have this as a specialty. Court administrators have the power to appoint these attorneys as special judges to hear a case on a as needed basis. Beyond that, there are allways expert testimony that a judge can request be presented at trial to bring him or her up to speed. Yes, I did say her. You would allow a woman to be a judge wouldn’t you? Or would PMS preclude them?
The wrong idea.
Mr. Shepard, I’m afraid you’ve gotten the wrong idea about me. First if all, I only used ‘he’ because I didn’t feel like ‘he or she’, not because I have some grudge against any group of people. (including age)
I am merely offering an option, though, I’d like to know where you get your data about the degrees of attorneys, or where they are located throughout the country. I only ask because it seems made up. I would *highly* doubt that most judges sitting at the moment even had the choice of computer science as a degree, let alone chose it. Then again, I have no data that says it isn’t true, and you seem to have data that says it is.
On asking for an expert– the judge has to ask for it, and, judging by some of the decisions I’ve heard about, they are not assking for it. No expert is going to say the internet is like a series of tubes… maybe I would to explain it to a 7 year old, but I am not an expert, and a judge is not a 7 year old.
I tried my best not to use a gender specific pronoun, if I did, forgive me.
“If a site says that you can’t do something with content it owns, then that should be respected. Face it — when you link to a bandwidth-intensive resource like a video, you are making the host expend money for no benefit, yet you get benefit for no expense. That’s not fair”
It is the responsibility of the host to manage their own resources and bandwidth, period. If you put media up on a public server, connected to the Internet, and don’t manage the access and usage, you can’t blame other people for your problem. The guy linking may be a mooching douchebag, but the people hosting the media are a bunch of idiots for trying to solve their problem with a lawsuit instead of using easily available technology to fix their site.
This is a problem for a smart webmaster to solve, not a lawyer.
I dream of an Internet genie
Umm… the Internet is public. I suggest that if you don’t want your content linked to you should erect some sort of technical barrier. There is no sense tying up the court system over what appears to be poor implementation of a website.
If this were a case of someone accidentally publishing proprietary intellectual property or trade secrets to a public website, then the court injunction would be too little too late. The cat is already out of the bag, and your competitors already know your secrets. Realistically it’s up to you (the CIO) to protect your assets, not the court system to try to put the genie back in the bottle.
Correct Anaylisis by Mr. No Such and Brian A.
Mr. No Such and Brian A. have it right the legal system should never come into play.
As for my friend Infamous Joe, I am trying to caution you against setting bars to employment based on age. That, as we say in the legal / poli sci profession is a “slippery slope”. Once one limits employment by age, race and gender are not far down the line. I did not think you were judging bases on sex joe, I thought if I brought it into the argument you might make the connection yourself. Sadly, I was disappointed.
re: #17
Actually, the site which originally hosts the video may gain benifit from a deep link.
Think about it, I host a site, I put a bunch of videos on that site. I make sure all my videos have a http://www.rstr5105.com watermark. You deep link to one of my videos, I get a free advert.
Now, I don’t support a free-to-deep-link-to-anything method, because say I have a .pdf floating around my site, this .pdf is the reference manual to some antiquated piece of machinery which I sell to put the bacon on the table. That’s when deep linking becomes bad. (Granted I don’t support selling information, I believe information should be free, but, it’s just an example)
Deeplink=free advert=more hits=more money from those advertising on your site=good for business.
In my book the “Potential Gain” far outweighs the “Risks” and “damages” of deep linking. Simple Risk vs. Reward economics.
That’s my two cents.
$nick
The confusion arguement.
On the topic of Judges, Ageism, and Legitimacy:
It seems to me, that while this is an extremely rousing discussion about the legitimacy of any particular judges ruling based on age, technological proclivity, and personal bias, it seems like it’s a little off point now.
While in some regard I agree with Joe that we need a method to allow for intelligent and informed decision making in the court room, I also agree with David that disregarding the ability of any given judge based purely on age (and based on the last post possibly sex) isn’t exactly the solution either.
I believe we need something akin to specialization in the judiciary process. (And it’s entirely possible it’s already out there or in the offing and I’m just unaware of it. This isn’t *my* area of expertise…) Right now you have multiple specializations in the types of cases a particular judge will sit on. Supreme court justice, civil court judge, traffic court judge, etc. right? Why then would it not be possible to create a body of justices that is solely concerned with technology? They would have to pass a certain amount of testing to ensure that they’re well versed on the current technologies, and have to re-certify on a semi-annual basis. (Something akin to how Master Mechanics, System Administrators, and Armed Forces personnel do now…)
And of course it’s entirely possible that this proposed solution will only create more problems, or is somehow inherently flawed. But I believe that we would be better served attempting to find a reasonable solution to this complex issue before it changes from a precedent to a standard.
On the topic of deep linking:
Based on the information presented, the Defendant appears to be a moron and the company suing him could probably use the services of a savvy web team to replace what they’ve got right now.
The Defendant should have hired a lawyer to represent him. “… A man that represents himself has a fool for a client…” Yes, I can understand the righteous indignation this person probably felt after being served with a lawsuit from “the man”, and possibly the inability to raise the funds to hire a proper defense attorney. However, there are multiple options that were available to him. (I.E. The EFF, ACLU, etc.) Instead of doing his own homework, he allowed himself to become a precedent in yet another misguided technology trial.
The prosecuting company is either litigious by nature, or just needs to hire a better web team.
While searching for more information on law regarding deep linking, I found the following from the Legal500.com website:
I know that deep linking and intellectual property have been topics of controversy for some time, but it is interesting to me how Hong Kong was already publishing articles regarding these topics in 2001.
My opinion is that both the person that defended himself in court, and the company that’s got the inept IT department should both be laughed at.
Re: The confusion arguement.
Gee, do you think that could have been a possibility? I’ve got new for you from the “less wealthy” of us: laywers are _often_ too expensive for us to afford. And if you think it’s easy to get pro bono representation from the EFF, ACLU, etc., well it just shows how sheltered you are from reality. This guy was probably just doing the best he could under the circumstances.
A rose by any other name....
Deep Linking? Um… For the longest time it’s been called Direct Linking. Where in the hell do these new terms keep coming from? Man, there are just too many people online these days. It muddies standardization…..
Here’s a good example. Social Engineer…. For years these people were just called “Con Men”. But nooooo…. We’ve got to give them a fancy intelligent sounding name. Talk about giving someone more credit than they deserve….
Um… yeah, next thing you know, my trashman will want to be called a Sanitation Engineer.