Permission to hyperlink....?

colinmcgray · Jun 13th, 2007, 14:17

Hi,

Are there any laws or legal requirements for gaining permission to link to someone else's site? I work at a university and I'm being told that I must write to the owner of any site asking permission before I can put a simple hyperlink from my site to theirs. I'm not including any of their text at all, just a title for their site and their URL. I just don't know if this can be true, how are search engines that trawl and link sites automatically (google...?) getting around this if so.

I've done a web search on the subject and come up empty handed. Does anyone know if this is true?

Any help appreciated,

Colin
www.dubdown.com

karinne · Jun 13th, 2007, 14:29

Well ... if that were true then social bookmarking sites like delicious, magnolia and digg for example wouldn't exist.

Link away!

colinmcgray · Jun 13th, 2007, 15:14

Thanks Karinne, that's what I thought! Unfortunately, I have people working in my institution's copyright dept, supposed experts, telling me that it's a legal requirement!

Therefore, because they say so, I've got to ask everyone I want to link to, which, as you can imagine, takes ages! I need to somehow find out definitiveley but I don't know where to look...

karinne · Jun 13th, 2007, 15:18

I can't see how there can be copyright infringement when putting a link to someone else's site. You are not copying anything?! You're actually giving them traffic ... who in their right mind wouldn't want that?!

It doesn't make sense!

colinmcgray · Jun 14th, 2007, 08:38

I completely agree, it doesn't make sense, but to be fair there are quite a few laws that don't really make sense. Take the fact that it's legal to sheet a scotsman with a bow an arrow in york on a sunday!

I was just wondering if anyone knew definitively whether there is or is not any type of legal requirement on hyperlinking. A number of legal bods in my institution, pretty expert and qualified people, seem to think there is...

karinne · Jun 14th, 2007, 13:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by colinmcgray

I was just wondering if anyone knew definitively whether there is or is not any type of legal requirement on hyperlinking. A number of legal bods in my institution, pretty expert and qualified people, seem to think there is...

Well ... I doubt you'll find anything because there isn't such a thing

Like I said earlier, nobody in their right minds would take legal action on someone for getting them traffic to their site!!?!

Ah ... kind of getting tired of repeating myself here you know. So ... just tell those "experts" that instead of worrying about creating traffic for someone else, to start going down on spammers instead!

sannbe · Jun 15th, 2007, 22:05

Found this through google search: copyright infringement when putting a link to someone else's site

http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking

It should help...especially the FAQ....I know I had the same question.

BGarner · Jun 15th, 2007, 22:28

The FAQ answers it without question...

Quote:

In general, if someone is making a website publicly available, others may freely link to it. That open linking is what makes the web a "web."

karinne · Jun 16th, 2007, 02:41

Bah ... from the "Recent News" section ... that site is ooooold!