[WEB4LIB] Re: Illegal to link?

[Dennis Moser]

James, Charles, et alia,

I think a less-sanguine approach is called for: while this decision was
specifically addressing the issues of posting or linking to DeCSS code,
there have been several other court cases that have been closely identified
or tied to this one that have ramifications for anyone who runs a website. I
draw your attention to this article:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38360,00.html

...which ALSO discusses the DeCSS trial. Jesse Berst, and ZDNet, have a
reputation for being corporatist news sources. As a result, what is
presentedin this article fails to provide any real substance to the very
real threat that has resulted from both the Scientology and
Microsoft/Kerberos cases. While Berst DOES address a single aspect of the
DeCSS case, it is done so in his usual sensationalist provocative manner,
one which is premeditated to result in more page views that then translate
into greater advertising revenues for Ziff-Davis.

The implications for linking reach far beyond what we are being told about
in the Berst article, somethihng which the Wired article make rather clear.

Dennis
Dennis Moser, MILS, Web Librarian
John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center
Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library
1133 M. D. Anderson Blvd, Houston, TX 77030-2809
dennism at library.tmc.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: James Cayz <cayz at lib.de.us>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Thursday, August 24, 2000 1:39 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: Illegal to link?


>On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Charles P. Hobbs wrote:
>> (Subject:) Illegal to link?
>>http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2619215,00.html
>>
>>--
>>Charles P. Hobbs
>
>Charles, all;
>
>I think we are safe in creating links on our websites, as this except from
>the ruling itself offers:
>
>Potentially more troublesome might be links to pages that offer a good
>deal of content other than DeCSS but that offer a hyperlink for
>downloading, or transferring to a page for downloading, DeCSS. If one
>assumed, for the purposes of argument, that the Los Angeles Times web site
>somewhere contained the DeCSS code, it would be wrong to say that anyone
>who linked to the Los Angeles Times web site, regardless of purpose or the
>manner in which the link was described, thereby offered, provided or
>otherwise trafficked in DeCSS merely because DeCSS happened to be
>available on a site to which one linked.
>
>(pages 52-53 of Court Decision at
>http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/courtweb/pdf/D02NYSC/00-08117.PDF)
>
>so, unless you *knowingly* point to something known to be illegal (in this
>case, both were found to be true), you're safe.
>
>James
>
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