[WEB4LIB] Metasearch Engines and Commercial Portals

[Blake Carver]

Maybe?
There haven't been any big cases that said one thing or another that will
stand, but there have been more than a few big ones that tried to limit
linking. The answer so far seems to be NO, so far, and so far as I've seen.

The USAToday had a story on a ruling in an important case involving the
bility to link to other sites.
"U.S. District Judge Harry Hupp said hyperlinking was not illegal as long as
consumers understand whose site they are on and that one company has not
simply duplicated another's page.
While companies may benefit by more customers using their service,
hyperlinking to deep pages allows users to bypass the ''front page'' area
that contains advertising Web companies rely on for revenue."
The full story seems to be gone

While A Story on the NY Times goes into some depth on how tricky the laws
are regarding linking on the Web.
"When a federal judge issued a decision last week in a case involving "deep
linking," many reports suggested that the controversial Internet practice
was now unambiguously legal. But the story is more complex than that. In
fact, deep linking -- the practice of linking to a page deep inside another
Website, bypassing its home page -- still appears to be in legal limbo."
The full story seems to be gone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/07/technology/08CYBERLAW.html
The NY Times has a Story on the latest linking lawsuits making their way
through the courts here in the US.
" According to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District, in Manhattan, a link can be bad or good. It mainly turns
on whether the linker's intent is laudable or not."

 The weekly "cyber law journal" column in the NYTimes examines a case in
which the Better Business Bureau requested that a for-profit site not
associated with the BBB remove links to it (the BBB). Although the BBB did
not threaten a lawsuit, a spokesperson did mention that they were developing
software to prevent unwanted hyperlinking (in the name of 'consumer
confusion').
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/23/technology/23CYBERLAW.html


I also know the RIAA had been attacking people for links, but can't seem to
find a good story.
---------------------
Blake Carver
LISNews.com
http://www.lisnews.com
Librarian and Information Science News


----- Original Message -----
From: "Howard Pasternack" <Howard_Pasternack at brown.edu>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 11:18 AM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Metasearch Engines and Commercial Portals


> I am curious whether commercial portals such as Yahoo and Google can
> legally restrict client software (graphic or otherwise) from searching
> their sites and harvesting results.  One of my favorite search clients
used
> to be Copernic, but it has gotten less useful in recent months as Google
> and other sites have been removed from the client.  -- Howard
>
>