Linking Legal Issues

Sellers and buyers can now find each other, though oceans and national borders separate them. One of the most effective ways that this happens is through linking, where website operators provide links from their websites to other people's sites. A person interested in buying a car may go to a website which ranks the performance of various cars and, finding one he likes, may click on a link to a dealer selling those cars. In most cases these links are legal and even desirable, without the need to gain permission from the site you are linking to.

Legal issues can arise, however, in the case of deep linking. Deep linking is when you put a link on your site to pages below the main page of another site. An example of this occurred when Ticketmaster.com complained that another ticket site had created links directly to Ticketmaster's order page. When the visitor bought tickets, Ticketmaster still received its commission. Ticketmaster argued, however, that it was losing out on potential advertising revenue that may have been available had the visitor been required to access the order page by way of the main and intervening pages, rather than by-passing them through the link.

How the law applies to this scenario is unclear.

In some jurisdictions, this may be regarded as a breach of copyright. The law is by no means settled, though, because this form of deep linking does not involve actually copying anything. Deep linking may lead to claims based on the allegation that it interferes with business relations between the linked site and its advertisers. Alternatively, deep linking may be seen as a violation of a site owner's right to prevent others from accessing its computer system.

Despite the uncertainty in the law, it is clear that linking to someone's site without their permission, particularly deep linking, could get you sued. Accordingly, you should always get permission before linking to another site.

This article is not legal advice and is not intended as such. The law relating to this topic varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from country to country. Additionally, any specific outcome would be determined by its own unique facts and may be different than what you might expect from reading this article. This article merely provides some general information about the topic. You should consult with a lawyer familiar with this topic, and with the laws of the relevant jurisdiction.