Tuesday, November 12, 2002

anti-linking policies are anti-web and absurd Are You Agreed?. After an extended absence from the office I have just retrieved a voice mail from the Los Angeles Times requesting that I remove the link to the article "Firm says law stifles fair use on DVDs" until we can negotiate a licensing fee. More here, at Kevin Heller's. The article Kevin linked to in his News sidebar is about the 321 Studios case (mentioned earlier here; the company's news page now is more up to date, but doesn't reference the Times article). According to the Times' Terms of Service, "... If you operate a Web site and wish to link to Latimes.com, you may do so provided you agree to cease such link upon request from Latimes.com. No other use is permitted without prior written permission of Latimes.com. ..." (Emphasis added.) This is reiterated when one follows the iCopyright linkage at the bottom of an article on the Times' page. The article in question is reprinted, presumably with the Times' permission, at SunSpot.net, where I can't readily locate a linking policy of any sort. NPR ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin's thoughts on linking issues are memorialized here. Cory Doctorow's response on shortcomings of the revised NPR linking policy is here, and an article by Mike Janssen in Current further summarizing and rounding up links about the NPR episode is here. Among other things, Janssen notes that, "The Washington Post and the New York Times openly allow links to all of their pages, and the Los Angeles Times stipulates that webmasters can link to its pages as long as they agree not to if asked." Bret Fausett's piece discussing the potential enforceability of "click-read" agreements is here, and Kevin Heller's own thoughts as to why such agreements should not be enforceable are here. Hordes of inbound links to the Times. The Times reaching out and touching people on their voicemail. Hmm. I'd say this one's destined for a bench memo near you, soon. [Bag and Baggage] Ooh this makes me cross!! Ideas/facts are not themselves copyrightable (only their expression) - although the content business would like to suffocate this fundamental information right in shrink-wrap. A link to a web site is just a statement of a fact - that at a certain place on the web this information exists. The L.A. Times can't prevent a blogger from linking to them, no more than it can copyright any other fact, such as 2+2=4, For the L.A. Times Times to prevent anybody linking to them is like claiming copyright in their own physical address, 220 W 1st Street, Los Angeles. Am I wrong?! 9:03:01 PM     Doubting that Bjork's Greatest Hits CD is copy-protected Tacky. Today for the first time I consciously refused to buy a CD that I would have bought if it hadn't been copy-protected: Björk, Greatest Hits. ... [The Aardvark Speaks] I don't usually discuss my musical tastes in this blog, but I'm a huge Björk fan. I pre-ordered both Greatest Hits and the Family Tree box set from her site. I received them on Friday and was able to play them on my iBook and I immediately ripped them with iTunes. That went fine. I've been able to play the MP3s without hassles or noticeable loss of quality. I've haven't tried burning them to another CD yet - but don't see why this would be a problem if I could rip the songs. I would be extremely surprised if Björk, of all artists, would do this. She seems to be very web-savvy. Her cool bjork.com/unity site has free music and video streaming. Even the contents of Greatest Hits were selected by the members of her site. Björk is innovative with her music and isn't one to shirk risks, but I really doubt that she would choose to be a pioneer in this area. Please excuse the rantings of this fan... 8:27:06 PM

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