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NPR Linking Policy Draws Fire
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posted by md
on Thursday June 20, @06:46AM
from the please-DO-link-to-greplaw dept.
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Wired.com reports on a story first picked up by Slashdot, indicating that National Public Radio's website policy appears to prohibit any linking to it, without prior consent. This policy has been drawing criticism since Cory Doctorow posted notice of the policy, and its corresponding permission form, on his BoingBoing blog site. NPR's response is featured in the Wired.com article, as are several salient replies.
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NPR Linking Policy Draws Fire
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The Fine Print:
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I used their request form to tell them how silly their views are. Here's what I wrote:
You state "Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited."
That is completely bogus. I do not need your permission to create a link to your page, since the text that does so is not protected by any exclusive right held by you under the copyright statutes (see 17 USC 106).
A link is simply an HTML instruction that I provide to any third party on how to formulate a "GET" *request* in the HTTP protocol. If the third party decides to follow my instruction, they will send your web server a request for your content. If you have configured your web server to respond by sending the requested content and it in fact does so, then YOU have authorized the third party to make a copy of that that page, and hence the most you can accuse me of is assisting someone to make authorized copy.
Nearly all web servers provide a variety of ways to allow you to control access to the material on your page. By not using these methods, you are attempting to rewrite the carefully considered rules that govern the internet. In some sense, you agreed to be governed by those conventions when you adopted HTTP as your content delivery mechanism.
By the way, this issue has already been litigated in the Ticketmaster case. I strongly recommend that you ground your views of what is and is not in your discretion to authorize based on a carefull reading of that precedent.
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Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
- Isaac Asimov
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