The linking issue came up in the DECSS case.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/cyber/cyberlaw/07law.html

There have been a lot more cases in Europe about this than in the US. IE Louis Vuitton sued Google over linking to fake merchandise.

here are a few more:
Ticketmaster v. Microsoft [1997]
Ticketmaster v. Tickets.com March 2000
Washington Post v. TotalNEWS, Inc.
HK Finance.com v. Prosticks.com

Seems to me that they need to just leave Google and the linkers alone; and go after the companies/people that do the crime.

Online law and precidents are QUITE murky still. The DMCA is a mess too. The Washington Post v. TotalNEWS, Inc. might be particularly relevant for you.

-skullaria

Acidus wrote:
] ] Why is Google immune from liability?
] ]
] ] The most direct reason is that a federal law that those
] ] who host, rather than author, speech on the Internet
] ] cannot be treated, for legal purposes, as having
] ] published it. As a result, they cannot be sued for
] ] defamation -- or for any other tort that has publication
] ] as one of its essential elements.
] ]
] ] The law protects message board owners, chat room hosts,
] ] bloggers who give others access to their blogs, and
] ] indeed, virtually anyone who allows material on their
] ] site, or provides access to material, that they do not
] ] themselves author. That includes Google and other search
] ] sites.
] ]
] ] By contrast, the defamation liability risk of selection
] ] sites such as The Drudge Report -- that is, sites that
] ] offer collections of specially culled links to other
] ] sites -- remains uncertain. Someone who chooses a link
] ] may count as having published the material to which the
] ] link leads -- and may be held to have the state of mind
] ] to be held liable for the choice. This argument has been
] ] used in the context of the Digital Millennium Copyright
] ] Act, and could be used in the defamation context, as
] ] well.
]
] I checked and couldn't find any court presidence on what
] constitutes "publishing" content on the Internet and "linking"
] content on the Internet. Anyone know of any?
]
] What are the legal ramifications of meme-ing a site that
] contents something defamatory? This has interesting
] consequences for the blogging community: seeing how stories
] and commentaries are spread by the Internet equivilent of word
] of mouth, linking, a single defamatory story would act as a
] virus, exposes all who link it to possible legal action.

Acidus wrote:
] What are the legal ramifications of meme-ing a site that
] contents something defamatory?

Um, whatever you are planning to do, don't. :)

This question of the legality of blogging is incredibly complex, basically because the questions aren't answered yet.

As for memeing defamatory content, it certainly depends on what YOU are saying. If you realize that the content is defamatory and you are propagating it because you wish to defame the victim, then your ass is guilty and the judge will throw the book at you. If you were recommending it from some other reason or intent then you will probably be alright.

There have been various attempts to legislate linking. The DeCSS case is one example, but that court case is funny. The judge basically says that 2600 magazine is not allowed to do it, but all kinds of other people with various interests might be allowed and he is not going to consider those cases. You can't link to copyright subversion tools if you're an evil haxor, but you might be able to link to it if you're a linux distro trying to interoperate, but its not clear.

There have been various cases involving "deep linking" and also framing where news sites have gotten sued because content on another site is presented by them directly. That question certainly applies to this site. Framing was declared illegal early on. Deep linking is still debated in the courts.

I wasn't a fan of the framing decision, but I'm not totally opposed to it either. I understand what they are thinking in terms of my ad being displayed next to your intellectual property, but content aggregators provide a valuable service, I've never been confused about who is who, and we're not talking about a case where your ads have been removed.

It seemed, with that case, like people were eliminating a new possibility early on because they wanted to apply an old community value (a traditional view of copyright) to the web without first experimenting to see whether they might be better off with a new way of thinking. I felt like they should have waited longer before making that decision.

As for the deep linking cases, in my opinion, they are bullshit. There are ways to configure your webserver so that no one can deep link it (check the referrer and redirect to a main page). Setting up a web page on the web that is easy to deep link and then complaining when people do it is like leaving 30 glasses of lemonade out at a church social and claiming theft when people drink them. Linking is what the web is for. Its what people do on the web. It should be expected that content on the web will be linked. That is the standard of behavior in the community. If you don't want it to be linked, then in Apache its about 4 lines of perl to set up a security barrier.

There are also copyright questions. Do you have the right to quote material from the web page you are memeing? How much material? Is it fair use if you are running a web log? What if you don't comment on the article, you just recommend it? IMHO, this is probably the messiest question discussed here. We can not expect millions of people who are blogging to make daily decisions about what they can legally quote and what they cannot quote. Everyone cannot be expected to be an expert in copyright law. Furthermore, the blogosphere does represent an important form of social discourse. I believe that it should be protected. On the other hand, get the right plaintiff with a clueless defendant, and you may see serious damage done to this scene.