The coolest “Linc” of the 70s!
This case holds that you can’t link if the owner of the link objects. What’s next, we’ll need explicit permission to link? They say the web was designed to survive a nuclear attack, but I doubt if it’ll survive the onslaught of lawyers!
A federal judge in Texas has ruled that it is unlawful to provide a hyperlink to a Webcast if the copyright owner objects to it.
U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the northern district of Texas granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who operated Supercrosslive.com and had been providing direct links to the live audiocasts of motorcycle racing events.
Lindsay ruled last week that “the link Davis provides on his Web site is not a ‘fair use’ of copyright material” and ordered him to cease linking directly to streaming audio files.
The audio Webcasts are copyrighted by SFX Motor Sports, a Texas company that is one of the largest producers of “Supercross” motorcycle racing events. SFX sued Davis in February, noting that fans who go to its own Web site will see the names and logos of sponsors including wireless company Amp’d Mobile. (Anyone who clicked on the link from Davis’ site, however, would not see the logos of companies that paid to be sponsors.)
What’s unusual in the SFX case is that a copyright holder is trying to prohibit a direct link to its own Web site. (There is no evidence that SFX tried technical countermeasures, such as referer logging and blocking anyone coming from Davis’ site.)
A 2000 dispute between Ticketmaster and Tickets.com suggested that such direct links should be permitted. A California federal judge ruled that “hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act” because “no copying is involved.“
John wrote about this problem back in a May 1997 PC Magazine column, which unfortunately, I cannot find online.
I agree with the judge in this case. SFX Motor Sports owns the copyright on the recorded “Supercross” motorcycle racing events. And they have sponsors that want their logos to be seen when those racing events are replayed. That translates into money, which Robert Davis is basically stealing.
I agree with #1. SFX has invested money, time, and energy into a business. While “free” is my favorite price, I recognize that it costs money to provide the video and servers that host this stuff.
1 & 2. Where is the copying?! He did not move the files to his server. He merely pointed to where the files were. Is telling people where a book is infringes copyright?! Please explain.
They should have just had the play-by-play guy read the ads.
#3, SN
SFX sued Davis in February, noting that fans who go to its own Web site will see the names and logos of sponsors including wireless company Amp’d Mobile. (Anyone who clicked on the link from Davis’ site, however, would not see the logos of companies that paid to be sponsors.)
If he linked to the home page then there most likely wouldn’t be any problem. The link, however, bypassed the revenue generating part of the SFX site. SFX still has to pay for the servers and obtaining the material that Davis gets for free. If Davis earned any income from this link, he did so at SFX’s expense.
From your article.:
…The court agrees that if Davis is not enjoined from providing unauthorized Webcast links on his Web site, SFX will lose its ability to sell sponsorships or advertisement on the basis that it is the exclusive source of the Webcasts, and such loss will cause irreparable harm.”
#5. Thanks for repeating an article I already read. But where is the infringment?! Where is the copying? Does the Dewey Decimal system violate copyright law because it shows were copyrighted material can be found? That’s all a link is, a direction to where something else is.
If the guy copied the materials to his own server, I’d agree 100%. But the internet is just that: An interconnected network. It’s a web. If you don’t want other people linked to your content, take it off the net.
If this case succeeds in creating new law, the net will cease to be legal. Suddenly all links to content, even those provided by search engines, will be illegal without permission.
Given the choice between destroying the internet or protecting ad revenues, what do you think is more important? Exactly how does destroying the internet “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” which is the sole basis of Copyright in the US.
Technical Solutions:
1) They could have their pages provide a cookie needed to play back the stream, so you have to go to any page(s) of the hoster’s choice to get the streams.
2) have the adds shown at the start of the stream before “going live”
3) Block hits with referer from his site (as stated in article)
Or the least intrusive for users and most robust answer:
4) Redirect requests with any external referrers for a stream to the entry page (with the ads) for that stream. This means that a link from anyone else’s site will take you to the main pages instead of the direct stream, which is exactly what the company claims is the problem.
Number 4 has the added benefit that it means the defendant is now providing a useful service for SFX; driving additional traffic (almost) directly to where they want to go.
There is no reason to sue over what your development team/web-masters could fix in a single afternoon of work.
If SFX Motor Sports’ technical architecture is that flawed, then they’re the ones who are to blame, not the guy who links to it. If they want to ensure that people got the advertisement, then add it to the audio/video stream.
Your headline is wrong. The decision was made by a federal judge; the ruling has nothing to do with Texas law, and isn’t confined to Texas.
Eugene Shubert: A company’s desire to make money doesn’t entitle them to keep people from learning what the URLs of their sites are. If it’s “stealing” to give people information that reduces the company’s revenue, then competing offerings are also “stealing.” There is no such thing as a right to success.
There are well-known technological means to prevent direct deep-links from working. But SFX Motor Sports is either too lazy or too stupid to do that, and wants to censor information about their site. The judge is either a crook or an idiot.
8 But where is the infringment?!
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,”…
Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The issue is not that linking to the files is “making copies” of them. That is obviously untrue.
The issue is that bypassing the ads is reducing/eliminating the value of the files, since the potential for revenue generated by the ads is reduced.
That was the whole point of the Microsoft vs Ticketmaster suit, in 1997.
http://www.visi.com/~sgrantz/june/2evils.html
Microsoft thought Ticketmaster would want pay to have its site displayed on M$’s “Sidewalk” portal.
Ticketmaster knew they were a “destination” site that people would try to find – no matter where they were – so they thought Microsoft should pay them for bringing their customers to Sidewalk.
Microsoft tells’em to pack sand, then direct-links to Ticketmaster’s ticket window – bypassing Ticketmaster’s [obnoxious] gauntlet of ads…
Ticketmaster still got its ticket surcharge for the sale, but sued over Microsoft showing Sidewalk customers M$’s ads while bypassing Tickmaster’s ads.
These stupid decisions will continue until the last of the old judges and politicians die off. When the people who are creating internet law have never used a computer themselves, don’t be surprised when those laws make no sense. Ted Stevens anyone??
The esteemed William Patry, copyright law expert, has a post on his blog about this case here:
Here’s a relevant portion of the post:
“But, in discussing defendant’s purported “affirmative defenses,” the court indicates defendant did no more than provide a link to plaintiff’s own site, which permitted consumers to listen to plaintiff’s stream of the broadcast while still remaining on defendant’s site. This seems consistent with plaintiff’s complaint that its loss was from advertising revenue: consumers would go to defendant’s site and not to plaintiff’s and thus reduce the audience size on plaintiff’s site. If true, there was no violation of the Copyright Act since the stream was plaintiff’s. This story on CNET supports the view that defendant did merely provide a link to plaintiff’s site, and thus this is a deeply disturbing opinion.”
What the defendant was doing is not protected under copyright law as it’s generally understood. This decision is an aberration and if the defendant wasn’t pro se (1) the decision would have gone the other way; and (2) it would be overturned on appeal.
#3.
It’s not a question of copying. It’s a matter of causing “irreparable harm” to the owner of the copyright. Theft is theft and the Golden Rule is a righteous principle. Jesus said, “Do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12. Confucius taught the same thing 500 years before Jesus and it’s a well-known Chinese proverb: “What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose on others.” (Analects 12:2).
#1, #2 and #10
So does this mean the Google (or any search engine) should also not be permitted to post links? It would seem that Google is doing precisely the same action by providing direct links to content while making money through their own advertising. What about http://www.dvorak.org? If you looked carefully, you could probably find examples of this behavior in a large portion of web sites.
This ruling is too vague and over reaching. I suspect this will not hold up under the supreme court.
Steve
Eugene you are full of crap. It is efforless to PREVENT deep linking of this sort with server based code. The web is ABOUT linking. You cannot say one kind of linking is OK and another kind of linking is not OK. How does one know which is which? This sort of thing is what will kill all the power of the web and supporting it in any way is misguided and dangerous. Simply put, by supporting this you have become a menace to society.
15 You cannot say one kind of linking is OK and another kind of linking is not OK. How does one know which is which?
A key test: Are you deep-linking for financial gain? i.e. bypassing the source’s ads so you can use their content to improve/maintain ad-based revenue on your own site?
And why deep-link, anyway? Why not just link to the entire page – ads & all? With all the ad & pop-up blockers available, who really has to look at ads anyway? Who even “sees” them anymore – even when they aren’t blocked.
15 This sort of thing is what will kill all the power of the web and supporting it in any way is misguided and dangerous.
This sort of thing is what makes content owners realize they need to erect barriers around their “property”, and add DRM to it… else it is effectively in the public domain.
I think the judge was correct. ESPECIALLY if the guy kept doing it after being asked to stop. Matt Drudge does it right. He references the site and doesn’t embed deeply to strip out ads. People who set these things up need to make a little money. Let the guy develop his own original content and profit from it. And let him link to pages on an external site that includes their ads rather than embed a media player or something.
To put it in perspective, if I had a way to strip out this article from John’s site and put it on mine with no reference to dvorak.org, I’m sure John would not be amused. It would be ripping him off.
Plus few of these sites make a ton of money. I own a newspaper that sells fewer copies than my web site gets. My paper gets about $6,000 a month in ad revenue. (It is in 45 stores in my county and is well read.) My web site has made less than $100 per year in ads. So the site is a loss. It would be wrong for someone to profit from my content in a sneaky way that makes it look as though the content is his own.
There is a difference in the dewey decimal system that references a book on a shelf and a giant bound unnabridged collection of works in their entirety with all copyright notices stripped and no royalties going to the authors and publishers.
Internet advocates have a right to preach about non-censorship–but we also have a responsibility to self regulate for fairness. If you invest in the speculative business of content production, you have a right to earn profit from it. It would be hypocritical to bitch about the RIAA and DRM and then oppose this judges ruling.
Corrected link to Ohio ebay article:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm
Sorry.
Did no one notice the deep link in this very article?
http://robola.wordpress.com/files/2006/08/modsquad3.jpg
The reason the web will not survive the lawyers is because they’re roaches, and we all know that a nuke will not kill them.
If you think about it, it’s a little ironic that if the defendant in this case had actually copied the media content to his own server (which is clearly illegal), that would have caused the plaintiff less financial harm than leeching it causes, due to the expense of maintaining additional server bandwidth. But this seems like one of those cases where copyright law is being stretched too far in light of how the law actually reads. This ruling seems consistent with the intent, but not the letter, of the law.
I’m inclined to agree with others here that the plaintiff should make an effort to block such leeching with simple server-side mechanisms. I heard from Senator Stevens that the internet is a series of tubes, so the necessary parts are probably available at the nearest hardware store 😉
It doesn’t matter if there were controls or not. The problem with not putting blocks on is you blame the victim. It doesn’t matter if you locked your car or not, it is still a crime to steal it. It doesn’t matter if she is dressed like a floozy, without consent it is still called rape. It doesn’t matter if there is no DRM code, to copy and distribute someone’s work without compensation is still copyright infringement.
The insult to injury here is when they even used the SFX servers and bandwidth. To those who feel this will kill the internet, I strongly disagree. Most of the accessible web depends upon commercial sites generating ad revenue to stay afloat. Without the revenue, we would end up having fund raising drives to keep up the servers and “tubes”.
Mr. Fusion, most of us who argued that server countermeasures should be taken were not trying to place any legal blame on the plaintiff for his resulting loss of revenue. Rather, the point is that when such preventative measures are readily available, they seem preferable to a lawsuit. To recycle one of your analogies, leaving my car unlocked doesn’t place the blame on me if it gets stolen, but locking it still seems prudent as a form of theft prevention. Some people would even call me an idiot for intentionally not locking it.
Everyone should keep in mind that this isn’t over yet — this was only a ruling on the motion for a preliminary injunction based on the potential loss of revenue to the plaintiff until the underlying case can be decided. The judge said that the plaintiff showed a “substantial likelihood” of prevailing, but the defendant may have lost this round for no other reason than the fact that he represented himself, and not very well (as the judge implies in his ruling).
And even so, this ruling does not appear to go outside the scope of “a copied display or performance of SFX’s copyrightable material.” Unless a final court decision goes well beyond that, the potential of this case to cause the death of the web is being highly exaggerated.
#24, I agree that one is probably an idiot for not locking his car. Your (or my) idiocy is irrelevant though. The act done to us is what is important. Yet, several times people have directly laid the blame on SFX.
#7, whole post,
#8, first sentence.
#9, last paragraph,
# 15, last paragraph,
#18, first paragraph,
Although I agree a little prudence goes a long way, we still must not lose sight that Davis gained at SFX’s expense. And yes, I usually lock my car at night and my home when we are out.
Good discussion. Not much name calling.