Linking to other sites: It’s a jungle out there

It used to be that companies, figuring any traffic is better than no traffic, wanted as many Web links to their sites as possible.
Then, as the Web developed, some companies got cranky about how those links were done. So how do you link to somebody else
without worrying about making them mad? The truth is, nobody knows. The law here is moving forward by inches, because most
cases are settled, not adjudicated. You just have to put out the links and see what happens, like with most of the Web.

Only a month ago, for example, New York-based Gatehouse Media settled with The New York Times, which owns the site Boston.com,
for violating Gatehouse’s copyright. Boston.com had been showing Gatehouse’s headlines and a teasing little bit of stories
on its own site. Boston. com was acting as an "aggregator," finding other sites’ material and pulling it all into one place
for its readers’ convenience.

Gatehouse took Boston.com to court, claiming Boston.com was effectively stealing Gatehouse’s hard-won copy, a practice known
in the trade as "scraping." After some posturing, the two settled; Boston. com can still link to Gatehouse, but it can’t display
any of Gatehouse’s content. That didn’t really settle anything, and news sites like Google still use snippets of stories as
teasers.

Of even greater importance was the Ticketmaster "deep-linking" case from 2000. The site Tickets.com was routinely sending ticket
buyers to Ticketmaster to purchase their tickets, but not to Ticketmaster’s home page. Tickets.com linked instead to pages
deeper within the site, directly to the pages where the buying sequence could start. The home page, however, is a Ticketmaster
billboard of sorts that earns Ticketmaster untold wealth from advertiser dollars, and visitors who arrived from other sites’
"deep links" bypassed those ads. Ticketmaster sued and lost.

This wasn’t the first time Ticketmaster had angrily punched the lawyer button on its speed dial. In 1997, Microsoft ran a
site called "Sidewalk" that did essentially the same thing Tickets.com would do a couple of years later: deep-link to Ticketmaster’s
purchasing pages. A war of sorts ensued as Ticketmaster grumpily refused to allow visitors from Sidewalk to even enter its
site, which seems like an odd way of treating customers. By 1999, both sides apparently tired of the flap and settled. Sidewalk
had proven to be a loser, anyway, and Microsoft did the prudent thing, ultimately selling much of Sidewalk to Ticketmaster.
But the issue of deep-linking was settled, for most situations. You can still do it, and the courts won’t make you stop.

But aggrieved companies can be infinitely creative. Last April, BlockShopper, a real estate news site, wrote and displayed
its own home-grown headline about a local lawyer buying a property, then BlockShopper linked to the lawyer’s bio on the law
firm’s home page using the language, "New Jones Day Lawyer Spends $760K on Sheffield." For some reason never fully spelled
out, the 2,300-lawyer behemoth firm of Jones Day then filed suit against the tiny online startup, claiming BlockShopper had
somehow violated Jones Day’s trademark.

Trademarks are protected so the public won’t be misled about products or services identified with particular companies. It’s
been said trademarks are some of the most valuable assets in the world. Often a failing but well-known brand will be purchased
by a competitor for its trademarks more than anything tangible. It’s understandable that any large company, even a law firm,
would be a bit touchy about its name. But BlockShopper didn’t try to portray itself as a competitor to Jones Day, or to affiliate
itself with Jones Day. It simply linked to Jones Day.

The case was finally settled, as most of them are, after BlockShopper was out some $100,000 in legal fees. The only change
was that BlockShopper had to stop using "embedded links," or links that are also text. For example, the link can’t look like
only "Law Firm Lawyer Buys Home," but "Law Firm Lawyer Buys Home (www. thatlawfirm.com/lawyer)".

How do you protect yourself from such suits? One strategy is to stop linking to anyone else, and that’s what many companies
now do. Another strategy is to avoid any form of linking that has previously caused anybody heartburn. As BlockShopper found
out, that doesn’t always work, either. Lawyers aren’t a lot of help, because there’s not much settled law about the issue.
A third strategy is to just do what seems reasonable, and be prepared to backtrack if somebody complains. That’s Google’s
approach, apparently. But then, Google presumably has enough lawyers of its own to repopulate a small town.

It may be time for our Washington lawmakers to take action on this, before the simple act of linking on the Web becomes surrounded
by an impenetrable crazy quilt of settlements, agreements and local custom.

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Altom is an independent local technology consultant. His column appears every other week. Listen to his column via podcast
at www.ibj.com. He can be reached at timaltom@sbcglobal.net. Find his blog at usabilitynome.blogspot.com.