What is deep linking? A simple concept that has been around
since the beginning of the World Wide Web, deep linking is the practice of
creating links directly to individual web pages within a site, rather than to
the home page. Interestingly, a large part of the Internet community agrees that
deep linking was one of the fundamental design principles that helped the Web
grow as quickly as it did. Deep linking made it simple for people to directly
access individual Web pages. Put simply, deep links are nothing more than a URL
and some words describing that URL.
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Deep links, which have always given rise to controversies
and litigations abroad, have now recently hit our very own country as well (See
interview with Ambarish Raghuvanshi, CFO, Naukri.com). One of the most
interesting cases in the history of deep linking is a court case that was
brought by the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association against Newsbooster.com.
Newsbooster took news from thousands of newspapers, extracting direct links to
these stories using headlines as the link text. Unlike search engines, which
also crawl and index the full text of web pages, Newsbooster extracted only
links and titles.
The Newspaper Publishers Association argued that in
bypassing their front pages, Newsbooster links deprived them of advertising
revenue. Further, they asserted that Newsbooster is in direct competition with
newspapers. Newsbooster lost the case on the basis of the Danish Copyright Act.
Deep linking has always raked in controversies in terms the
legalities of the action. However, a large number of people argue that if deep
linking is illegal, search engines are the worst offenders, because they create
deep links to the entire Web. So, do we put them out of business?
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'A Database
Protection Act should be incorporated in the IT Act'
-Ambarish Raghuvanshi, chief financial officer, Naukri.com
In the first of such
cases in India, the Delhi High Court recently passed an interim order
restraining an 'aggregator' website Bixee.com from deep linking and
aggregating content from leading job site Naukri.com. Ambarish
Raghuvanshi, chief financial officer, Naukri.com talks to
Jasmine Kaur of Dataquest about the company's experience
How was Bixee.com
operating? How do websites such as Bixee benefit from deep linking?
Using software programs, Bixee was sending out automated programs called
spiders and crawlers. These repeatedly crawled successively on Indian
jobsites and copied job postings that have been uploaded there. These job
postings were reproduced in the form of classifieds along with which a
deep link was provided directly to the corresponding job posting on the
original website. In this manner, Bixee.com was building up and updating
its database of jobs, as a parasite. Every time a user made a search on
Bixee.com, automatically jobs from almost all jobsites were displayed.
How this operating
model affected Naukri's business?
The database of Naukri was created after investing in labor, skill and
resources. Bixee was using this database. While in the short run, such
aggregation helps the original website to get more hits per page, in the
long run the host loses on revenues as the aggregator becomes a business
competitor. In our case, job seekers were uploading their jobs directly on
Bixee. A well-known business magazine in September 2005 had carried news
brief on Bixee, calling it the Google of Indian jobsites. Along with such
an exposure, Bixee was encouraging recruiters to upload jobs directly on
Bixee while using the database of Naukri to attract traffic.
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Understanding
Deep Linking
Deep linking, on the World Wide Web, is the act of placing on a Web
page a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image in another
website, as opposed to that website's main or home page. Such
links are called deep links.
In the current
case, Bixee.com had set up a website which enabled the users to
search for jobs on various websites such as Naukri.com and others.
Providing hyperlinks, which led users directly to the jobs they
wished to view, did this. In the process home pages of the jobsites
were completely bypassed. This was caused Naukri to lose out on
account of advertisement revenues, and Bixee gaining an unfair edge
by becoming a business competitor, while using the database of
Naukri to attract traffic.
In a similar case
in the US, eBay had slapped a lawsuit on Bidders Edge for
unauthorized intrusion on the grounds of unfair competition and
stress on eBay's network resources. The case was settled out of
court and Bidders Edge decided not to pursue further searches on
eBay. |
How did you come to
know about Bixee's overtures and what you did to prevent further
information outflow?
Though our site explicitly prohibits deep linking in our terms and
conditions, in September 2005 our monitoring cell became aware of the fact
that our jobs were coming at a third party site called Bixee. We took
steps to protect our databases from Bixee by blocking their IP addresses,
but Bixee circumvented them to come back again using other IP addresses.
In November 2005 we
filed a suit for Rs 50 lakh in damages against Bixee.com. These were on
the basis of potential loss of revenue and heavy strain on network
resources. The Delhi High court has now extended protection to our site
and Bixee.com has been restrained from copying, downloading and
reproducing the content of Naukri.
Are the existing
legislations in India sufficient for protection in the context of deep
linking? What are the international norms in this regard?
Though specific laws for protection of online databases do not exist, the
courts have been very proactive in interpreting the law to new technology.
Naukri's databases are protected under the copyright act, but with
e-businesses expanding in India, there is a growing need for a Database
Protection Act that should be incorporated in IT Act. While in the US,
similar cases come under the gambit of unfair competition; in Europe the
Database Right gives automatic protection to online databases. |
Supporters of deep linking say that even academicians deep
link. How else would you explain the footnotes to specific articles using exact
page numbers in the journals that published them? This community feels that the
whole point of having a public website is to encourage users to visit, and deep
links make finding and visiting sites easy. Home pages, typically offering
cluttered design and feeble excuses for site search tools, make finding content
much more difficult.
Making
News |
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Some of the best
known court cases in deep linking
Shetland
Times vs Shetland News
The first deep linking case was filed in 1996 in Scotland, involving The
Shetland Times, a newspaper and The Shetland News, a news delivery
website. The news posted headlines from the Shetland Times, using actual
Shetland Times headlines as the text of the hypertext link. For example,
one such link on the Shetland News home page was 'New Prime Minister
Elected,' which linked directly to a story in the Shetland Times with
the exact same headline. This was not the only complaint. The links also
bypassed the Shetland Times home page, which carried large volumes of
advertising.
Status: In October 1996, Scotland's
Court of Session banned the links. The Scottish Court did not rule on the
matter of deep linking.
Ticketmaster vs. Microsoft
In April, 1997, Ticketmaster filed a complaint in Federal Court in the
Central District of California alleging that “Microsoft's actions
diluted their trademarks; created a false, deceptive, and misleading
representation.”
Microsoft at that time
operated Sidewalk, a recreational and cultural guide website. If a
Sidewalk user wanted to buy a ticket to a particular event mentioned on
the site, Sidewalk offered them a link to Ticketmaster's ticket purchase
page, promoting Ticketmaster sales in the process. What was the bone of
contention was the link bypassed the advertising and other proprietary
information on their home page.
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Status:
In February of 1999, the 2-year-old lawsuit was settled out of
court.
Ticketmaster
vs Tickets.com
Ticketmaster uses its website to sell tickets for events to its customers
and so does Tickets.com. But, Tickets.com also lists information about
tickets available from other sources. Tickets.com even explained this on
their website.
Ticketmaster claimed
that when Tickets.com transferred a customer to a Web page deep within
their site, it caused the customer to bypass the Ticketmaster home page.
The issue: they had ads on their home page and advertisers payed a lot of
money to be seen there, and deep linking interfered with their ability to
raise revenue. Ticketmaster believes that deep linking is legally wrong
because it violates sections of the 'terms and conditions' at the
bottom of their home page.
Status: In April, 2000, Federal Judge
disagreed with Ticketmaster on several claims, ruling in favor of
Tickets.com. The judge ruled that hyperlinking does not itself involve a
violation of the Copyright Act since no copying was involved. |
People
argue that if deep linking is illegal, aren't search engines the worst
offenders?
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There is no decided case law in the area of deep linking,
although there have been several high profile cases settled out of court and a
recent partial decision in one large case. The legal implications of court
rulings could be enormous. Even search engines could be affected, as nearly all
of them, such as Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, etc. base their operations on a form
of deep linking. Their function could be severely restricted by blanket
legislation or bad litigation results in deep linking cases.
Most of the deep linking cases so far have left the
Internet community confounded largely due to the opposing nature of verdicts
(See Making News). So if one has to take a call on the legalities of deep
linking, one simply ends up with no solutions. Most of the cases, due to the
contradictory nature of judgements, leaves the victim (whether the plaintiff or
the defendant) quite confused. Many companies are today addressing their deep
linking concerns by creating policies. This seems logical-if you don't want
links pointing to your site, then say so. Are the linking policies legally
binding? That is the question many companies and attorneys are trying to find
out. In the Indian context, the copyright law has worked so far with the Delhi
High court extending protection to Naukri (the plaintiff) by passing an interim
order restraining bixee.com from copying, downloading, and reproducing the
content of Naukri.
Bhaswati Chakravorty
bhaswatic@cybermedia.co.in
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