By David H.
Rothman
(From the Christian
Science Monitor
of Dec. 3, 1996)
The Wisharts are the Citizen Kanes of the Shetland Islands, the windy isles 103 miles north of the Scottish mainland.
Almost every adult among the 23,000 Shetlanders reads the family's newspaper. For good measure, the Wisharts also publish a monthly magazine, local histories and poetry, and a shelf full of other books on topics ranging from trout fishing to the inevitable ponies and knitwear.
Now, with Kane-like determination, the Wisharts are feuding with an ex-editor of theirs -- Jonathan Wills, a bright, uppity PhD who has worked for the BBC and The Times of London.
Scotland's highest court is to rule in the next few months on the legality of unauthorized links that Mr. Wills's electronic newspaper made to the Internet edition of the Wisharts' Shetland Times. The wrong outcome could do billions of dollars in damage to future business on the Web.
"This decision will set an international precedent regarding the ability to create pointers to business Web pages without explicit permission to do so," says Dan L. Burke, an internationally recognized expert on Internet copyright.
Scotland's highest court is to rule on the legality of unauthorized links. The wrong outcome could do billions of dollars in damage to future business on the Web.
These links are how Netfolks scoot from one World Wide Web site to another. They click their mice on a word highlighted in a different color from surrounding text, or on an image associated with the other site. Links don't copy material. They merely point you in the right direction, just like a phone book or library catalog.
I run Web areas with scads of links to and from others as far off as Australia, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Let the whole cosmos read my political writings or the ads that I'll soon run on my real estate page. And if I felt otherwise? A password system could limit my readership. Or I could rig my Web site to make the links within it keep changing constantly, so that other people's areas couldn't point to individual items without permission. Who needs lawyers when technology can do the job?
If the Wisharts win in Scotland's Court of Session, however, and if our own courts eventually rule the same way, then people like me may have to rip out zillions of impromptu links rather than mess with onerous legalities. What's more, sites like the popular Yahoo index might be virtually useless if links typically needed permission.
So how come the Citizen Wisharts are willing to risk wreaking havoc on Netfolks, while the gutsy Wills defends linking? One need only tour the Web sites of Wills's Shetland News and the Wisharts' Times to see why.
The News site, "Britain's first local daily paper on the Internet," exemplifies the Net as a nirvana for the cash-strapped but talented. Graeme Storey, a photographer friend of Wills, came up with the idea. The two were on a boat in "half a gale," having chased a dud of a news story, and both felt surly. Storey challenged Wills to go online with what is now the News. The idea clicked. Thousands of honorary expatriates had put in military or corporate service on the islands.
"At least 4,500 people are regularly reading us every day in more than 55 countries," Wills says. And, not surprisingly, the News sparkles with colorful ads from such companies as P&O Scottish Ferries and the Shetland Knitwear Association. His paper runs not just routine news stories but spry and wry commentary.
Clearly, this longtime Shetland resident sees his work as a mission rather than a mere vocation, and, judging from his fan mail, readers share his enthusiasms.
"Now I have a chance to once again return to your beautiful islands," wrote a former Coast Guardsman from Rome, N.Y. "It is not quite the same as being there, but through the Internet, your newspaper articles and pictures have again made that connection to my heart. I am forever grateful."
The News offers helpful links to put people at ease on the Net. While it did send readers to individual stories within the electronic edition of the Shetland Times -- until a judge restrained it, pending a decision -- Wills says he was careful to identify material from the Times's reporters. I wish the identifications had been more noticeable. But, on the basis of a sample page I saw, they were there; besides, the Times could slap its masthead on its own pages and put ads there, too.
The News also offered -- and still does -- links to CNN's Net site and other prominent ones on the Net.
Between the well-chosen links and hundreds of pages of original material, the News was hardly just a repackaged Times. When a temporary judicial order came for the News to remove its links to the Times, they had been in place for all of two weeks or so.
Contrast the News site to the one that the Times started three months after the News hit the Net. Wills and Storey are hardly making a mint off ads, but have enjoyed far more advertising in cyberspace than the Times has. I'm not surprised. Too much of the writing on the Times site is J-school formulaic. Even more striking, however, is the scarcity of conspicuous links to sites elsewhere on the Net. It's as if, not content to be on an island in real life, the Shetland Times wants to be an island in cyberspace. That may be fine for the Wisharts, but not for mainlanders like me.
David H. Rothman, a writer in Alexandria, Va., is most recently author of NetWorld!: What People Are Really Doing on the Internet and What It Means to You (Prima).
Click here for subscription information for the Monitor.
OTHER LINKS (SUGGESTIONS WELCOME)
Please note that many news organizations thumb their noses at the Web and do not give stable Web addresses for news articles, even archived stories. So I cannot guarantee that the items below will be around. This, of course, is an entirely different issue from the legality of Web links.
TotalNews, Publishers
Settle Suit, from C|Net's
news.com. Also see the
actual settlement, reproduced by Law Journal Extra!, and a collection of related articles from NewsTracker. I can't believe the stupidity of the big
media here. They've forced TotalNews to take out a links license,
a complete travesty of the original concept of the Web. Beyond
that, keep in mind that the media excel as packagers; what
happens when other sites sue them over unauthorized
links? Even governmental entities might put up copyrighted material on the Net (as has already happened in Georgia) and
someday require permission to link. While the recent controversy
has been over framing, I
see some dangerous precedents that raise much broader questions
for journalists and their employers. Of course that's aside from
the main point the media bullies made: that Dow Jones, the
Washington Post and the rest had more legal resources than little
TotalNews. So, gang, what else is new? Would that A.J. Leibling
were alive and wired to report on this.
Microsoft Lawsuit Tests Web's Linking
Practices, from the Seattle
Times of April
29, 1997. In a lawsuit of Bleak House-level inanity,
Ticketmaster (owned mainly by Paul Allen) is suing Microsoft
(which Allen cofounded and where he sits on the board and owns
nine percent of the stock) to prevent it from linking. The Times
quotes Ticketmaster's brief: "By accessing Ticketmaster's
live-event information and services without Ticketmaster's
approval, and by prominently offering it as a service to their
users, Microsoft is feathering its own nest at Ticketmaster's
expense. It is, in effect, committing electronic piracy."
Just as Paul Allen's C|Net
does if ad-supported NEWS.COM links to Web pages without asking permission? One
could almost call the lawsuit "Allen vs. Allen." 
Allen is selling his shares
in C|Net. Just the same, the suit remains just as absurd as ever.
Ticketmaster Lawsuit Accuses Microsoft Of
'Piracy', April 29 story
from Reuter via Yahoo.
MS Link Irks Ticketmaster, from NEWS.COM of April 29, 1997.
Aiming at the Heart of the Web, from Cal
Law of April 30,
1997. Includes copy of Ticketmaster's complaint.
Ticketmaster Sues Microsoft over Sidewalk
Links, from Wired
News of May 2, 1997.
Groups Express Shock at Ticketmaster Move, from TechWire of
May 3, 1997.
Ticketmaster vs. Microsoft, from BusinessWeek of May 12, 1997.
Update of
March 24, 1997, from Jonathan Wills, editor of the Shetland News.
The Shetland News Appeal Fund page, a perfect example of the kind of activism
page that might suffer if free-and-easy linking vanished.
Shetland News is a parasite, says
Wishart. From the Shetland
News.
What the Judge said in 'The Shetland Times'
case. Shetland
News.
The Internet copyright case and its
implications for users of the WWW, by Prof. Charles Oppenheim, an electronic-library expert at De
Montfort University. He
sits on the advisory board of the Journal of Information Law and Technology.
Online Publishers Wage a Battle Over Frame
and Fortune, from the Washington
Post of February
11, 1997. What if Web Publication #1 uses framing to display articles from Web Publication #2 while simultaneously
showing #1's ads? Also see The Bad News about Total News, a Netly News article discussing TotalNews--a Web site that sends you to news stories
elsewhere without constantly showing their URLs. An executive
with Fox News
blasts the Total people as "leeches." As reported by Netly
News, CNN lawyers,
too, have been at odds with Total. And now the National
Law Journal says the
Washington Post, CNN
and Reuters have
actually gone ahead and sued
TotalNews. In March 3 column online, PC
Magazine columnist
John Dvorak sees the suit as a threat to the future of the Web. "It's important that we do
something," he says, "including considering a boycott
against these publishers, as well as a letter-and-fax
campaign."
Steve Outing's Editor and Publisher Column
on Shetland Dispute.
The Day the Sites Went Out in Georgia?--On Another
Link Controversy
Images, links, URLs create problems for Web
liability, an Advertising
Age article by Jonathan
I. Ezor, an Internet business lawyer with Davis and Gilbert in New York--and general
counsel of a Java developers group. Ezor offers concrete tips for reducing
link-related risks.
A newsletter from Russell McVeagh McKenzie Bartleet & Co.,
in New Zealand--which reports on the link controversies down there.
The Missing Links of the Washington Post. A different kind of controversy. The Post
is using technology, not lawyers, in this case to discourage
permanent links from other Web sites.
Related: The lowdown on
the intellectual property treaties just passed in Geneva.