Linking, Framing, and Inlining
Every website developer should know when using deep links, frames, and others' graphics is allowed, and when it can lead to trouble.
Using deep links, frames, and others' graphics on your site can make it appear more robust and provide a better user experience, but it may not please the affected website owners.
Linking
Linking is so fundamental to the functioning of the World Wide Web that many users feel that any legal restriction on their use of links is a violation of the right to travel and speak freely in cyberspace. But many businesses who don't want their valuable content associated with or connected to certain sites are far less enthusiastic about some aspects of linking. Here, we briefly discuss some of the legal principles that may limit the right to link.
Deep linking. Deep linking allows visitors to bypass information and advertisements at the home page and go directly to an internal page. As a result, linked-to sites can lose income, because their revenues are often tied to the number of viewers who pass through their home page. Some businesses also dislike the practice because it may mistakenly create the impression in a user's mind that the two linked sites endorse each other.
However, there is no law prohibiting deep linking, and no U.S. court has prohibited the practice. In one case decided in March 2000, a federal court ruled that the use of deep links did not violate copyright law. In this case, Tickets.com, an online ticket service, provided deep links to Ticketmaster pages to provide users with certain ticket purchases. Tickets.com prefaced the link by stating "These tickets are sold by another ticketing company. Although we can't sell them to you, the link above will take you directly to the other company's web site where you can purchase them." This disclaimer eliminated the claim of unfair competition as well, because there was no confusion as to the source of the ticket purchase. Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.Com, Inc, 2000 US Dist. LEXIS 12987 (2000).
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