Illegal links should worry British websites

NEWS A Danish judge has banned a news site from linking to the web pages of certain newspapers. The Danish Newspaper Publishers Association has won an injunction to prevent Newsbooster.com from placing links on its sites that skip the home page of other news sites going straight to specific stories. This reflects the ongoing concern publishers have about how deep-linking might de-value online advertising. Remember the famous case of the Shetland Times versus Shetland News back in 1997? Probably not. The issue was the same but the case never went to trial. Newsbooster, meanwhile remains defiant and is plotting an appeal. It argues that links and the ability to go directly to a certain page are at the heart of how the web operates. Its CEO, Anders Lautrup-Larsen issued a statement saying: "We had a decision that we believe is quite wrong, we believe that the decision will hurt the Scandinavian market and development for search engine technologies." One internet company that has been following the case very closely is content aggregator NewsNow.co.uk. It is not, however, overly concerned by the ruling. Alex Hazell, marketing manager at NewsNow, told silicon.com: "We're not bracing ourselves - this is just one publisher flexing their muscles. We know of lots of publishers that are very happy with our service. We're very surprised at the outcome... I think it's likely that the decision was made by someone that doesn't understand how the internet works." Kate Fox, a lawyer at legal firm Eversheds, explained that under the European Copyright Directive, copyright law is the same in every member state. However, she argues this does not necessarily mean the Danish case will set a precedent for the UK because "different countries have different judges who will respond in different ways". She did, however, conclude: "If I were NewsNow I'd be worried."