Thursday, December 21, 2006

Bad linking case

In a case that apparently ignores virtually all other cases on copyright liability for linking, the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas entered a Preliminary Injunction against Supercrosslive.com for posting a link on its website to a live webcast of motorcycle racing events, the copyright to which webcast was owned by plaintiff. There was no apparent actual copying of any work by the defendant--from the Memorandum Opinion, it appears his only act was to host a link to the webcast on his site! Presumably, this was some sort of a deep link that permitted "clickers" to bypass a pay login screen and obtain plaintiff's live webcast for free. See Live Nation Motor Sports v. Davis, (No. 3:06-CV-276-L, ND Texas, Dallas Division, December 11, 2006). There was no indication, however,that any of plaintiff's content ever appeared on or was resident on defendant's site or servers, and there was no evidence of any actual copying or public performance or other conduct that might violate Section 106, other than the link. What am I missing here?