kevvyc submits:
The Financial Times has an editorial about a recent ruling by the 9th Circuit:
The ninth circuit US court of appeals is being lobbied to reconsider a dangerous if little noticed decision handed down in February. The case involves the quintessential web practice of linking. Critics say it could turn almost every web link into an act of copyright infringement, threatening the unique value of the web as a tool of knowledge by preventing people from finding their way around it.
The case, Kelly v Arriba Soft Corp, involves a "visual search engine" located at www.ditto.com. Ditto (formerly known as Arriba) trawls the web to produce "thumbnail" images of millions of photographs including those of Les Kelly, a photographer of the American West, who sued them for reproducing miniatures of his images without his permission, and using them to link to his original photos.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court rebuffed Kelly on his thumbnail claim, ruling that it was legal "fair use" for Ditto to display the tiny images.
But in a much more far-reaching ruling, the court said Ditto could not also send users to the original photo through a link. It was the first time an appellate court had ruled on the issue of "in-line linking" or "framing", the practice followed by many search engines of providing a link that opens a browser window displaying material from another website.
Ernest Miller adds:
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation — EFF Defends Internet Linking: Asks Court to Rehear Ditto.com Case.
Kelly's website on the case (NetCopyRightLaw).
Read the decision [PDF].