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Electronic Frontier Foundation Media ReleaseEFF Defends Internet LinkingAsks Court to Rehear Ditto.com CaseFor Immediate Release: Wednesday, February 27, 2002San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed a brief on behalf of Ditto.com, urging the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling that threatens to make all linking on the World Wide Web a copyright infringement. In order to hold Ditto.com liable for copyright infringement, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals created a novel legal rationale. It found that linking to a website without permission infringes the public display rights of the website owner. "Extending copyright law to all linking on the Web would be a nightmare," said EFF Senior Intellectual Policy Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "A whole new flurry of lawyer letters would chill linking on the Web, striking at the heart of free expression on the Internet." Ditto.com is a search engine that helps people find publicly available image files on the Web. So, for example, by entering "sailboat" into the Ditto website, the searcher would be shown a selection of images of sailboats from around the Web. Ditto both presented the images in reduced form, known as thumbnails, and also provided links that would allow the searcher to open the full-size image in a new web browser window. Ditto was sued by Les Kelly, a photographer, after Kelly discovered that Ditto had indexed his website and the images found there. Ditto.com prevailed before the trial court, but suffered a defeat on appeal before the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Although the Ninth Circuit found that Ditto.com's use of thumbnail images was allowed under the copyright law doctrine of "fair use," it held Ditto.com liable for copyright infringement for opening a new window to display the image. This technique is known as "in-line linking" or "framing" and is commonly used by numerous other Web search engines, including Lycos, Google, and Altavista. By concluding that these common linking techniques infringe copyright law, the Ninth Circuit has seriously threatened linking on the Web. EFF filed an amicus brief on Ditto.com's behalf, asking the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its decision. The case title is Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., No. 00-55521, decided on February 6, 2002. [Arriba Soft is the former name of Ditto.com Inc.] Links:
For documents related to the Ditto.com case: About EFF:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties
organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in
1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to
support free expression, privacy, and openness in the information
society. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the
most linked-to Web sites in the world: Contacts:
Cindy Cohn, EFF Legal Director
Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney - end -
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