Our clients have been asking us about the legality of using external links (a link to another web site) within the content of their corporate web sites.
Although linking to other sites from your site without permission is a generally accepted practice, it is not without risk. In general, a link to another site’s home page is fine. Many content sites, however, prefer that you seek permission before bypassing their home page by linking to a page
inside their site.
Although seeking advance permission is a task often skipped, it does have a benefit that is not initially obvious: many pages deep within a site may be moved, removed or be placed behind a log-in in a members-only area after a period of time. If you communicate with the site owner for permission
before you link to their site, you can plan ahead.
Want to learn about linking to and using content from other sites without breaking the law? If so, the
MVP Law Group has a terrific article (written for the layperson) called:
Getting Permission To Publish: Ten Tips for Webmasters
After all, with Digital Positions and
i3SiteTools, our
Site Management System,
you are the webmaster!
And,
YES, we did get advance permission to link to the MVP Law Group's article!
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And you're spot-on: linking is legal. Inlining, framing, posting PDFs of the original page content, etc are where folks get into legal trouble.
However, our larger clients have expressed concern about the potential legal exposure. Unfortunately, should a site owner feel that there has been a copyright violation, the corporation still has to respond to the filing ... regardless of the legal precedent.
More and more of our clients are seeking advance permission rather than asking for forgiveness.
- David Taylor-Klaus