This Is Your Deep Link On P2P

from the is-it? dept

Last July, a Danish court that didn't understand what the internet is, ruled that deep linking was illegal and forced the company NewsBooster to stop linking to articles that were beneath the front page of a news website. Now, NewsBooster is trying to get around that ruling by offering a desktop client software which does the same thing. Wired News is claiming that this is take a page from the P2P networks, but there's no indication here that there's any P2P involved at all. The article does a terrible job explaining how the desktop client works or how it's similar to a P2P system (other than that it uses a desktop client). I'm also not sure how simply continuing the deep linking from a desktop client is any different from deep linking from a web browser. It still involves deep linking. While the article claims that NewsBooster believes this gets them around the legal ruling, they don't explain how. While I believe that there's absolutely nothing wrong with deep linking, this seems like a risky strategy. I could certainly see the courts (and the ridiculous newspaper that started this mess) getting even more upset because NewsBooster is clearly just looking for loopholes in the semantics of the ruling.
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