Imagine a Web with No Links

First, there was that case in New York in which a federal court ordered a hacker e-zine to stop linking to certain other sites. The reason? Those sites had computer code that contributed to copyright infringement, even though the links in themselves did not tread on any legal rights whatsoever.

Then earlier this month, Internet auctioneer eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) announced that it is going to start strictly enforcing an existing policy that prohibits users from including links heading out of eBay in their reader-generated content.

And now we have Yahoo! supposedly making behind-the-scenes maneuvers to alter the directories and links that help Web surfers navigate its clubs and groups sites. Yahoo! told the New York Times that alteration of the links is being "evaluated," but already, a group of angry Yahoo! users are busy passing around petitions asking the company to stop messing around.

Bad Content?

Okay, sure, the links in the New York case were to other sites that posted the code used to break into DVDs and infringe valid copyrights. And yes, good arguments can be made that eBay users should not use the auction site purely as the meeting ground for making off-site deals without paying the piper.

And you're right, the Yahoo! crackdown on the directories and links in its clubs section is directed to adult content, and is being made in response to legitimate concerns about the accessibility of pornographic content.

The problem is that when censorship starts, it always starts at the fringe. No one believes that their own speech will be curtailed -- until it is.

Let's Be Sensible

Now, I'm not one of those idiots who thinks that all speech should be "free" and uncensored. Free speech does not mean all speech and the First Amendment only restricts government limits on speech. Corporations are not bound by First Amendment guarantees.

Indeed, there are plenty of good reasons to limit speech, including the prevention of injuries caused by libel and slander, child pornography, threats to national security, copyright infringement, invasions of privacy, and so on.

But the new laws and corporate rules prohibiting reader-generated links don't fall into those exceptions.

Wink, Wink

In the New York case, which is now on appeal, Eric Corely (aka Emmanuel Goldstein), the publisher of the hacker e-zine 2600, was barred by the court from posting or linking to a computer code called DeCSS, which descrambles DVD content.

That content is intentionally scrambled by the copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying. So actually using the code contributes to infringement -- that seems fairly clear.

However, using the code, posting the code and linking to the code are three different things. Posting code that leads to infringement is probably contributory infringement in the same way that using the code is, although that's debatable.

But just linking to the code? That's information of interest, not a copyright infringement.

Enforce This

What about eBay's link ban? The company says that starting May 31st, it plans to enforce a company policy banning any links that lead its auction users to other Web sites.

Although eBay will ban the links from pages within the auction section, sellers may continue to use the "About Me" page to provide links to their own homepages or storefronts.

According to eBay, "sellers that attempt to divert buyers off eBay potentially decrease the value of the marketplace to the entire community."

Held in eBayance

However, it's clear that eBay is working to cut down on the number of non-eBay sales made by buyers and sellers who find one another on its site. That's a laudable goal -- if you work in the marketing department at eBay.

However, eBay long ago positioned itself as a community site. Most of its content is reader-generated. If that's the case, eBay needs to go all the way -- including whatever links people want to insert in their texts so others can understand what is being offered and discussed.

Locking people either in -- or out -- of a community site is not exactly good community relations. Yahoo!, are you listening?

Missing the Links

Linking from one site to another is the very nature of the Web. Imagine a Web without any links at all? No such thing, right? It's some kind of Zen Buddhist koan, a paradox to be meditated upon, as in "imagine a forest without any trees."

Forget about the unthinkable for now and contemplate instead a Web with only the links that either Uncle Sam endorses or Daddy Corporate wants you to see. That's an Internet that will never reach its potential.

The very strength of the Web is its hypertext capability, allowing one site to link to and access another site. When the Internet was primarily a research network, linking was encouraged by scholars and Web surfers alike.

Nervous Time

Now we have the Internet giants looking to boost revenues, and many believing that the Internet is more of a trade channel than it is a research tool. So the fact that Internet businesses and the courts are making rules about when and how links can be inserted, even in reader-generated content, is not that surprising.

But it should be alarming.

The glorious thing about the Internet is that people can use it to connect people to people and ideas to ideas, and people to ideas and so on and so on. And that a single person can travel around on it anywhere to find out anything about anything at all. Well, at least for now.

What do you think? Let's talk about it.