Is Deep Linking Ethical?

When there is technology available to allow content providers and owners control over who can access their online content, there is no need for law regulating deep linking. When content is posted in a public forum, content providers have to accept that people may want to use it. Indeed, many content providers want users to visit their pages, any pages, to help them in their Web rankings. The higher their Web ranking, the higher they appear on the list in search engines. When a person goes to a seminar and is provided handouts and content, the person may not use that content in a manner that violates copyright law. However, that same person may tell an associate where it is located so that associate can read the material. This is not unethical. In the same way, when a content provider posts information on the World Wide Web, he or she has given access to that content to the world. It is not unethical for anyone to provide a link to that content to site visitors.

Since content providers have the ability to limit access to their materials should they choose to do so, or at least the ability to hire those with the know-how to do this for them, content they do not limit access to is open to the world. It is not unethical for an a Web designer or an instructor to make use of those materials, as long as there is no copyright violation, such as claiming ownership of the material, or charging visitors for the use of the materials. To pass laws to the contrary limits the usefulness of the World Wide Web to all concerned, and will create a hodge-podge of unrelated, unconnected, and unusable information.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have from the beginning been open to hyperlinking. While some changes are inevitable, changes in the area of deep linking would have long lasting repercusions. Using one definition of deep linking, everyone in America who has used his or her Bookmark or Favorites button on a browser has participated in deep linking (Spinello, 2004). While the argument that “everybody does it” does not make an action ethical, it does to some extent indicate the problems with outlawing deep linking. Those sites have technological recourse if they do not wish content on their sites to be linked to by others.

Resource:

Spinello, R. A. (2004). An ethical evaluation of Web site linking. In R. A. Spinello & H. T. Tavani (Eds.), Readings in cybernetics (pp. 337 - 350). Boston, MA: Jones and Bartlett.