Oh boy, here's another judge with no idea how the internet works: deep linking ruled out of bounds:

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that it is unlawful to provide a hyperlink to a Webcast if the copyright owner objects to it.

U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the northern district of Texas granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who operated supercrosslive.com and had been providing direct links to the live audiocasts of motorcycle racing events.

Lindsay ruled last week that "the link Davis provides on his Web site is not a 'fair use' of copyright material" and ordered him to cease linking directly to streaming audio files.

If you don't want content linked to, then use redirects, password walls (etc, etc). If you put content up in an accessible location, you are allowing it to be linked to. Can someone hand this a judge an "internet for dummies" book and read it to him? I'm not even expecting him to read it himself without assistance.

Technorati Tags: stupidity, copyright