On Wired, of interesting to weblogging:

Site Barks About Deep Link

"Deep links" point to specific content within a site, allowing readers to bypass the site's front page. Instead of linking to a specific article within The Dallas Morning News's site, Belo wants Adelman to only link to the site's main page.

The short version is that an issue that was supposedly settled a year or two ago has come back to life. The Dallas Morning News is asserting that barkingdog.org can only link to the paper's website "front page," and not to specific articles within the website. They claim that to do so is a potential violation of copyright.

Obviously this can have a serious impact on blogs, since a lot of them (such as here) quote from and link to articles all the time. You, gentle reader, would have to find your own way through a site's maze to an article that I might refer to, if The Dallas News has its way.

I'm still mystified how this would violate copyright. Such links direct people to the site. There is no theft, just--in a manner of speaking--an index to a specific article or item. The real lose is ad revenue, of course, since a lot of the complaining sites generate hit numbers off their front page. So, jumping to mid-site might not get counted as a hit, and thus there's no proof of readership with which to support ad rates. Something Belo, owner of The Dallas News, acknowledges with...

Belo says that those links ... more importantly, "allows the viewer to avoid the advertising, etc., on the homepage (which places our client in a bad position with respect to its advertisers, etc.)."

Well, bummer. Maybe they need a new accounting scheme? Or just avoid "permanent" links, so that a link that works one day for a story doesn't work the next. Or just flat out block access to archives. Etc. Seems there are other answers than saying--in essence--"How dare you link to my site without my permission!"