Free Links, Only $50 Apiece. Some news sources have begun to charge a fee for others to link to their online articles; another fundamental challenge to the premise of the hyperlinked Web. Moreover, the online service these sites use to limit unapproved linking — iCopyright.com — also attempts to control what can be said about the online content in your link to it. And not only can you not say anything derogatory about the author or the publication in which the linked-to article appears; you cannot say anything derogatory about “any person…depicted in the content.” Plain and simple, if I linked for example to an Albuquerque Journal article about Dubya, I would have to fork over $50 for the privilege of remaining respectful about the illegitimate son — uh, I mean the President-elect. It appears that iCopyright.com started out to handle collecting licensing fres for reprinting and photocopying in return for a portion of these licensing revenues, but decided to tack on the HTML linkage fee arrangement as well. An Albuquerque Journal spokesperson denied being aware of the linkage fee arrangement and did not know if the newspaper would be enforcing it or if people who linked to their content without paying a fee would be in legal trouble. iCopyright.com, which says it represents more than 70 publishers and more than 300 publications, referred inquiries to its attorneys.

Legal commentators suggest that attempts to charge for linkage to online content would not stand up in court, not to mention the free speech restrictions of this particular arrangement. Although obtaining permission, and even paying a licensing fee, for the reuse of printed material (through photocopying) is an established precedent, it has been difficult to enforce restrictions on, say, academic redistribution of articles for a long time. I know from personal experience that that has been the mainstay of, for example, medical education for decades. In the hyperlinked world, let’s hope it’s even more difficult to enforce. And in this era of dot-com startups going belly-up with regularity, perhaps iCopyright.com will turn out to be an ill-planned scheme that efficiently founders even before putting someone through an expensive and time-consuming legal test case. Information just wants to be freer and freer, to paraphrase someone… Wired