Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Hostess Hotlinks
I had been made aware by a blog of a website that displayed all those great Hostess ads found in comic books, where the heroes defeat the villains not through raw force or cunning intellect, but by the creamy goodness of Ding-Dongs and Twinkies. The link above is not to that site, however, but a similar one.
You see, looking a bit further, I saw that the first site talked about culture kitsch that I could identify with: Mr. T, the Super Friends, Ataris and Nintendos. However, I also found a liberal dose of not-quite-ready for primetime language and some raw descriptions that I didn't think was wholly appropriate. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I finally made my way to his home page and discovered he keeps his site going for ads for some less than wholesome websites. Needless to say, I got rid of the link and elected to remind people of Hostess absurdity through a less well designed but more family friendly site. I guess it's the way of the internet - something for everyone's taste, but not everyone's cup of tea. If you want to see the original site, look for him over on Google.
This whole experience just went to underscore the dangerousness of the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act. The act makes linking to a site containing copyrighted material as a means of faciliattes the violation, therby making you culpable as well. For example, if I had linked to his site, in addition to some emails questioning my sanity and decency from my family, I would also make myself liable if Hostess decided to sue for use of their comic book ads on his site. Similarly, if other parts of his site had such material, even if I was never aware of it, I would be accountable for that as well.
Therefore, if you link to someone's site, you are now resposible for looking at every page of that site. Daunting thought, isn't it?
I think this depends on how you look at links. I see links as a bit of conversation, like when you tell a friend, "Hey, I found something funny. Go check it out." A link is an electonic form of the same, and I think this is a big problem in this legislation.
And it's not like I'm making an farfetched interpretation of the law. The Church of Scientology used this argument yo get Google to remove links to the most popular anti-Scientology site, as that site included copyrighted excerpts from Scientology books. And being taken off of Google is death to a site. It's the largest search engine, and not being listed is like being a business not listed in the Yellow Pages. Since then, Google has restored the links, but it is indicative of future legal disputes to come. It seems the internet has a few new legal mines.
Be careful where you surf. Especially while eating Twinkies.
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