Pittsburgh Homes Daily

Since starting this blog, I’ve seen the debate about attribution of sources of material a number of times.  But I haven’t seen a good debate about the right to link to material in the first place. 

Greg Swann from the Bloodhound Blog raised a storm yesterday about a real estate blog provider that used a screenshot of his blog and a link to it on a page describing real estate blogs and attempting to sell the provider’s services.  If an image of my blog was run on a commercial on television, I would be up in arms as well.  But I’m much more uncertain about my feelings about similar use on the internet.   

As one who irregularly reads the Terms of Service page on a website, I’ve noticed roughly 5 different clauses from website owners regarding linking policy.  I’m curious which, if any, the community feels are within the website owner’s rights:

1. You may not link to an internal page on my website (only the homepage).
2. You may only link to my website if you use the following anchor text.
3. You may only link to an internal page on my website if you also link to the homepage with the following anchor text:
4. You may only link to my website with my permission.
5. You may link to my website unless I send you an email revoking your permission to link to my website.  [Must the link be taken down? Is this implied without the clause in the Terms of Service]

For the specific situation involved here, what if the blog provider had instead, on a page or weblog promoting the provider’s services, said:

1. Blogs I like: [for example, in a blogroll to the left of the page]
2. If you are thinking about creating a weblog, you should first look at these industry leading weblogs to get an idea of the style of a blog and time commitment involved:
3. If you would like a weblog similar to ________, I would be happy to help you install and modify the theme.
4. Blogs I like [with image preview on mouse rollover]
5. [Uses an image in addition to the link]
6. [What about if the blog provider had quoted extensively from a discussion on a blog about the benefits of blogging and provided attribution to the owner and the owner asked him to take it down?]

The reason that I am asking this of the blogging community is that my impression is that bloggers have generally been on the defensive arguing for broader rights to linking and, now that blogging has grown (and gone corporate), bloggers are also forced to defend against those linking to them.

Since the law is generally behind the times when it comes to technology, I’m curious what other blog owners and internet users think should be allowed.