WASHINGTON -- Add a major magazine publisher to the ranks of websites peeved about "deep links" to their articles.
Rodale Press, the publisher of Runner's World magazine and many other prominent health-oriented publications, sent a stiff note to a hobbyist website this week, demanding it delete a hyperlink to a "printer-friendly" version of a runnersworld.com article or -- face the consequences.
Allen Tullar, an attorney representing the Emmaus, Pennsylvania-based publisher, gave the LetsRun.com site until the end of the day Tuesday to comply, saying otherwise, "My client will pursue its rights" under federal copyright law.
Rodale's nastygram comes not long after the Dallas Morning News became irate over so-called deep links to newspaper articles. Deep links point to specific sub-pages on a website, allowing readers to bypass the site's home page, and, occasionally, avoid seeing some advertisements.
No U.S. court has ever restricted deep-linking of the type at issue here, and most copyright specialists believe the practice does not violate intellectual property laws.
If deep-linking could be legally restricted by publishers, it would roil the Internet industry and call into question the future of search engines like Google and directory services such as those operated by like Yahoo and Lycos, the parent company of Wired News.
The deep-linking controversy seemed to go away in 2000, when a federal judge handed down his verdict in a case pitting Tickets.com against Ticketmaster.
"Hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act," U.S. District Judge Harry Hupp wrote. "There is no deception in what is happening. This is analogous to using a library's card index to get reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently."
That didn't stop some news organizations, like the Albuquerque Journal from trying -- unsuccessfully, as it turned out -- later that year to demand up to $50 to link to their articles.
In an interview, Rodale attorney Tullar said, "I wouldn't assume that" his client had no legal ground to stand on.
"I assume that you have access to my correspondence and at this point, I'm not going to add anything to it," said Tullar, an associate at Gross, McGinley, LaBarre and Eaton in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The printer-friendly version of the Runner's World article did not include any advertisements.
That seems to be what Tullar was concerned about, writing on Monday that: "Viewers who click on the hyperlink are actually prevented from reaching the runnersworld.com website and are denied access to its services and message. "In short, letsrun.com has appropriated Rodale's trademark in order to purvey its own Internet services -- the letsrun.com website -- to an audience intending to access Rodale's website. The actions of letsrun.com clearly constitute copyright and trademark infringement and unfair competition."
A Rodale spokesman said his colleague who could comment on the topic was out of the office and not immediately available.
"We did link to the printer-friendly version of the article because in the past they (Runner's World) have been slow to archive their interviews, so this way we will have a static link," LetsRun.com's Weldon Johnson wrote in an e-mail.
"But clearly the article is on their website and there is no attempt at deception on our part. Perhaps they will write back saying we have to link to non-printer-friendly versions of their website, but this would set a terrible precedent implying that links have to have a certain amount of ads," Johnson wrote.
In LetsRun.com's lively response to Rodale, Johnson points out that runnersworld.com also engages in deep links -- including to Johnson's site.
Besides Runner's World, Rodale also publishes dozens of health and fitness books each year, plus magazines including Bicycling, Men's Health and Prevention. Founded by legendary organic pioneer J.I. Rodale, the company is family owned.
