After two days of hearings, a Danish court has delayed making a decision in a closely watched case that could determine the legality of "deep linking" in Denmark and other European Union countries.
Anders Lautrup-Larsen, the CEO of the Newsbooster, the defendant in the case, said a decision is expected at the next hearing, on July 5.
The Danish Newspaper Publishers' Association is suing Newsbooster, an online news service, over the site's "deep links" to the newspapers' websites. Deep links are links to any page on a site other than its front door. The DNPA says that the deep links violate the copyright over its content, and that they allow users to bypass the advertisements on the sites' front doors.
At the pre-trial hearing this week, the court in Copenhagen heard arguments over the DNPA's request for a preliminary injunction that would prohibit Newsbooster from deep linking at least until there is a final decision in the trial.
Lautrup-Larsen offered few specific details about what was discussed in the hearings, saying only that Newsbooster made the same case that it has always made: that "we are a search engine, our links are just like from a search engine."
He said he believed that Newsbooster's argument was well received, and "actually right now we are looking forward to see the decision."
The DNPA could not immediately be reached for comment. In the past, it has said that it doesn't really mind deep links from other sites, but that it doesn't like when sites make deep linking a routine practice. As a news service, many of Newsbooster's links are deep links to stories at the newspapers' sites.
If the court rules in the DNPA's favor, there's a possibility that the ruling would apply to sites beyond Denmark, as the country's copyright act is based on European Union law.
There have been few decisions on linking policies in American or European courts, though many sites which produce content have tried to dictate the terms under which other sites can link to them.
The Rodale Press (publisher of Runner's World) and the Dallas Morning News have recently tried to enforce rules on linking. And last week it was discovered that National Public Radio, a nonprofit organization, asks that people seek its permission to link to npr.org.
That discovery caused a small uproar on the Web, prompting people to flood NPR with e-mail. Last week, NPR put up a notice on its site saying it was working on a "solution" to the linking dilemma.
