in deep

By Todd Stadler · Wednesday, September 25, 2002 4:39am

So in reading an article on a friend's blog, I came across an article on deep linking, the practice of linking to useful content rather than just the front page of a web site.

Apparently (as the article was written only a few months ago), there is still a lot of hubbub over this practice because, what, it bypasses advertising and makes a web site more useful? Who can fathom the mind of a lawyer?

Anyhow, the article above mentions that my hometown newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, is the company in question that hasn't quite grasped how to use the internet.

According to their terms of service (section B.4), links to other pages on the site besides the home page are strictly verboten.

And, of course, I just deep linked, because I'm pretty sure it's legal, and I know that this whole debate is stupid.

If you're scared of people using your web site, with the possibility of not-so-bright folks not realizing when they've left one site for another, then go back to your print outlets. And get a good book on how the web works.

Meanwhile, don't tell anyone at the Dallas Morning News about this site I found the other day that has hundreds of deep links to all sorts of files in the dallasnews.com domain. They'd freak out.