Legal Question in Technology Law in California

Linking Directly to Images at Other Web Sites

I am a volunteer designing Web pages for a non-profit Internet genealogical organization. In order to decorate my pages with photos that will give viewers an idea of foreign places where their ancestors lived, is it legal for me to link directly to an image or images at another, copyrighted, Web site in designing my site? (I would not be downloading such images to my computer--merely linking to them so that they would still reside at the other site.) It has been difficult sometimes to get permission to link to an image at another site, especially in foreign countries. Often, request letters simply go unanswered.


Asked on 6/30/99, 1:57 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Bruce Burdick Burdick Law Firm

Re: Linking Directly to Images at Other Web Sites

NO, that would be copyright infringement. The purpose of the copyright laws is to reward authors to encourage them to create more artistic works. If anyone could feely link, no one would need to buy. That link is the means by which you propose to take the image without compensating the artist and without permission. You should either get permission or get your own image.

Now, if your image is merely a small graphical hyperlink to the image owner's website (where clicking on the image sends the user to the image owner's site)and the image is of reasonably small size, then it might be held to be a fair use, a shortcut way of hyperlinking.

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Answered on 7/08/99, 4:44 pm


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