Legal Question in Technology Law in Louisiana

Re: laws relating to linking to another site

This is an unclear area of the law. Sites like NPR.org and other well known corporate sites have taken the position that they can require permission for people to link to their site. This seems to fly in the face of the whole concept of hyperlinking, which is the fundamental basis for the World Wide Web. Certainly, Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web and the HTML protocol) would say that requiring permission to link is ludicrous. I would say that eventually the law will have to recognize that requiring permission to link doesn't make sense. But until there is caselaw deciding the question in Louisiana (which there is not currently) the issue will remain open. For now, if the site you want to link to doesn't have a public statement on the website saying that they require it I would say you are okay to link.