Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/14

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Legal links
From: Patrick Giagnocavo <pgiagnoc@qi.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:40:45 -0500

Tina Manley wrote:
> Tina
> 
> PhotoPro seems about evenly divided between "free speech"(they can
> say whatever they want) and "libel"(they can't say anything about
> you that you don't want them to).  Since the site doesn't actually
> copy my photos or the web site but only points to it, it isn't
> really a copyright issue; however, I don't want my site linked to
> "Boylinks"!  What should I do?

Hello Tina,

I would not worry about what your rights are in this case.  It is
unlikely that unless you spend money on a lawyer that anything will
happen, and if you are in a different jurisdiction or whatever you
will end up spending even more.

Worry about addressing your real concern, which is to prevent a
boylinks link from working when someone clicks through to your site.

Every time a web link is clicked there is a value set called
HTTP_REFERER.  This is sent as part of the link to the web server
that serves up your pages.  

1.  Ask the webmaster that runs your site's Web server if they can
restrict or redirect links based on the contents of the HTTP_REFERER
field.  

If so, someone clicking a link via boylinks will get either a
"access denied" or "URL not found" message.  If you really want to
drive the point home, have the server issue a "redirect" to some
other site, like maybe the FBI's home page. (It is unlikely that
Tripod will do anything for you (too big), the photogs.com webmaster
might be more responsive.) 
Any site running the "Apache" web server can set this up easily
provided the webmaster is competent.

2.  Email the fpc.net webmaster and tell them that you don't want
links to point to your site.  This may or may not result in anything
happening.  Sometimes sites like this do not want adverse publicity
and prefering operating "off-radar" so they will do this.   

Hope this helps,

Cordially

./patrick