There is, indeed, a case ongoing on this very point in New York for someone who was photographed walking down a street. While the subject of the photograph lost his case, it was primarily due to the statute of limitations expiring. Although there was clearly some support to affirm the photographer's ability to publish the photo without permission this was a minority position on the most recent court ruling.

This is, at best, unsettled law but in most jurisdictions in the United States there are restrictions on using photographs of people who simply exited their homes. This restrictions do not only kick in for commercial uses, either. While it may be legal in some locations to use a photograph of someone without their consent, this is not a consistant standard. What we have with these linking cases are an effort to assert a corporate right to privacy and publicity based more in copyright law. I doubt it will succeed, but they base their attempt very much on those laws that do restrict photographing a person in a public setting.

Other than that, this sort of policy (all links must go to main page) is rather common. Some sites enforce it by looking at the Referrer: HTTP header, and if it's anything other than their own site, they serve an error message. It's very easy to circumvent, but at least they do try to enforce it. It's mostly done at image gallery sites rather than corporate websites or search engines though.

I'd also note that your first example isn't perfect and indeed illuminates the legal reasoning that is used to attack deep linking. While you can probably personally take a photo of a nude model on the street, you cannot take a photo of a person on the street and use it however you like. Them being in public doesn't matter, because they still have to personnel privacy. Walking outside is nota waiver of those rights. To use that photo, you'd need permission of the subject. That's the standard corporations want to see applied to hyperlinks. I think that's a gross misapplicatiton of that standard, but I cannot say that I know for certain that some judge won't affirm it.

so i guess calling them money-grubbing incompetent douchenozzles or stupid poopypants wouldn't be okay?

Huh?

Its like taking a picture of a nude model on the street. The, cannot sue you because you have no privacy in public. This is also true in that case where that guy got tried due to the fact that the state of california submitted his trash as evidence and he got busted for it.

Next Cingular will try something like, "By reading this sentence, you agree to all out Terms of Service."

Also, since Google caches pages, you could hyperlink to the Google cached homepage of Cingular with no problem. Cingular doesn't own Google... yet.

At least it doesn't say anything about the content of the page having to speak nicely about ChaCha - they would never get any inbounds then...

"Third-Party Links. Cingular Wireless makes no claim or representation regarding, and accepts no responsibility for, the quality, content, nature, or reliability of third-party Web sites or services accessible by hyperlink from the Sites, or third-party Web sites linking to the Sites."

So which is it, Cingular? If you grant a revocable limited license, then you're implying control over third parties and thus ARE making claims and representations because of the license. If you don't grant a license, then you imply no control. If you grant a license, then that is by the very nature of the act of licensing, control.

Cingular is just another example of our corporate culture having no shame or guilt for how they do business. I deal frequently with engineers and top management at a Japanese electronics manufacturer; when you point out problems and bugs, they take it as personal failure. They don't sweep it under the rug, they find the problem, bring in the people responsible and when the apologies are concluded, they announce when the problem will be resolved and that deadline is never missed. In the United States, it'll somehow not only be turned into the consumer's fault, but it'll be turned into a line of profit.

So I guess this would get me sued if I were to say, "This is a link to a great cell phone company that has great products and customer service!" Very misleading. My bad Cingular..I mean at&t..or whatever it is this week..

When is a good company going to buy Cingular and just offer great phones, great prices, customer service. Someone like Google® needs to buy it.

Oh, I'm such a rebel, defaming Cingular. Viva la revolucion or w/e :p

Well, at the very least, I've just heard another reason to change my service to Verizon.

Luckily, when I blogged about what scumwads they were at Cingular for having giftcards that illegally expire in California and then refusing to do anything about it until I shoved and shoved, I didn't link to their site. But, this does bring back memories, and it reminds me to remind California Cingular customers who have the giftcards that illegally expire to ring up Cingular and tell them you want your money off the card and you want your money now. See the law or search my blog (at advicegoddess.com) for details on what constitutes an illegally expiring giftcard.

Not really...Cingular, where the hell did you get these lawyers?