When you click on a hyperlink on a web site, that link takes you to another part of the web. Deep linking is when that link takes you to another site, bypassing that other site s front or home page. The practice is widespread and is a fairly fundamental part of the operation of the Internet.
Many people are quite happy with the activity.
However, because one of the income streams from the Internet depends on counting visitors or hits on a site s home page, bypassing that home page is not always popular. The most prominent and expensive adverts tend to be on a site s front page. So, bypassing the homepage can cause a real loss to the new site visited. There has been a concern for a number of years that some deep linking could be a breach of copyright as you are, arguably, using someone else s work onto your website. One of the most important developments in this area occurred in Scotland in 1996 when The Shetland Times obtained an interdict on the basis of breach of copyright preventing The Shetland News from linking to their stories.