U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the northern district of Texas granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who operated Supercrosslive.com and had been providing direct links to the live audiocasts of motorcycle racing events.

Lindsay ruled last week that "the link Davis provides on his Web site is not a 'fair use' of copyright material" and ordered him to cease linking directly to streaming audio files.

A link is a link. Banning deep linking is a step towards banning all linking, and what does that do for the Google business model? Where are the Google attorneys helping out in this case? Are they helping out on the appeal? If not, then why not?

How do we even use the Internet if deep linking is illegal for some reason? We don't, that's how.

This is what baffles me the most. If you think deep linking is so bad, then block it.

To me, it's like leaving your house unlocked with the doors open and being gone all the time. Then you wonder why everything is missing, so you blame the police and demand more laws...

The message a judge should hear is that if a site technically allows deep linking, then it is tacitly and overtly allowing it — perhaps encouraging it. The links are fair game, period. If it tries to block it, then it is not allowing it. That's that. Simple. It works. No more complaining.