In almost every case, you do not need permission to link to another website. A standard text hyperlink to a publicly accessible page is treated by courts as a pointer, not a copy, and posting content on the open web carries an implied consent to be linked. Permission enters the picture only in specific situations: when your link uses another company’s logo, when you frame or embed their content on your page, when you know the destination hosts infringing material, when you earn a commission on clicks, or when you actually agreed to terms that restrict linking. Everything else is routine web publishing.
Plain Text Links and Deep Links
A standard text link that opens another site in the browser doesn’t copy anything from the destination. It tells the browser where to go. Courts have accepted this reasoning consistently, including for “deep links” that skip a site’s homepage and point directly to an interior page. In Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.com (C.D. Cal. 2000), the court held that deep linking without framing does not violate copyright because no copying occurs. Deep linking is now standard practice, and no court has since reversed course.
The practical upshot: if a page is publicly reachable on the web and you’re linking to it in plain text, you don’t need to ask.
Using a Logo or Brand Image as Your Link
The quickest way to turn a harmless link into a legal problem is to make the clickable element a company’s logo or trademark. A visitor who sees a recognizable brand mark on your commercial site can reasonably assume some official relationship: an endorsement, a partnership, or an authorization. That inference is what trademark law polices.
The Lanham Act prohibits using a trademark in a way that creates confusion about affiliation, sponsorship, or approval by the trademark owner.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1125 – False Designations of Origin, False Descriptions, and Dilution Forbidden Intent doesn’t matter; the test is whether a reasonable consumer would be confused. If you want to link to another company without permission, use plain text (“Visit Company Name”) rather than their logo.
Framing and Embedding Someone Else’s Content
Linking and displaying are not the same thing under copyright law, and this is where the law gets genuinely unsettled.
Framing
Framing displays another site’s content inside a window on your own page, so it appears to be part of your site. This can interfere with a copyright holder’s exclusive rights to display and distribute their work.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 106 – Exclusive Rights in Copyrighted Works In Futuredontics Inc. v. Applied Anagramic Inc. (C.D. Cal. 1998), a court refused to dismiss a claim that framing could amount to creating an unauthorized derivative work. The case settled before a final ruling, but the risk signal was clear.
Embedding and Inline Linking
Inline linking, sometimes called hotlinking or embedding, pulls an image or video from another server and displays it inside your page. Federal courts disagree on whether this is copyright infringement.
The Ninth Circuit, in Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com (2007), adopted the “server test”: only the party actually storing and serving the file from its own server can be directly liable for infringement. A page that merely embeds an image hosted elsewhere provides display instructions, not a copy.
The Southern District of New York rejected that reasoning in Goldman v. Breitbart News Network (2018). News outlets had embedded a tweet containing a copyrighted photo, and the court held that the embed violated the photographer’s exclusive display right regardless of where the file physically lived.3Justia Law. Goldman v Breitbart News Network LLC et al, No 1-2017cv03144 The court emphasized that the defendants had taken active steps to display the photo and that the Copyright Act does not require the infringer to physically possess a copy.
The result is a geographic split. In the Ninth Circuit, the server test still protects most embedding. Elsewhere, the ground is shakier. If you don’t have rights to an image or video, link to the page that hosts it rather than pulling the file onto yours.
Linking to Content You Know Is Infringing
A plain text link can still create liability if you knowingly send visitors to illegal material. The theory is contributory infringement: you didn’t pirate anything yourself, but you helped others reach it with knowledge of what they’d find.
In Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry (D. Utah 1999), the defendants posted addresses of sites hosting unauthorized copies of a copyrighted church handbook. The court found contributory infringement and ordered the links removed, along with references to any sites they knew or had reason to know contained infringing material.
Knowledge is the hinge. No one expects you to audit every page you link to. But if you know a destination distributes pirated software or streams copyrighted material without authorization, linking to it with that knowledge exposes you. If you learn later that a site you linked to has become a source of infringement, take the link down promptly.
DMCA Safe Harbor for Links
Section 512(d) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides a safe harbor for linking to infringing material if three conditions are met.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 512 – Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online
- You didn’t know the linked material was infringing, weren’t aware of facts making infringement obvious, and acted quickly to remove the link once you found out.
- You aren’t earning a direct financial benefit from the infringing activity in a situation where you could control it.
- When you receive a valid DMCA takedown notice identifying an infringing link, you remove or disable access to it quickly.
To qualify at all, the site must also have a policy for terminating repeat infringers and must not interfere with standard technical protection measures. Most operators who publish in good faith and answer takedown notices will qualify. Actual knowledge of infringement plus inaction ends the protection.
Linking to Defamatory Content
If someone argues that linking to a third party’s defamatory statement makes you liable for defamation, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is strong protection. The statute provides that no user of an interactive computer service can be treated as the publisher or speaker of information created by someone else.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 US Code 230 – Protection for Private Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material A hyperlink points to content authored by a third party, so the person posting the link is generally not the “information content provider.”
Section 230 has limits. It doesn’t protect you if you wrote or substantially developed the defamatory content yourself, and it carves out federal criminal law and intellectual property claims.
Affiliate Links: The FTC Rule You Cannot Ignore
If you earn a commission when a visitor clicks your link and buys something, federal law requires disclosure. The FTC treats undisclosed affiliate links as deceptive endorsements.
The disclosure has to be clear and close to the link. “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post” works. “Paid link” next to the link works. What doesn’t work: burying the disclosure behind a footer link labeled “Disclosure” that few readers will click, or using industry terms like “affiliate link” that consumers don’t recognize.6Consumer Advice. FTCs Endorsement Guides What People Are Asking
Penalties are real. Companies that receive an FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses for endorsement practices and keep violating can face civil penalties of over $50,000 per violation, with the amount adjusted for inflation each January.7Federal Trade Commission. Notices of Penalty Offenses Even without a penalty notice, the FTC can pursue enforcement actions and consent orders. A short disclosure statement near the top of any page containing affiliate content solves the problem cheaply.
When a Site’s Terms of Service Can Restrict Linking
Some sites include anti-linking clauses in their Terms of Service. Whether those clauses bind you depends on whether you actually agreed to them.
Courts distinguish between “clickwrap” agreements, where you check a box or click “I agree” before proceeding, and “browsewrap” agreements, where the terms sit behind a small footer link you never clicked. Clickwrap agreements are generally enforceable. Browsewrap terms have been found unenforceable in many cases because users had no meaningful notice. If you never created an account, never clicked to accept anything, and the terms lived in a footer you never saw, an anti-linking clause is unlikely to bind you.
Sites that require account creation or login have firmer ground. If you agreed to terms during sign-up that restricted how you could link to the content, that agreement may be enforceable as a contract even where copyright law wouldn’t prohibit the link. Copyright and contract are separate questions.
If You Receive a Cease and Desist Letter
A cease and desist letter about a link warrants a careful read rather than panic. Many are aggressive posturing, not a prelude to litigation.
Identify the specific claim. Is the sender complaining about a logo you used as the link, a frame or embed pulling their content onto your page, or a bare demand to remove a plain text link they have no legal right to control? The type of claim tells you the risk.
For most operators, removing the link is the fastest and cheapest resolution when the link isn’t essential to what you’re publishing. If the demand looks baseless, or the link matters to your site’s purpose (a journalistic reference, a product review), talk to an attorney before you respond. Sending back your own legal arguments without advice is how disputes that could have quietly ended tend to escalate.