If you live in Canada and have ever linked to anything in your life ever, then you probably want to go read my article at TheCourt.ca about the decision on Crookes v. Wikimedia, AKA “the linking case.”
Heck, if you live in a common-law country you probably want to read it too, because it won’t be binding precedent in your country but it’ll be persuasive.
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“…there is no deception in what is happening.”: That what about Rickrolling?
Even if you’re willing to accept a change to the status quo, the idea of site A providing a link to site B meaning that A assumes legal liability for B’s content falls apart rather quickly.
What if B linked to C? Does A then have liability for C’s content as well? How far down can the chain go? The Web is very heavily cross-linked – that could mean that defamatory content posted to one website could “poison” significant portions of the Web very quickly.
I don’t know about Canadian law, but I think this question is pretty settled in U.S. law. Our copyright safe harbors are actually decent (fair use, common carriers, free speech, no publication requirement), and our trademark protections aren’t strong enough to provide credible chilling effects in the first place.