Lessig on O'Reilly and Linking

Is there some procedure in law school that surgically removes any shred
of common sense or is it some on-the-job thing you pick up working in
particular industries? It smacks of Aristotleian science where any
attempt to observe the actual phenomenon was irrelevant in the face of
authority. Or for those of a more New Testament bent, much like the way
the Pharisees tried to avoid the evidence of their eyes.

make my day, bill-ites. So there's a blog first created by the volunteers who watched Fox to create the data necessary to produced OutFoxed. They posted an item
about a Bill O'Reilly column, which itself was posted on the web. The
company syndicating O'Reilly's column wrote them a nasty letter,
telling them to take the column down. They did, and replaced it with a
link. The same company wrote again, insisting that the blog was guilty
of “unauthorized linking.” Dear syndicators of Bill: Me thinks there's
no such concept as illegal linking (outside of China, at least, and
please, don't pester me with misreadings of the 2600 case). Indeed, I
think that I, like anyone else, am perfectly free to link to the
column, as this link
does. And indeed, I'd invite anyone else out there who thinks that we
still live in a FREE LINKING world to link to the same. Got to find
some way to keep those lawyers busy. [Lessig Blog]