Photographer threatens legal action over Daze Reader link

A while back, Daze linked to an online gallery of photographs by Vee Speers. Most little-known artists would be delighted to have their work called to the attention of several thousand new viewers, but not in this case. This morning I received the following email:

To Whom it May Concern,

I would like you to remove my link from your site IMMEDIATELY. It is an offence to place a link without consent. I have not given you my authorisation, and the link has also been removed from Indie Nudes. If you do not remove the link, I will begin court proceedings against you.

Thank you,

Vee Speers

I felt torn between conflicting impulses: respecting the artist's wishes vs. defending my right to link freely. If Ms. Speers had been more polite about the delinking request, I might have quietly taken down the link. But her nasty tone and empty threat pissed me off. My email response:

Vee Speers,

I do not plan to remove that link. I did not need anyone's permission to place that link, and you have no right to request its removal.

You might wish to read - http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi

If you bring legal action against me, I will defend my free speech rights to the fullest.

Evan Daze
editor, Daze Reader
http://www.dazereader.com/weblog.htm

On a side note . . . I searched "Vee Speers" at Amazon and came up empty. Then I tried searching at Amazon's French site, but they'd never heard of her either. The first search response for "Vee Speers" was this item. Now that's grounds for legal action, if you ask me.

Posted on Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 12:02 PM

Yo Vee:

http://www.drmenlo.com/samizdat/

http://www.drmenlo.com/sla.html

http://www.drmenlo.com/home.html

Continue to be offended.

Yours,
Dr. Menlo
International Art Machine
Central Labs, Seattle

Posted by: dr. menlo on March 30, 2003 04:15 PM