The Right2Link campaign launches today in response to questions from the government and media organisations about the freedom to link, share and reference content on the World Wide Web.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, as well as other online news portals act as link aggregators, identifying links that are of interest to be read and passed on. Linking to this content – and referencing it with a headline, short quote or summary with attribution – is standard practice for users of the Internet. Email and social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn are often used to share links.

This has recently come into question as heads of large media corporations, among them Rupert Murdoch of News Corp and Gavin O’Reilly of Independent News & Media, have accused search engines and link aggregators of stealing content. They have ventured to suggest that publishing headlines and short excerpts, widely accepted as permissible under the law, should be made illegal. The Government’s new Digital Economy Bill is also cited by the campaign as a potential threat to information sharing freedoms.

One solution to media owners’ concerns is to establish a method of obtaining permission to use links. While this would protect media content being given away for free via the internet, it would stifle the current freedom to link to and share information freely.

Currently, getting the latest scoop is as easy as linking out to a national broadsheet’s website from your blog. We must not forget that newspapers are vital to providing the influx of information that we are so desperate to protect. Journalists need paying, after all.

Clearly the problem of supporting journalists financially to report the news and protecting the free flow of information from pay-walls still remains unsolved. But while online copyright needs to be maintained, the solution to financial issues shouldn’t come at the cost of the freedom to create, circulate and follow links to online content.