I'm going to cite Slashdot on this (and hope that the translation of the ruling is accurate):
[Note: my hyperlinking is a bit different than Slashdot's]
BlueWonder writes "German news site Heise Online reports a recent decision of the Bundesgerichtshof, the highest court in Germany: Deep linking is not illegal. Newspaper company Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt had sued the news search engine Paperboy for deep linking to their articles. According to the Bundesgerichtshof, the public interest in a well-working Internet takes precedence over the commercial interests of the newspaper company, even if the advertizing of the company is bypassed. The Bundesgerichtshof has clarified that users can access any page if they know the URL, and deep linking is just a technical simplification for entering the URL manually...."
The reason this caught my eye and I decided to blog it (as opposed to the zillions of other interesting and important things that I also see on Slashdot) is because of the line, "the public interest in a well-working Internet takes precedence over the commercial interests". This should be the trumping consideration in nearly every case involving the Internet. Too bad it hasn't quite worked out that way (yet)...