IT'S the most exciting thing to happen on the island since that foggy day last August when Jarvis Cocker and his band Pulp flew in to play a surprise gig.
Normally the Shetland Times and the Shetland News would run headlines on the lines of "Call to Widen Tug Campaign", "Generator Sales Boom as First Snow Falls" and "Hedgehog Makes a Good Recovery" (yes readers, these are real stories).
But for the past three weeks these two publications serving the Shetland Isles (population about 23,000) have been involved in a legal dispute which could have mind boggling repercussions for copyright on the World Wide Web. The case revolves around the following question: can a link to somebody else's Web page be a copyright infringement of their page?
In one corner stands the plaintiff, the Shetland Times, founded back in 1872, with a circulation of 11,000 plus copies. In the other corner is the Shetland News, which exists only in cyberspace, as a daily Internet newsletter. It started last November - three months before the Shetland Times went onto the Web - and has 250 pages and over a million readers in more than 60 countries".
The Shetland Times has gone to Scotland's supreme civil court, the Court of Session. Its managing director, Robert Wishart, told the court in Edinburgh last month that the Sheiland News had links on its Web pages to the ST's pages, and that these links breached his copyright and hindered his efforts to attract online advertising.
The judge listened to three hours of legal arguments, then ordered an "interim interdict" (or temporary ban). So, for the moment at least, the links from the Shetland News to the Shetland Times are gone.
According to Mr Wishart, this is an argument over whether a publisher on the Internet retains copyright in any material once it goes online. My view is that by incorporating our copyright material into his news service he infringes our copyright. The technical process by which this is achieved is irrelevant.
The publisher of the Shetland News, Dr Jonathan Wills, disagrees totally: "Surely he realised that a link does not involve making a copy?"
IF THE Shetland News had blatantly taken reports or photographs from the online Shetland Times and passed them off as its own, there would have been a clear and serious case of copy right infringement. But the Shetland Times's action revolves around what the "hyperlinks" on Web pages are, and what they do.
The Web, in short, consists of millions of pages which can be linked to any other page on the Web. Hyperlinks are the very arteries of this system. When a user clicks on a link on the page (which can be a highlighted word or picture), this sends a command to the Web browser soft[ware to call up this new link or page. For example, if you are reading the Web version of this very article, you will see that it has hyperlinks to both the Shetland Times (whose Web address is http://www.shetland-times.co.uk) and the Shetland News (http://www.shetland-news.co.uk)
When you click on either of these links, your computer leaves the Irish Times server, and is [redirected to the Shetland server in question. From then on you would clearly have left the Irish Times Web site and would be g the original reports by the Scottish newspaper's staff.
Dr Wills wrote to Mr Wishart: "The principle of the Internet is free access. We have no turnstile where we vet or charge readers. Nor do you. What we have done, are doing and will continue to do is direct our readers to your Web site on those occasions when your six editorial staff manage to come up with a story which our single member of staff has either missed or not got around to writing. You are in good company. We do the same for the Herald, CNN, Le Monde, La Stampa and dozens of other Internet news publishers.
There is no love lost between the two chief protagonists: Mr Wishart dismissed Dr Wills from his newspaper over half a decade ago.
Since launching the Shetland News just over a year ago, Dr Wills has drummed up a substantial amount of paid advertising from organisations such as P&O Ferries and Shetland Islands Tourism. Meanwhile the Shetland Times hasn't disclosed its online readership (or "hit rates"), though its Web pages haven't attracted much significant paid advertising since the venture started last February.
There will be a full hearing in the Court of Session in about a week's time, and its verdict could end up being appealed as far as the House of Lords or European Court. Meanwhile the fledgling Web industry - both in Britain and much further afield - looks on anxiously at one of the most bizarre and unprecedented Internet cases for a long, long time.