University of Bergen assistant professor of law Knut Martin Tande was recently interviewed about his doctoral thesis on “Linking to other people’s material on the www” and possible infringements on intellectual property law. The punchline is saved until the last paragraph (my transl.):

“”And your doctoral thesis will be published on the web, so that we can link to it?”

“No, it will be published as a book, and won’t be posted on the web. At least not yet,” the candidate smiles. He knows how to defend his intellectual property, this man”.

Indeed. Take a look at his official university homepage (to be fair, there’s a brief description of the thesis posted another place on the university’s website). I’m afraid this is quite representative of Norwegian professors’ web presence. I guess most of them a) don’t see the point, or b) would like to be left alone as much as possible. I’m afraid that Mr. Tande comes in the a) category, although it might appear obvious to others that it should be possible to link to a thesis about linking. If he had posted drafts while he was working on it, it might even have become a better thesis. Who knows?