The Boston Globe’s parent company, the New York Times Co., is in trouble! On Monday, GateHouse Media Inc. filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company for linking to GateHouse articles on the Globe’s recent local websites. These new community websites are in no way authorized to use online material from GateHouse.

In the lawsuit filed in US District Court in Massachusetts, GateHouse - which is one of the biggest publishers of newspapers in US - has alleged that Boston.com bypasses ads posted on home pages that help raise funds for its operation, and offers direct links to send readers to “Wicked Local” stories.

GateHouse alleges that Boston.com purposely circumvented the measures for linking to its articles; and said it has set up electronic security measures to prevent a certain Boston.com address users from scrapping content off its websites.

Since quite a few blogs and media sites normally post links to some other media’s stories, the infringement suit raises critical legal issues about the kind of linking permissible on the Internet. Not too long back, even GateHouse has published links to Globe stories. In fact, the Internet powerhouse itself, Google Inc., hunts countless news sites globally for headlines and posts links to the stories.

In the opinion of Times Co. spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, the lawsuit by GateHouse was without merit, because “far from being illegal or improper, this practice of linking to sites is common and is familiar to anyone who has searched the Web. It is fair and benefits both Web users and the originating site.”