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Landmark Canadian Hyperlink Case Goes To Supreme Court
An anonymous reader writes "Vancouver businessman Wayne Crookes is trying to reverse a decision by BC Supreme Court judge Stephen Kelleher that linking is not the same as publishing. He's been given permission to appeal it to the Supreme Court of Canada. If he wins, it could mean the end of the net in Canada and will reverberate around the world. 'The notion that someone might be considered a publisher merely by linking to someone else's content, I think could have a potentially huge chilling affect [sic] and, for that reason alone, is going to have a major impact on the shape of the Internet in Canada,' says Ottawa law professor Michael Geist. Hyperlinking is what the web is all about, says p2pnet founder Jon Newton. 'Without it, the Internet would become a drab and pale facsimile of the exciting news, data and information medium it is today. Instead, each item would be isolated from every other item, and online defamation lawsuits aimed at anyone and everyone with a Web site would instantly become commonplace.'"
What gets me is not that this is going to the supreme court (where I'm sure it'll be tossed out regardless) but that it when it was dismissed from the BC Court of Appeals, there was a dissenting judge...
Government _really_ needs to become better educated on technology and how the 'tubes' work. See - the same thing happens up here in Canada too!
Hello Mr. rich person. As you appear to be dead set on having your own way contrary to the received opinion of most of Western Society, we will allow you to cure yourself of this tendency by transferring large sums of money from your account to those of various lawyers. You might call it a tax on arrogance. Quem dii vult perdere, dementat prius (if you lose the gods your Prius accelerates mysteriously)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Really, I think the whole sturm and drang of the doom of the internet is so much a red herring. This would hurt content aggregators, of course. They would ultimately have to pony up for links to interesting sites, rather than the benefit of a no-follow link. But, between google bombing, link farms and all the other useless link content on the internet, I would not mind a sweeping away of sites that really offer no value at all. Far from being this rich and beautiful thing, most of today's internet is just an over-advertised waste of time.
This is my sig.
> " Instead, each item would be isolated from every other item, and online defamation lawsuits aimed at anyone and everyone with a Web site would instantly become commonplace."
Actually, what would happen is everyone would host their websites offshore in nations with looser copyright laws, and the Internet would become increasingly decentralized as larger, "legitimate" players are isolated, and independent, "less legitimate" players circumvent legislation and continue to link.
Ironically, this will *hurt* big media.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
This stupid case was tossed out in the first instance, and will certainly lose in the second...
Never underestimate the the ignorance of technology of governments and their courts.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
[superfluous-tag-that-will-be-ignored]
Putting HTML tags inside square brackets is a "standard" now ?
[/superfluous-tag-that-will-be-ignored]
Would that be the <EH HREF...> ... </EH> tags?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
If you read the previous articles about this yahoo's quixotic quest, you'll find that he's not attacking the general notion of hyperlinking per se, but whether linking to allegedly defamatory content is, in and of itself, an act of defamation. To me, that's like saying that if a print newspaper publishes something libelous or defamatory, then anyone advertising, selling, or telling you where you can buy that newspaper is also guilty of defamation. The previous ruling seems to establish a test of context -- a mere link to the material is not actionable, but a link actively promoted in the context of implying that the content is true might be.
But in any case, hyperlinking is not "publishing," and a blanket ruling to that effect would be incredibly ignorant. There are ways to deal with the specific parameters of this case without causing collateral damage to the Net and undermining the very basic concepts that make it what it is.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
So, Wayne wants the courts to agree hyperlinking an article is "publishing" and that anyone who links to defamatory content is guilty of defamation themselves. He's already lost twice in courts.
Speaking as a Canadian, I think the snowball has a better chance in our supreme courts. My prediction is that 8 or 9 of the supreme court justices will rule against him.
Believe it or not, I think our supreme court is pretty good. They're smart people and they make sane decisions.
Actually, I think that the courts pretty much demonstrated good understanding of technology in the first judgement.
It's normal that the plaintiff should have a right of appeal - that does not mean he'll win, or that the appeal court does not 'get' the Web.
This case hinges on whether or not linking is publishing, which - under the admittedly fairly bonkers rules of English-based defamation laws, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation), determines whether or not someone has been libellous, (since we're talking about the written, rather than the spoken word).
In the initial judgement, the Court reasoned, "...hyperlinks...are analogous to footnotes, rather than constituting a 'republication.' "
In other words, he did not repeat the libel, so no case.
Remember, there are less people in Canada that in Los Angles, and a lot friendlier.
Not even close.
Population of metropolitan LA: 17.7 million
Population of Canada: 33.3 million
Actually, money is not the deciding factor on what goes to the Supreme Court. In fact, there are countless cases where the appellant is indigent.
The Supreme Court is most interested in cases where an important question of law is at issue. Not granting certiorari (i.e. not hearing a case -- usually just abbreviated "cert") just means that the Supreme Court feels that either the question isn't important and/or the appellate court got it right, so they don't want to waste time on it.
It all depends on your definition of publishing. Maybe there is an accepted legal definition of publishing, I don't know, but if not, trying to map current electronic activities into a print-based definition doesn't really make sense.
"Publishing" is making some content available to the public. The question is really is advertising a public location for a given piece of content "publishing" that content. Further questions could also be asked, such as: Is owning the server that the content on make you the publisher? In this latter case, I think we need to draw parallels with the printing industry, because they have a lot of precedent that we wouldn't want to just throw away.
1. Owning the server and network connection is like owning a printing press.
2. Links are advertisements.
3. Publishing is the act of making it available. In the case of public (free) publishing, that would be uploading the content to the web server.
Cool! Amazing Toys.