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Dutch Court Rules Hyperlinks Can Constitute Infringement
Ubi_NL writes "In yesterday's ruling of Playboy (via publisher Sanoma) vs Dutch blog Geenstijl, the court ruled that hyperlinking to copyrighted material was itself infringement of copyright. The court ordered the blog to remove all links to the infringing links (court ruling in Dutch). How this ruling fits into the supreme court ruling that hyperlinks cannot by themselves infringe copyright is still to be discussed, possibly in an appeal."
So Dutch courts protect Security by Obscurity?
No surprises here. Judges have as much of a clue of those things as the sec department in my company. Oh, wait...
The point is that a query like "britt dekker nude pictures" would not (at that time) return the links that they published.
When it would be legal to post links like that, everyone could get around copyright issues by putting their material at some filesharing host and linking it on the main site.
The judge considered that to be unacceptable.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem that new, there's also the judge Chris Hensen who happened to be running a commercial anti-piracy together with the council for the plaintif while deciding that links to TPB should be blocked.
Frankly I suspect it's rare with members of the various parts of the judicial system in the field of IP who do not have significant financial interest in enforcing IP. Whether it's revolving door interest or more blatant abuses the field of government granted monopolies has always been lucrative for those on the inside, which probably makes the field very attractive for those with slightly lower ideals than what could be expected in a judiciary.
Lawyers totally depend on security through obscurity. Laws are deliberately made made vague and obscure, thus providing job security for lawyers.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Wrong. As some other posters have already shown, google happily indexes and searches FileFactory.
No it doesn't. FF blocks indexing. See http://www.filefactory.com/robots.txt
Google indexes links to FF it finds on other sites. You can't just get a file listing of uploads to FF from FF (well, maybe with a court order).
I think your wild, conspiratorial accusations are completely out of line.
Slashdot and its biases theories aside, there are a lot of grown ups out in the world who have looked at IP law in general and, while perhaps accepting that there are occasional absurdities and oddities around the edges that do need to be worked out, have concluded that it is fundamentally good. They (we) have looked for this from multiple angles, including econonomic theory, economic REALITY (we now have excellent examples of rates of development vs strength of IP regulation - and guess what - IPR does seem to matter quite a bit), and ethics. You may disagree - you may have your own arguments against IPR - fine, fair enough - but for you to immediately proclaim " I suspect it's rare with members of the various parts of the judicial system in the field of IP who do not have significant financial interest in enforcing IP. Whether it's revolving door interest or more blatant abuses the field of government granted monopolies has always been lucrative for those on the inside, which probably makes the field very attractive for those with slightly lower ideals than what could be expected in a judiciary." is irresponsible and juvenile.
there are a lot of grown ups out in the world who have looked at IP law in general and, while perhaps accepting that there are occasional absurdities and oddities around the edges that do need to be worked out, have concluded that it is fundamentally good.
Isn't that the very problem the parent was describing? The judiciary should not be concluding that particular laws are fundamentally good, but applying them indifferently.
If nothing else, more law guarantees more work, so an impartial judiciary would not even celebrate the existence of some body of law.