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Hyperlinking Is Not Copyright Infringement, EU Court Rules

Posted by timothy on from the just-to-be-safe-please-type-the-link-yourself dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes "Does publishing a hyperlink to freely available content amount to an illegal communication to the public and therefore a breach of creator's copyrights under European law? After examining a case referred to it by Sweden's Court of Appeal, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled today that no, it does not. The Court found that 'In the circumstances of this case, it must be observed that making available the works concerned by means of a clickable link, such as that in the main proceedings, does not lead to the works in question being communicated to a new public.'" Reader Bart Smit points to the court's ruling.

4 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. TPB legit? by xfizik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does this mean The Pirate Bay is legit now?

    1. Re:TPB legit? by Fluffeh · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A Very interesting flow-on understanding.

      As they technically don't host any infringing materials, they shouldn't be anything but legit - though I think they get hit with something along the lines of "conspiracy to enable infrigement" or some such muck - in which case, this might not actually have any bearing.

      --
      Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
    2. Re:TPB legit? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hasn't TPB's legal status always been 'We can't actually find any laws that they violate; but they just look so damn uppity and illegal that we couldn't possibly let them walk!'?

  2. Re:DO NOTE by suutar · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Fun fact: linking to content that used to be freely available but is no longer is called out as constituting infringement. The Internet Archive may have a problem.