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Linking Without Permission Violates Copyright, Rules EU Court (reuters.com)
BarbaraHudson writes: Reuters is reporting that Playboy has won a lawsuit against a Netherlands news site for linking to photos without permission: "'It is undisputed that GS Media (which owns GreenStijl) provided the hyperlinks to the files containing the photos for profit and that Sanoma had not authorized the publication of those photos on the internet,' the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) said in a statement. 'When hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published.' The European Commission, the EU executive, is set next week to propose tougher rules on publishing copyrighted content, including a new exclusive right for news publishers to ask search engines like Google to pay to show snippets of their articles."
Neil_Brown adds: The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled today on whether posting, on a website, hyperlinks to copyright infringing works constitutes a "communication to the public" for the purposes of EU copyright law, an act which requires permission of the rights holder or other authorizing basis. The court held that, if the links are provided "without the pursuit of financial gain by a person who did not know or could not reasonably have known the illegal nature of the publication of those works on that other website," the act of posting the hyperlink is not an infringement of copyright. However, if the links are providing in the pursuit of financial gain, the poster of such links is deemed to have known that they were infringing copyright, unless they can prove otherwise. The court has stated that those sites operating "for profit" are expected to have carried out the (impossible?) "necessary checks to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published on the website to which those hyperlinks lead." The court does not clarify what is meant by "the pursuit of financial gain." If previous decisions are followed, any sites which host ads (Papasavvas), or perhaps even just accrue value to a brand (if the Advocate General's opinion in McFadden is followed), might be treated as operating for financial gain.
Farewell. We hardly knew ye.
ok, so one party puts the pictures onto a public http server, then claims they did not want those pictures publicly available--- and the courts accepted this logic?
there are other ways besides putting them on a public http server, for those images to be shared with purchasing clients and other select audiences.
so, linking to files on a public http server is copyright infringement, if the copyright holder made them available, but is really an idiot and did not mean to?
because that is what i am taking away from this.
"You're linking to a party that is legally hosting the content, how is that infringement?"
It isn't. It's no different than saying "go to the library to read this book" (although the action of going to the library becomes more automatic, since it's done for the user by the browser). The "linker" isn't involved in either delivering or receiving the content, and they're not a party to any copying. It's entirely up to the content provider if they want to deliver content which is linked from off-site.
This is just a case of a content provider being lazy by not going through the work of denying content linked from off-site, and trying to push their responsibility onto someone else.
The decision is a step towards further Balkanization of the web, which is based on hyperlinks.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"rights of copyright holders."
Uh, privileges. Copy"right" is not a natural right (like the right to self-defense), but a privilege granted by society to encourage creation of new works which benefit society. It's a very recent concept, going only back to the 17th/18th centuries.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm genuinely curious:
Is there anyone here who believes that this is not a completely stupid ruling?
If so, please explain to the rest of us how pointing to something that is already publicly available (ie published on a web page) could possibly be a violation of copyright.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It would seem copy has more rights than people.
The comments I read seemed to have missed the point that the link was to illegally posted, pre-publication photos. Not just any old link. Just sayin, puts a different angle on the story, although a little less clickbaity!