New EU Copyright Ruling

"A link to a website which publishes photos without authorisation of the author does not in itself constitute a copyright infringement, an adviser to Europe's top court said on Thursday..."
http://in.reuters.com/article/internet-copyright-eu-court-idINKCN0X40VE

I had always assumed that this was how links were viewed (not infringing) and was a bit surprised to see the above being touted as news. I now wonder what U.S. courts have said on this topic. Anyone care to share on this?

 

I don't think that this was so self-evident.

Liability for hyperlinks posted on your own website has been discussed thoroughly in EU for many years. An analogy: Imagine that the link target provides a manual on "how to build a bomb". When a website links to such a "criminal" website isn't that accessory to that crime? The link to such a website is definitely supporting terrorism. How much liability is with the domain owner of the website that is linking to the illegal site? Would you not say that it should be illegal to link to such a website that is distributing illegal material? Same thing for photos. Is it really right to link to a website that infringes copyrights of others? Doesn't such a link support the criminal website? And does the person who has linked the site become an accomplice?

We know the outcome of it all now, but equally well it could have went a different path, e.g. the court ruling that linking to illegal activities is illegal for itself.

 

I agree that linking to sites espousing criminal activity can flow back legally to the linker. However, it is one thing to link to a site that is espousing criminal activity in plain writing and/or graphics. It is entirely another thing, in my layman's opinion, to link to a website only after somehow verifying that every picture on the page is not infringing a copyright. The chilling effect of such a requirement would be significant. Do I also have to check the written content to be sure that they have not copied someone else's copyrighted work? If I find a site with duplicate pictures or copyrighted content, am I expected to determine which is the rightful owner before linking? If both claim ownership, how do I proceed?

 

I surely agree with you, and probably your thoughts are also what the court thought over. It is not really practical to force website owners to continuously check their links. They also cannot be sure whether a photo on another websites infringes someone's copyright. The decision is probably sound and wise.

 

Links to other sites are generally not going to be liable for the infringement of the target site as long as they are not engaging in "contributory infringement". For example, having a website that links to infringed video downloads on a pirate site would be "contributory infringement". Linking to a site that is using a stolen picture would not be. It depends on whether one knows or should have knowledge that the links are to infringed works.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/contributory_infringement