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Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#21

Post by lisper »

6502nerdface wrote: post #3

> Europe's highest court is considering whether every hyperlink in a Web page should be checked for potentially linking to material that infringes copyright, before it can be used. A hyperlink is just an address of some kind that client software interprets in a certain way allowing users to easily send network packets to it. Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by…

> Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by whoever controls the address, and outside the control of the publisher of the hyperlink.

It's actually even worse than that. The content can change depending on who is making the request, and can also change from one request to the next. There is absolutely no guarantee that if you check the content of a URL at one time and find that it doesn't infringe any copyrights (and how would you know anyway?) that the next time you check, or the next time someone else checks, that the content won't be different.

That the court would even consider this is an indication of deep and profound ignorance on their part.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#22

Post by digi_owl »

mr_luc wrote: post #13
duncanawoods wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a different spin on that example, say you sold a directory of crack dealer's phone-numbers called 1800-dragon-chasers. It seems clear its aiding in a criminal enterprise and not a totally innocent knowledge product. I wonder if you could be charged for that.

Right. But the point is that laws exist that do apply to your scenario; the law would have to demonstrate that it's aiding in criminal enterprise and use legal methods (maybe even an injunction). However, newspapers let people place personal ads: "Pottery enthusiast seeks friends. 555-1212, or write to 1010 Binary Lane." Should the newspaper have to call that number, and write to that address, and determine (how?) th…

> However, newspapers let people place personal ads: "Pottery enthusiast seeks friends. 555-1212, or write to 1010 Binary Lane."

I recall reading a story from a guy living in England during the Amiga years.

At one point he learned that he could place a personal ad in the back one of the many magazines sold, offering to exchange copies if he was mailed floppies.

At the height of this activity he got so much mail he had to buy extra drives, and spend whole weekends swapping floppies.

And this is sending floppies via physical mail.

If you want a contemporary equivalent i hear there are people operating a "sneakernet" based on external HDDs over in Cuba.

Heck, i have personally seen people bring duffel bags of CD-Rs to LAN parties. And this was back when most used modems to get online.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#23

Post by lisper »

The fact that the court is even considering this is an indication of deep and profound ignorance on their part. There is no binding at all between URLs and content. A web server can serve different content for the same URL on every single request. In fact, most URLs on the web today are like that.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#25

Post by _yosefk »

lisper wrote: post #21
6502nerdface wrote: post #3

> Europe's highest court is considering whether every hyperlink in a Web page should be checked for potentially linking to material that infringes copyright, before it can be used. A hyperlink is just an address of some kind that client software interprets in a certain way allowing users to easily send network packets to it. Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by…

> Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by whoever controls the address, and outside the control of the publisher of the hyperlink. It's actually even worse than that. The content can change depending on who is making the request, and can also change from one request to the next. There is absolutely no guarantee that if you check the content of a URL at one time and…

On the other hand, and not that I'd like to be sued for placing links, if the link in my page is something like Avatar Movie Download, the argument that the page had the text of the Holy Bible in it last time I checked might not be very convincing.

So I can see how someone might mull.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#26

Post by simcop2387 »

chjohasbrouck wrote: post #17

This proposal makes the EU cookie law ( https://www.cookielaw.org ) seem totally reasonable by comparison. My first question is, what impact would this have on the European economy over time? Total devastation? Or would it ultimately amount to just a bunch of fines and legal fees that only the major tech companies can afford to pay, effectively locking out competitors? In other words, would this merely be horrible fo…

Absolutely horrible for consumers. Not sure what it would do to the European economy, but at best it would have no effect on it. There'd be no good side to this happening.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#27

Post by TeMPOraL »

Analemma_ wrote: post #20
trose wrote: post #14

I can't wait for the day when our legislative bodies actually understand how the technology around them works. Maybe then we can avoid idiotic discussions like the ones surely going on in this courtroom right now.

It won't happen until "those people who actually understand how the technology around them works" decide to become legislators. Are you quitting your engineering job to run for office?

It's irrelevant. It would happen even if everyone involved had a CS PhD.

Note that there's a reason this idea is being discussed, and it's not that the Internet is broken and needs to be fixed. The Internet works fine. But there are groups of people who want to make money off it, and they have enough resources to (attempt to) buy legislation that would favor their preferred business model.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#28

Post by tomjen3 »

trose wrote: post #14

I can't wait for the day when our legislative bodies actually understand how the technology around them works. Maybe then we can avoid idiotic discussions like the ones surely going on in this courtroom right now.

I am terrified of that day. The only reason we progress in IT is that no person in authority understands tech, so they can't make stupid rules that stops us.

Imagine if they had been competent enough to make the rule that all source code had to be stored in a repository, and that each file had to be locked to prevent concurrent modification - we would never have progressed from RCS.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#29

Post by germanier »

Just to make things clear, nothing is decided yet. What is debated in this thread is the very same question the court will answer. For example, they are being asked to asses:

> is it important whether the ‘hyperlinker’ is or ought to be aware of the fact that the website to which the hyperlink refers is not easily findable by the general internet public?

Which in fact does included the finer details of changing content after the link was published. But that isn't really important to this specific case: The link pointed to the very same content all the time and was labelled with the content on the linking website. Even if they decide that this link was illegal that does not necessarily imply that any link going to infringing websites is a law violation (for example, if the content changed later on or different content is served to different users).

That's what courts are there for: They are asked question of legality and answer them. We don't know yet how they will decide this time and it's wasted time to mock judges for not knowing anything about technology before actually seeing the ruling they make. The CJEU has a pretty good track-record so far.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#30

Post by trav4225 »

6502nerdface wrote: post #3

> Europe's highest court is considering whether every hyperlink in a Web page should be checked for potentially linking to material that infringes copyright, before it can be used. A hyperlink is just an address of some kind that client software interprets in a certain way allowing users to easily send network packets to it. Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by…

Are you assuming that policymaking has anything to do with logic and reason? ;-)
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