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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

#31

Post by germanier »

lisper wrote: post #23

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.

It's their job to consider this as they were asked to answer that question. In the case we are talking about, the content was the same for every request and the linker knew what they were linking to. They would be doing a pretty bad job if they would not think about whether this fact changes anything for at least some cases.

What you answered may as well be their answer. We have to wait and see.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#32

Post by placebo »

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 doubt that will ever happen. What I'm curious about though is the extent stupidity or greed of a few can kill freedom and creativity of the many without the masses revolting. I guess it depends on a large number of factors, including existing culture, and how slowly the water is heated before the frog realises it is boiling...

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#33

Post by weddpros »

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.

"when our legislative bodies actually understand how the technology around them"... They probably thing they do, hence the problem

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#34

Post by njharman »

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…

Sure, but we've allowed "The Content Oligarchy" to expand Copyright so ridiculously that there is a thing called "Contributory Infringement". If you enable or even don't actively inhibit someone's ability to infringe copyright then you are breaking the law.

The issue described in this article isn't the problem. It is a symptom. The problem, the disease infecting us all, is Copyright Law.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#36

Post by titanomachy »

_yosefk wrote: post #25
lisper wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think that's more where this legislation is coming from. Some people have built a business on aggregating links or embeddings of copyrighted material and those sites always use the legal defense of "we don't host any of the content so it's not our problem." I imagine this is very frustrating to copyright holders, so it's reasonable that they would seek redress of some kind.

Of course, making any copyright-infringing link illegal would be far too heavy-handed, but I don't think that's a likely decision here.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#37

Post by dsp1234 »

titanomachy wrote: post #36
_yosefk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that's more where this legislation is coming from. Some people have built a business on aggregating links or embeddings of copyrighted material and those sites always use the legal defense of "we don't host any of the content so it's not our problem." I imagine this is very frustrating to copyright holders, so it's reasonable that they would seek redress of some kind. Of course, making any copyright-infringin…

If someone published only the names and addresses of known drug dealers in a phone book, the publisher still wouldn't be responsible for any drug deals.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#38

Post by bonoboTP »

gioele wrote: post #2

The Court of Justice of the EU has some of the most competent IT lawyers of the world. I am sure they already compiled a memo about the definition of "hyperlink". I'd love to see it. What constitutes an hyperlink? * A working ` ` HTML element? So overlay links inside YouTube videos are OK? What about elements with `onclick="window.location="`? * Anything that can point to a URL and is actionable? * A simple URL? Woul…

The law does not need formal definitions like that. Law isn't programming, this is what nerds usually forget.

Legal definitions are usually based on common sense and the "flies like a duck, quacks like a duck, ..." principle.

A clumsy first approximation: If the purpose and intended use of the thing is to provide access to or greatly help in finding access to the infringing content, then it's "linking" to that content.

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#39

Post by 5ilv3r »

njharman wrote: post #34
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…

Sure, but we've allowed "The Content Oligarchy" to expand Copyright so ridiculously that there is a thing called "Contributory Infringement". If you enable or even don't actively inhibit someone's ability to infringe copyright then you are breaking the law. The issue described in this article isn't the problem. It is a symptom. The problem, the disease infecting us all, is Copyright Law.

Damn the consequences of distributed creation! It will never last! Content creators need to get paid! Why else would anyone make art?

Re: Europe’s top court mulls legality of hyperlinks

#40

Post by FussyZeus »

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…

You're assuming the judges in this case have an understanding of the basics of the structure of the Internet. Based on my experience with governing bodies, most still think the Internet is stored inside the blue E.
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