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European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

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Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#61

Post by jacquesm »

icebraining wrote: post #57
logicallee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the link had consisted of a prominent section "How to find it" consisting of the words (I'm making this up) "Search Google for leaked playboy pictures from 2011 , and click on the first link, which should be a site named after a fish." Now it is a passing reference to how to find it -- but your criteria that 1) they made money from it, and 2) they could know and should know that this content is illegal. Well,…

I don't think reproduction is a good line at all; HN could still be guilty if someone posted an unlicensed copyrighted work (say, a news article). Intention and knowledge is the best dividing line, in my opinion, and courts certainly take it into account. HN blindly reproduces what people post, whereas the link in question was posted by the site editors themselves - that's a clear distinction, and in fact many lawsui…

> I don't think reproduction is a good line at all; HN could still be guilty if someone posted an unlicensed copyrighted work (say, a news article).

There are 100's of these on HN already.

Just a few samples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262777

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862279

Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#62

Post by sbierwagen »

cm3 wrote: post #45
nickpsecurity wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptographic, digital notaries. You could do screenshots and/or HTML pages. It's how I've always done it when I thought what's on a page would be significant and need proof later on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping EDIT: There's also newer ones that pull the site for you like a MITM to do what we're saying. Startups come and go, though, so I recommend scripted or manual scraping combined with long…

While we could implement a system to have tamper proof verification of stuff that's been archived, how do you prove that the archive (snapshot) is what was actually at the target at creation time and hasn't been modified before archival? I'm thinking in purely technical terms here, and that I can easily argue that such evidence is inadmissible, unless there's a certain number of independent, trusted snapshot services…

Hash it, store the hash in a blockchain: https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping (One of the few things blockchain stuff is useful for)

Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#63

Post by jacquesm »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #49
Esau wrote: post #33

My god, I love Europe, but they have some of the most brain-dead results when it comes to decisions that affect the Internet.

Not if you read the actual ruling instead of an article turning it into sensationalism with facts omitted. Always a good idea to get the facts before you commit to making claims. In this case the _actual_ ruling is about linking to content that you know is illegal, but you still intentionally link to for monetary gains. Any reasonable court, or person for that matter, would go "oh... yeah that's obviously a VERY DIFF…

If you take it as a given that any news publication is in some way or other 'for profit' and that all links are placed intentional some of the sensationalism is warranted.

"Illegal" content is anything that the source does not want distributed, and this ruling could make it quite hard for news sources to link to places like wikileaks.

Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#64

Post by kuschku »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #29
Maarten88 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be bad for the internet, but it seems fair and also consistent with earlier EU rules, such as the "right to be forgotten". It places an extra burden on the big, commercial sites to remove links (or stop linking on the first place) to content that is considered illegal in the EU. Of course, that may be considered bad for the internet, because most people, as long as they are not the victim, like to see leaked n…

> I think that now that the internet is mature as it is, some limits are necessary to keep things fair and protect people from the mob, and the internet will live on nonetheless. The problem is, if you have a different internet in the US than you do in Europe, China and Saudi Arabia then it isn't the internet anymore. There is no way to do that and still allow people in Europe to communicate with people in the US --…

Sure, we shouldn’t have different internets for different countries.

But instead of applying US law globally, we might want to instead apply EU or Chinese law globally.

It can’t be that laws that only 300 million people can vote for are applied to billions of people.

Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#65

Post by ajnin »

So now publishers must determine what is legal or not. They must do the job of judges as well or better as them or risk the very very high penalties attached to copyright infringement. This can only lead to defensive postures and extensive amounts of self-censorship to avoid that huge risk.

Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#66

Post by kuschku »

jessaustin wrote: post #23
seszett wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the decision[0] though? It specifically addresses this. > it is to be determined whether those 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 or whether, on the contrary, those links are provided for such a purpose, a situation in which that knowledge must…

IANAL, but my reading of that is if one makes money from one's site (e.g. by having ads) then EU will assume that one knows whether or not linked content is infringing. Because €10/month from adwords is totally enough to hire a lawyer to evaluate every link that users post. Anyway, how does that "specifically address" GP's question about mutability? That isn't even mentioned in the bolded text.

> Because €10/month from adwords is totally enough to hire a lawyer to evaluate every link that users post.

And that’s where courts will just classify you as noncommercial.

If you don’t make enough with it to finance your lifestyle, it’s very likely not really commercial.

Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#67

Post by kuschku »

downandout wrote: post #59

So then Facebook can be sued if someone posts a link to my copyrighted content? I hope none of my "friends" post a link to the picture I just took and don't want on Facebook then. I wouldn't want to have to sue them. This ruling will take about 20 seconds before it is abused for profit.

> This ruling will take about 20 seconds before it is abused for profit.

You’ll get laughed out of every court.

Remember, the EU does not operate under common law, but civil law, so the value of a precedence case is already limited.

In such a case, more specific interpretation is definitely necessary.

Re: European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

#70

Post by cm3 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #62
cm3 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we could implement a system to have tamper proof verification of stuff that's been archived, how do you prove that the archive (snapshot) is what was actually at the target at creation time and hasn't been modified before archival? I'm thinking in purely technical terms here, and that I can easily argue that such evidence is inadmissible, unless there's a certain number of independent, trusted snapshot services…

Hash it, store the hash in a blockchain: https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping (One of the few things blockchain stuff is useful for)

Yes, but how do you conclude without a doubt that what was hashed hasn't been tampered, leading a site to believe it's legal or malware-free content, while it actually isn't, and you've just been fed a shadow version of the real thing. We can reach for consensus algorithms, but ultimately without something like Van Jacobson's Content Centric Networking, it will be very hard to prove with enough confidence for a judge to make a ruling.
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