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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

#71

Post by soufron »

That's not what the decision said. At all.

The decision said that a link to illegal content can be illegal in itself when 1. it's done for monetary purposes, and 2. when the person creating the link was aware of the illegal nature of the content being linked.

But who would have doubted about that? Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it?

On the other side, it clarifies the fact that a link to illegal content will not be illegal if it's done for free, or if it's done without knowing the illegal nature of the content being linked.

To quote the decision : "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 be presumed."

From my perspective, it's a good decision.

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

#72

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kuschku wrote: post #64
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The answer is not to argue over whose censorship laws to apply, the answer is to not have government censorship.

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

#73

Post by amelius »

unicornporn wrote: post #36
cm3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that's the case, and I didn't read the legal text, but how would you protect yourself against that? Would we have to keep tamper-proof screenshots (or archive.is-like snapshots) for each external link posted?

Screenshots are terrible proof. They were however used in a Swedish piracy court case many years ago. That led to someone building the "proof machine"[1] which created screenshots of BitTorrent clients with any IP you entered. Try it: [1] http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence

It could bring you into more problems than you started with.

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

#74

Post by easychris »

kuschku wrote: post #66
jessaustin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not true - at least for Germany. Here a repeated action to earn a profit is considered commercial activity.

I'm not sure what a court would think about 10€/m, but I guess 100€/m would be considered commercial.

EDIT: the common description of being commercial in Germany is: a planned, longer term acting to make money - it's not even necessary to make a profit. Source (in German): http://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/verbraucher-unternehmer.html

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

#75

Post by elmigranto »

soufron wrote: post #71

That's not what the decision said. At all. The decision said that a link to illegal content can be illegal in itself when 1. it's done for monetary purposes, and 2. when the person creating the link was aware of the illegal nature of the content being linked. But who would have doubted about that? Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it? On the other side, it clar…

Are 1 and 2 `AND` or `OR`?

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

#76

Post by Symbiote »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #72
kuschku wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The answer is not to argue over whose censorship laws to apply, the answer is to not have government censorship.

Copyright is one form of government censorship.

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

#77

Post by kstrauser »

soufron wrote: post #71

That's not what the decision said. At all. The decision said that a link to illegal content can be illegal in itself when 1. it's done for monetary purposes, and 2. when the person creating the link was aware of the illegal nature of the content being linked. But who would have doubted about that? Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it? On the other side, it clar…

> Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it?

Yes, and that's a horrible ruling. Almost everything can be construed as "for money". Are you a newspaper with paid subscribers? Everything you link is "for money". Do you have a Google ad on your hobby blog? Technically, you're getting paid for it. Someone will make the argument that you're driving traffic to your ad-sponsored blog by linking to infringing content, so obvious you're profiting from piracy.

It's also ludicrous to pretend that the linker is guilty of the crime. If I link to Silk Road and you go there to buy drugs, I am not involved in the transaction. I didn't buy drugs. I didn't sell drugs. I had nothing to do with you ordering drugs other than telling you where they were.

Google links to things that are illegal all over the place. Should they be guilty of linking to Muhammad cartoons because that's taboo in certain countries? Of course not, even if they get paid for it.

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

#78

Post by easychris »

petre wrote: post #68

European law isn't precedent based.

That does not mean that this ruling doesn't have any effect on future rulings of "smaller" courts.

The European Court is asked by the local courts how to interpret European laws. Otherwise why should the local court should have asked the European Court in the first place?

I don't have a better source than Wikipedia at the moment[1], but local courts will likely orient their decisions on this one.

[1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4ischer_Gerichtsho...

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

#79

Post by tormeh »

kstrauser wrote: post #77
soufron wrote: post #71

That's not what the decision said. At all. The decision said that a link to illegal content can be illegal in itself when 1. it's done for monetary purposes, and 2. when the person creating the link was aware of the illegal nature of the content being linked. But who would have doubted about that? Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it? On the other side, it clar…

> Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it? Yes, and that's a horrible ruling. Almost everything can be construed as "for money". Are you a newspaper with paid subscribers? Everything you link is "for money". Do you have a Google ad on your hobby blog? Technically, you're getting paid for it. Someone will make the argument that you're driving traffic to your ad-spo…

The law is rarely interpreted so literally in court. Accordingly, few laws are written for literally-minded courts.

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

#80

Post by im4w1l »

cm3 wrote: post #70
sbierwagen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1. Because the hash is in the blockchain, certificates cannot be created retroactively.

2. The notary could make their archive public, so that any interested party could go through and verify that it is legit.

3. By using many different notaries the chance of any one of them being bad would be reduced.

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