European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by FigmentEngine » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

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…

agreed, you are correct.

but this ruling also catches all search engines with advertising..

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

#82

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:33 PM UTC

rahkiin wrote: post #5

I agree, this is bad for the internet. However, some context is missing: The case was in the Netherlands, regarding the website GeenStijl linking to leaked playboy pictures. The court said that 1) GeenStijl made money from it 2) they should and could have know, and most probably knew, that this content was illegal (because they posted it as 'leaked nudes!!'). The combination of these (earning money from content that…

> Also, Google does not know what is illegal and what is legal, so they can't be sued over this particular ruling.//

Only because "Google" chooses not to. Execs in control of what Google links to know that it links to illegal/tortuous/immoral content -- leaked nude images, say -- they make money from advertising alongside those links and by inclusion of such links so they can provide a 'comprehensive' search.

Google will get a pass though, too big to prosecute. The result of that is there will always be a place to find such content.

It's inequitable -- and hence contrary to democracy and the rule of law -- to convict someone of providing a link without also convicting search engine execs whose SE provides the same link. It also makes the process futile.

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

#83

Post by kelnage » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:37 PM UTC

FigmentEngine wrote: post #81

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…

agreed, you are correct. but this ruling also catches all search engines with advertising..

How do search engines meet requirement 2 (knowingly linking to illegal content)?

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

#84

Post by nickpsecurity » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:37 PM UTC

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…

The answer is mostly in the link I gave you. Here's an implementation:

http://www.surety.com/digital-copyright-protection/prove-own...

You publish the hash chains with signature in places you can't retract. They use New York Times for instance. Far as their sigs, they can use one or more HSM's. One or more atomic clocks plus high-quality NTP for timing. Open-source client checks all of it right after it happens, maybe keeping local copy. Every other aspect is just standard INFOSEC.

I dont have time to answer the last question right now. Off to work. :(

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

#85

Post by kelnage » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #82

rahkiin wrote: post #5

I agree, this is bad for the internet. However, some context is missing: The case was in the Netherlands, regarding the website GeenStijl linking to leaked playboy pictures. The court said that 1) GeenStijl made money from it 2) they should and could have know, and most probably knew, that this content was illegal (because they posted it as 'leaked nudes!!'). The combination of these (earning money from content that…

> Also, Google does not know what is illegal and what is legal, so they can't be sued over this particular ruling.// Only because "Google" chooses not to. Execs in control of what Google links to know that it links to illegal/tortuous/immoral content -- leaked nude images, say -- they make money from advertising alongside those links and by inclusion of such links so they can provide a 'comprehensive' search. Google…

I think you've misunderstood - Google, I am sure, is aware that it probably links to illegal content. But it has no way of knowing what is illegal or not - so it would not meet those conditions. It's a completely different situation to the case in question.

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

#86

Post by ekiru » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

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…

What the decision said is much closer to "or" than "and".

Such linking is, as your quote says, not infringement if it is done without pursuit of financial gain and is done by someone who does not or cannot reasonably know the illegality of the linked material. In other words, they decided that linking to illegally published material is copyright infringement if it was done for commercial purposes or by someone who knew that the linked material was illegally published.

The court also concluded that, if the linking was done for commercial purposes, it must be presumed that the person publishing the links knew that the linked material was illegally published.

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

#87

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

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…

>how do you prove that the archive (snapshot) is what was actually at the target at creation time //

It's not what was at the sender though, surely, it's what gets sent to the client. Each client receives different content (at some level).

If I paste a 'forbidden' link to my blog that I've never followed, and no-one ever views the page, surely that's not a crime??

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

#88

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #79

kstrauser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This isn't a hypothetical abuse of the law. This actually happens. Sites are shut down for linking to things. Sites are considered 'commercially' violating copyright because they have a banner ad that gives then a thousandth of a penny. Look at the current incarnation of the pirate bay. It doesn't even link to infringing content. It just gives you the ID code of a file that helps you find infringing files. There's no tracker, there aren't even .torrent files. Now look at how many places it's banned.

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

#89

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

Drakim wrote: post #16

cm3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read now. The ruling acknowledges the target is mutable, but it also says that the poster of a link on a page that's for-profit must check the target content. However, I cannot find anything how one should prove it was legal at time of linking. The only sensible thing I can find is that once notified a link has to be taken down. Did I miss something?

Perhaps it would work the other way around? The prosecutor has to positively prove that when you established that link, it was pointing directly at illegal content (and based on the context of your linking, that you knew it was illegal).

Assumption of innocence, are you mad? /s

Next you'll be wanting trials instead of summary rulings.

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

#90

Post by tormeh » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #88

tormeh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This isn't a hypothetical abuse of the law. This actually happens. Sites are shut down for linking to things. Sites are considered 'commercially' violating copyright because they have a banner ad that gives then a thousandth of a penny. Look at the current incarnation of the pirate bay. It doesn't even link to infringing content. It just gives you the ID code of a file that helps you find infringing files. There's no…

> Look at the current incarnation of the pirate bay. It doesn't even link to infringing content. It just gives you the ID code of a file that helps you find infringing files. There's no tracker, there aren't even .torrent files. Now look at how many places it's banned.

Was this really the best example you could come up with? Because that's clearly the law working as intended.