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

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

#101

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #96

Dylan16807 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that's the intent, it's pretty hard to reconcile how copyright law acts nothing like anything else. If I make a website that describes the effects of various designer drugs in glowing terms, and the closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID, I'm very easily on the legal side of things.

> closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID How are those things in any way comparable? Knowing the chemical formula of a drug doesn't get you any closer to possessing it, but knowing the ID of a torrent lets you immediately download it. At the end of the day, would you want law to be based on technical trivia, which can rapidly change, or do you want it be based on the intent of the person…

You can put the ID of a chemical into a black market search engine just as you can put the ID of a torrent into the DHT search mechanisms.

Both require that you know where to go, and use a third party search system to find the people that actually have the illegal material.

At the end of the day, I want the responsibility to be on the people actually performing illegal distribution. And when someone provides a listing of what is available illegally, without who or where to get it from, that should be legal.

In your opinion, if someone writes a highly-convincing page encouraging you to smoke opium, is that intent okay? Because to me that seems about equally far-removed from any drug crime as your typical torrent search engine is from infringement.

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

#102

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #19

morganvachon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but again using Cracked as an example, they have many times linked to a 30+ minute video to make a one-sentence joke. That's far beyond fair use as far as the law is written. They also obviously do not get prior permission from the publisher; a typical older article from Cracked will have embedded videos that show "this was removed for copyright violation" placeholders.

You don't need prior permission if it's fair use, and it can still be fair use even if the video is removed (the DMCA ensures it has to be taken down regardless, at least until the uploader sends a counter-notice, and YT goes even beyond that). Still, the 30m for a single joke might be infringing, yes, but so what? If it would be infringement if they served the video from their own servers, why shouldn't it be by emb…

>If it would be infringement if they served the video from their own servers, why shouldn't it be by embedding from YT? //

Because then the infringement, if there is one, is YouTube's and not the linker-to-YouTube's.

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

#103

Post by smallnamespace » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:22 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #101

smallnamespace wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID How are those things in any way comparable? Knowing the chemical formula of a drug doesn't get you any closer to possessing it, but knowing the ID of a torrent lets you immediately download it. At the end of the day, would you want law to be based on technical trivia, which can rapidly change, or do you want it be based on the intent of the person…

You can put the ID of a chemical into a black market search engine just as you can put the ID of a torrent into the DHT search mechanisms. Both require that you know where to go, and use a third party search system to find the people that actually have the illegal material. At the end of the day, I want the responsibility to be on the people actually performing illegal distribution. And when someone provides a listin…

But the distribution of profit is completely different in those two cases, and that's legally relevant.

When you go on the dark web and buy something illegal, the money goes to the seller, whereas presumably nobody is directly profiting from the torrents.

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

#104

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:25 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #103

Dylan16807 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put the ID of a chemical into a black market search engine just as you can put the ID of a torrent into the DHT search mechanisms. Both require that you know where to go, and use a third party search system to find the people that actually have the illegal material. At the end of the day, I want the responsibility to be on the people actually performing illegal distribution. And when someone provides a listin…

But the distribution of profit is completely different in those two cases, and that's legally relevant. When you go on the dark web and buy something illegal, the money goes to the seller, whereas presumably nobody is directly profiting from the torrents.

The obvious question then is how you classify a pirate bay clone that has no ads. No profits.

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

#105

Post by kuschku » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #99

kuschku wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You’ll get laughed out of every court. Apparently not, if other courts agree with this one.

First, PLEASE read the ruling. It’s disheartening how many are discussing it without reading first.

Second, the court made a ruling about the application of a law in a specific set of cases:

A company takes a link which they know points to illegal material, and publish it, for the intention of making profit.

Third, this is Civil Law. NOT Common Law. Precedence means nothing.

So, if that was actually true, due to (3), Google could have been sued thousands of times before, or Movie4k.to or so on – but they haven’t.

Even kino.to could only be sued because they paid the uploaders of illegal movies money – not because they linked to them.

Second, this specific case here doesn’t even apply to almost every other website.

The argument is "because they published it and claimed exclusivity to make money, they had to know it was illegal".

Which means if you have user generated content, standard C&D or DMCA stuff applies, and only if you violate that, it can be infringing.

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

#106

Post by s_q_b » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:27 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.

Too much ambiguity in the law creates the opportunity for arbitrary enforcement.

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

#107

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #98

icebraining wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When they said copying was what should be seen as the line I assumed that was within the framework of current Western laws, so things like intent (mens rea) are a given.

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by kuschku » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:30 PM UTC

easychris wrote: post #74

kuschku wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/…

Yes, but there’s a legal difference, and courts in Germany have to take Verhältnismäßigkeit into account.

You can’t sue the parents of a kid selling lemonade in their frontyard, even though it’d technically be a violation of the Lebensmittelverordnung.

Just like a small webblog which does not even qualify as Nebeneinkunft, and which is not taxable, would also be not relevant for such a case, unless you published it knowing it was illegal to make that money.

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

#109

Post by user5994461 » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:31 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…

> they have a banner ad that gives then a thousandth of a penny

Forget about thepiratebay. It's children pocket money.

Remember the time of RapidShare/Megaupload? They were paying something like $5 per thousand downloads.

Let's imagine a popular DDL/streaming site sending one video. The next week it's been downloaded 100k times. That's $500 easy money for one upload.

Multiply that amount of money by the amount of movies, of tv show episodes, of video games (whose 20GB are split in 20 separate files).

That was the hell of a business model.

Now, let's think about the modern streaming sites. It doesn't monetize that way anymore. Instead it's putting aggressive ads on every fucking page + misleading widgets opening ad popups + affiliation with streaming services + useless redirection so visitor are forced to open more pages.

Illegal download/streaming are a very lucrative business and that's why there are so many of it. Noone is talking pennies there.

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

#110

Post by cm3 » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

im4w1l wrote: post #80

cm3 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, and if the quorum consists of 6 members, and you managed to undermind 3 of them by making sure they're fed the same custom shadow content, you'll have a split.