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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

#111

Post by biot »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #92
tormeh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Torrent sites merely hosting an ID that describes a file? You say that as if they are publishing UPC codes. The problem with that description is that clicking the ID launches an application that connects to other peers and proceeds to download the file in question in violation of copyright law. That's the entire point. The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law.

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

#112

Post by icebraining »

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.

IANAL, but it seems they are saying that the financial gain shows mens rea.

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

#113

Post by cm3 »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #84
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…

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, mayb…

But the last one is the most interesting to finally be able to trust the results. It's the same problem as faced in distributed systems, but in, say, NoSQL databases I haven't heard anyone consider the possibility of 4 of 6 members of a quorum to be undermined, and how to detect that.

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

#114

Post by pbhjpbhj »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #46
jbuzbee wrote: post #38

Techdirt has a good writeup on the new ruling. One of the good points made on Techdirt, is regarding search engines which are obviously for-profit. How in the world would Google keep from linking to material which is violating someone's copyright? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160908/11305735465/terri...

simple: google has no idea what it indexes. Please read the full ruling, which explains this only applies to those who willingly and intentionally link to content they _know_ is illegal, _and_ do so for monetary gain. Which is perfectly reasonable. The article posted to HN is pretty much fear-mongering for te purpose of getting some clicks.

>google has no idea what it indexes.

In the same way a drug dealer has no idea what's in his stash; they know exactly the sort of thing in there, roughly how much of it is there but not the very specific details.

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

#115

Post by Dylan16807 »

biot wrote: post #111
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.

Torrent sites merely hosting an ID that describes a file? You say that as if they are publishing UPC codes. The problem with that description is that clicking the ID launches an application that connects to other peers and proceeds to download the file in question in violation of copyright law. That's the entire point. The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link i…

> The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law.

And the user had to previously choose how to route these requests to 3D printers through a completely independent application. The original site itself doesn't make the IDs do anything. By default clicking those magnet links does nothing at all. A UPC code is a good analogy.

So the printer is clearly doing illegal things. But is the original site illegal because a totally different person automated drug-buying? And it's not a pachinko setup either. These are truly independent actors.

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

#116

Post by Dylan16807 »

user5994461 wrote: post #109
Dylan16807 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mov…

But those sites you're talking about are actually distributing content illegally. They're not linking to things, or doing even less.

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

#117

Post by nthcolumn »

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…

Presumption of guilt is fascist. Prosecuting the accessory before the crime. Content is not inherently illegal in and of itself. Was it was actually found to be illegally published by an EU court? No. I would argue they have no copyright here. She is very much in the pubic domain. (sic)

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

#118

Post by biot »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #115
biot wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrent sites merely hosting an ID that describes a file? You say that as if they are publishing UPC codes. The problem with that description is that clicking the ID launches an application that connects to other peers and proceeds to download the file in question in violation of copyright law. That's the entire point. The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link i…

> The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law. And the user had to previously choose how to route these requests to 3D printers through a completely independent application. The original site itself doesn't make the IDs do anything. By def…

"Golly, your honor, I had no idea that magnet links could be clickable and that, if people clicked, they could download the file, thereby facilitating copyright infringement..."

Good luck selling that line of argument. You might have an argument if the protocol actually did trigger off of unlinked UPC codes and sites didn't have to construct special links that conform to a standard (in which case you could download movies by browsing Amazon or IMDB). But if a site publishes magnet links there is no denying knowledge of what those links do. Or I guess you could try to deny but no judge or jury with an IQ over 50 would believe it.

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

#119

Post by Dylan16807 »

biot wrote: post #118
Dylan16807 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The equivalent would be a site that contains an ID for illegal drugs, and when you click the link it connects to a pharmaceutical 3D printer that instantly constructs the drug from raw materials in violation of narcotics law. And the user had to previously choose how to route these requests to 3D printers through a completely independent application. The original site itself doesn't make the IDs do anything. By def…

"Golly, your honor, I had no idea that magnet links could be clickable and that, if people clicked, they could download the file, thereby facilitating copyright infringement..." Good luck selling that line of argument. You might have an argument if the protocol actually did trigger off of unlinked UPC codes and sites didn't have to construct special links that conform to a standard (in which case you could download m…

I'm not saying the argument should be ignorance, rather that it should be lack of causality. The user has to specifically configure their system to turn these magnet IDs into a piracy opportunity. Or they have to copy each one into their torrent client of choice. Just like if I review an illegal drug and tell everyone exactly what it is so you can get the right thing from your supplier... I'm still not your supplier, I don't know who you are or where you go to buy such things. I'm not in the drug trade.

I'm sure I can find plenty of 5 star weed reviews that nobody would call illegal, even though they're calling out specific brands in a way that someone could trivially turn into a purchase.

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

#120

Post by Natanael_L »

sonoffett wrote: post #50
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…

TLSNotary is one approach: https://tlsnotary.org , although I'm not certain it provides trusted timestamps.

It doesn't, but you can feed the content through a digital timestamping system
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