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

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

#121

Post by cjpdx » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 8:47 PM UTC

kelnage wrote: post #83

FigmentEngine wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

depends on how they defined "knowingly". DMCA clearly defined this, but without some specific legislative definition of what constitutes knowledge it's open to interpretation which is a dangerous ambiguity.

Perhaps I could send a message somehow to some Google exed to remove a bunch of links that are to illegal content, wait 2 weeks then claim that was sufficient notice for them to be aware of the content and therefore meet requirement #2.

To be fair, I didn't dig to see if this second requirement is clearly defined.

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

#122

Post by logicallee » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #112

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

are you and your parent referring to me by "they" (as a gender-neutral term)?

What I meant with my comment is that a pretty clear example of copyright would be, for example, hosting and including the copyrighted content. (If the content is literally on the hosting server - posting full text is obviously an example of this. Hosting full images is another example.)

A less clear example would be hotlinking. (So that the pictures are loaded and shown by the browser, and it appears to be part of the article, but is in fact an offsite image anchor.)

An even less clear example would be a URL link. That is what we're reading about. But What if it's not clickable? (hxxp:// whatever(dot) whatever - replace hxxp with http and (dot) with . -- what then?)

An even less clear example is telling you explicitly what Google search to search for, and how you can know that you've found it. (e.g. words like "Search Google for leaked playboy pictures from 2011, and click on the first link, which should be a site named after a fish." - I'm making this up.)

But a less clear example still would be "It's easy to find. Just search for [vague reference but one that is clear enough]"

So you want to use the standard of "mens rea."

How can we REALLY judge what someone's reason might be?

For example, it could be that the real reason to report on something is so that interested readers might find it.

Example: "The Pirate Bay is now hosting the entire (name something)". It could be that the primary reason to say that is that it provides people information that they can immediately use to start infringing the copyright of (something).

But what if it's couched in any other report?

"What the fact that the pirate bay is hosting (something) says about democracy and our copyright laws"? Should that be an illegal post to make?

You understand what I'm saying. It's an extremely slippery slope.

But one very, very clear line is: "are you ACTUALLY yourself hosting the content"? Because if not, then there's an actual target to shut down.

I guess it's like the difference between selling drugs, and saying "you know you can just ask the kids hanging out on the corner of 6th and 8th streets, they'll hook you up." Whether that latter shows criminal conspiracy or whatever, it doesn't really matter - you can actually just shut down the kids, you don't have to shut down the free speech around it or judge mens rea.. . .

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

#123

Post by MollyR » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 8:54 PM UTC

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…

Probably another law that will just be applied to the "little people".

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

#124

Post by Natanael_L » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

madgar wrote: post #34

shiven wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. As a strong opinion holder in the copyleft philosophy of any and all content, I feel such sites have a right to exist and profit from content as much as the copyright holders (who are not necessarily the creators of said content). But hey, this is just the opinion of some random dude on the Internet.

A random dude on the internet who must know that they their opinion is not current law in any of the countries under discussion?

Using the status quo as the basis of an argument of how things should be isn't very meaningful...

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

#125

Post by Natanael_L » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #13

morganvachon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this is the EU, but if this ruling were to happen in the US, sites like cracked.com who link to copyright-encumbered content all the time (mostly Youtube clips of movies and TV shows, often produced by highly litigious houses like Disney/Marvel Studios) and make a ton of money from ads, would quickly be sued out of existence.

Would that be a bad thing though? Those websites are purposefully acting in a way that doesn't respect the copyright of the owner of the content they want to show. That they do this through a third-party host shouldn't be that important.

Why shouldn't it, when the host is a much more obvious target?

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

#126

Post by Natanael_L » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #54

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.

As far as I can see from the rest of the document, the reason why profit motive is clumsily forced into that sentence is because it was argued that the act of posting the link itself was an attempt to increase the site's revenue because the owners were aware the public would be interested in visiting their webpage linking to the material because it wasn't authorised for publication anywhere at the time. Hence their d…

Since links are just addresses that can be followed automatically, I strongly disagree with the ruling that this applies under the cited precedence;

in the absence of that intervention, its customers would not, in principle, be able to enjoy the broadcast work

Anything already in a public index should not be illegal to point to.

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

#127

Post by andylei » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #100

ekiru wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kn…

> 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. So... no more search engines, then?

how are search engines supposed to figure out if a link contains illegal content or not

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

#128

Post by koolba » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

> European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement

If that were remotely true somebody better tell Google quick.

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

#129

Post by biot » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #119

biot wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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,…

By that line of reasoning you could publish a website with information on hitmen for hire and put their phone number beside each listing. After all it's just a sequence of numbers and the user has to manually call or configure their device to place the phone call.

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

#130

Post by nhebb » Sat, Sep 10, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

kelnage wrote: post #83

FigmentEngine wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

Search for just about any desktop software with the words "crack", "serial", "torrent",... and search engines will show results. Most of it will be virus-laden crap, but that's a separate issue. Same goes for all forms of digital media.