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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

#141

Post by function_seven »

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #139
0x0 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything you link is "for money". Do you have a Google ad on your hobby blog? Technically, you're getting paid for it. So why do people have Google ads on their hobby blogs? Could it be that it's actually for money , not just "for money"? If it's not for money, why even bother running ads? Sounds to me like a pretty good indicator of intention.

Because hobbies cost money? It's not their day job, they're just looking to maybe pay for their hosting and a little more, generally.

It's irrelevant what you plan to spend the revenue on. My hobbies cost money as well, but I don't subsidize them with ads. I pay for them with my own money.

If you want to run a blog as a hobby, great. Spend your own money to buy hosting and be done with it. If you want to generate revenue off your hobby, that's fine as well, but know that it's not purely a "hobby" anymore. Even if the amounts are small or you're not profitable, it doesn't matter.

EDIT: Sibling comment may be more accurate. If you show non-profitness, (I'm speaking abstractly, not in relation to linked court decision), that would be enough to sever the link between the otherwise infringing links and your revenue.

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

#142

Post by plandis »

0x0 wrote: post #137
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…

> Everything you link is "for money". Do you have a Google ad on your hobby blog? Technically, you're getting paid for it. So why do people have Google ads on their hobby blogs? Could it be that it's actually for money , not just "for money"? If it's not for money, why even bother running ads? Sounds to me like a pretty good indicator of intention.

I use ads on my hobby site to pay for my hobby site. I make like $10 a year off of it.

I run ads because I'd rather not pay out of pocket but I hardly consider it as something that makes me money for the sake of making money.

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

#143

Post by GunboatDiplomat »

andylei wrote: post #127
Natsu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Clairvoyance.

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

#144

Post by 0x0 »

plandis wrote: post #142
0x0 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything you link is "for money". Do you have a Google ad on your hobby blog? Technically, you're getting paid for it. So why do people have Google ads on their hobby blogs? Could it be that it's actually for money , not just "for money"? If it's not for money, why even bother running ads? Sounds to me like a pretty good indicator of intention.

I use ads on my hobby site to pay for my hobby site. I make like $10 a year off of it. I run ads because I'd rather not pay out of pocket but I hardly consider it as something that makes me money for the sake of making money.

When you have ads on your hobby site, do you ever stop to think about how your content affects ad traffic and revenue, or do you never ever think about the banners that you run? Genuinely curious.

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

#145

Post by GunboatDiplomat »

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.

I'd rather the laws of a country which enshrines freedom of speech to a greater degree than any other be the set of rules governing the internet than the laws of a place where you can be fined for jokingly giving a Nazi salute.

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

#146

Post by smallnamespace »

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,…

> rather that it should be lack of causality

I don't think causality is the right metric here, rather it's the fact that you're facilitating a criminal act -- you're making it easier for someone to break the law.

The proportional amount by which you facilitate the action ought to matter.

If a drug is going to cost you $50 and all I did was point you in the right direction, you still need to cough up another $50.

But if finding the right link and downloading some tool is all I need to do, then by providing the link you've taken me at least halfway, and maybe more if I already had the tool.

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

#147

Post by Dylan16807 »

smallnamespace wrote: post #146
Dylan16807 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> rather that it should be lack of causality I don't think causality is the right metric here, rather it's the fact that you're facilitating a criminal act -- you're making it easier for someone to break the law. The proportional amount by which you facilitate the action ought to matter. If a drug is going to cost you $50 and all I did was point you in the right direction, you still need to cough up another $50. But…

Would that mean the cheaper the drug is, the more proportional responsibility I have for pointing you the way?

Your efficiency tools should not make my actions more illegal.

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

#148

Post by smallnamespace »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #147
smallnamespace wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather that it should be lack of causality I don't think causality is the right metric here, rather it's the fact that you're facilitating a criminal act -- you're making it easier for someone to break the law. The proportional amount by which you facilitate the action ought to matter. If a drug is going to cost you $50 and all I did was point you in the right direction, you still need to cough up another $50. But…

Would that mean the cheaper the drug is, the more proportional responsibility I have for pointing you the way? Your efficiency tools should not make my actions more illegal.

> _Your_ efficiency tools should not make _my_ actions more illegal.

Why would you expect that to be an invariant in the legal system?

Your actions take place in the context of the world; the context should affect how someone judges your actions.

The key point is whether you personally know (and if the prosecution can show it) that providing a link is tantamount to allowing someone to easily download it.

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

#149

Post by cm3 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #87
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…

>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??

> Each client receives different content (at some level).

Exactly, and now imagine how easy it is for someone motivated and with the right resources to meddle with that.

Similarly, it's hard to prove a machine was used by its user to consciously navigate to an illegal link. There's too much automatism on the web and on networked machines, plus if we consider link shorteners, there are too many explanations against that would not allow admitting evidence like machine-x-owned-by-mike-miller-accessed-mp3forfree-artist-album-2016.pdf.

It's the equivalent of me walking in a street where I didn't know drugs or weapons or humans were sold, and being arrested for just walking through there. In real life you have some clues where not to go, especially if you're from the town, but on the internet it's too easy to have your machine load a random illegal link or search alarming terms on Google without your consent.

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

#150

Post by icebraining »

logicallee wrote: post #122
icebraining wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By "they" I meant the judges.

Personally, I think not having mens rea as a standard is killing any possibility of user-generated content, since any such site could be convicted if any of its users posted an infringing work. The Safe Harbour provision is one of the few good parts of the DMCA, but it requires judging mens rea, and once you have to judge that, adding linking doesn't have bring any further issues.

In Brilliant v. W.B. Productions Inc., the court ruled that the phrase "I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent" was copyrighted. Under your black-and-white standard, without judging intention, HN would now be guilty of infringement. How could it continue to exist with this threat?

Mens rea might be hard to prove (and presumption of innocence should be applied), but strict liability becomes absurd.

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