
Internet hyperlinks do not infringe copyright, EU court advised - jonbaer
http://in.reuters.com/article/internet-copyright-eu-court-idINKCN0X40VE
======
pwenzel
The 90s are back! Clinton is running for president, and the legality
hyperlinks are up for debate again.

In 1999, a similar lawsuit was brought up against 2600 Magazine over the issue
of linking to source code that could have the potential to violate copyright:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Reimerdes)

[http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/ptech/12/28/dvd.crack/](http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/ptech/12/28/dvd.crack/)

~~~
ljk
..and bubble burst in a few years?

~~~
jackweirdy
HN's Law: The deeper the comment chain, the higher the probability someone
talks about bubble burst

~~~
justinlardinois
Might as well call it Weirdy's Law.

~~~
jackweirdy
I'll take it!

------
caractacus
This is NOT a court ruling and NOT law. Yet.

Note the word 'advised'. This is a legal _opinion_ from an important
individual who looks at the case and tells the court what he thinks. But (i)
the court can ignore it or look at the case themselves and make their own
opinion; and (ii) any ruling they do make does not bind any EU government to
implement it (though it should strongly decisions in EU countries). It's like
asking your mechanic friend what he thinks of the car you've got lined up to
buy.

As the CJEU press release states:

> NOTE: The Advocate General’s Opinion is not binding on the Court of Justice.
> It is the role of the Advocates General to propose to the Court, in complete
> independence, a legal solution to the cases for which they are responsible.
> The Judges of the Court are now beginning their deliberations in this case.
> Judgment will be given at a later date.

[http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2016...](http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2016-04/cp160037en.pdf)

~~~
jim-greer
FWIW my wife puts the odds of victory on this at something like 70% at this
point. She's a director at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, working
on freedom of expression.

That's based on this study:

[http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/01/measuring-
influenc...](http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/01/measuring-influence-of-
advocate-general.html)

------
talles
Off-topic: anyone else find the article picture really odd? (who uses a laptop
that way?)

[http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20160407&t=2&...](http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20160407&t=2&i=1130943189&w=644&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXNPEC360F3)

~~~
jchendy
The caption is kind of amusing with it's literal-ness and complete irrelevance
to the story:

> People are silhouetted as they pose with laptops in front of a screen
> projected with binary code and a Central Inteligence Agency (CIA) emblem, in
> this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014.

~~~
drostie
It is; I think it may have been intended as alt-text rather than a caption.
It's precisely the sort of description that you'd give to a blind person to
describe "here's what this image is, in case you can't see it."

------
alva
I wonder how this would have affected the UK TVShack.net case [0]. Richard
O'Dwyer was subjected to the absolutely awful UK-US extradition agreements
over linking to copyrighted content.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer)

------
mtgx
This comes at the right time, because the EU Commission was just preparing to
put "copyright infringement by hyperlinking" into law:

[https://juliareda.eu/2015/11/ancillary-copyright-2-0-the-
eur...](https://juliareda.eu/2015/11/ancillary-copyright-2-0-the-european-
commission-is-preparing-a-frontal-attack-on-the-hyperlink/)

France was also planning to ban "hyperlinking without permission":

[https://openmedia.org/en/amendment-ban-
hyperlinks](https://openmedia.org/en/amendment-ban-hyperlinks)

~~~
zerocrates
Of course, an opinion that hyperlinks aren't _currently_ copyright
infringement by themselves could be seen by some as evidence that a new law is
actually necessary.

~~~
michaelmrose
Or a sign that European nations need to stop propping up an obsolete business
model with internet breaking laws.

------
profmonocle
Seems absurd to legislate this when there's a simple technical solution. If
you don't want to allow "deep links" on a public web site, simply block any
request where the HTTP referrer isn't from your domain (or from domains whose
owners have paid you for linking rights, if you can find anyone inclined to do
so.) You could go even further by encoding a base64-encoded expiration date +
HMAC into the URL, so that your deep URLs can't be saved at all.

I think doing either of these things is silly - why even run a public web site
if you're going to do this? But it's their site, and their right to make bad
decisions with it.

If a site owner chooses _not_ to do this, it's safe to assume they intended to
allow deep links, since links are a fundamental, well-known feature of the
medium they chose to use.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Lots of people block referral headers. Browsers also drop them across
HTTPS->HTTP boundaries.

~~~
nacs
> Lots of people block referral headers

Source? I would think most people run stock browsers that don't manipulate
referrer headers.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Just take a look at the amount of times
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-
control/hn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-
control/hnkcfpcejkafcihlgbojoidoihckciin?hl=en) has been installed. And that's
just one extension for one browser.

~~~
nacs
100K users out of 3B+ internet users [1]? I don't think that qualifies as
'lots of people'.

[1]: [http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-
users/](http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/)

~~~
tokenizerrr
100K users of a single extension for a single browser. I'll leave it to you to
get the numbers for all other extensions for all other browsers. And don't
forget that uBlock can do this as well.

------
domergue
I saw a video from EU parliament where Gunther Oettinger urged that paper
pritning news industry will die thanks to hyperlinking and so we, the EU, must
do something about it (ratify this law). I think it's pretty clear where his
second wage is coming from. Or he's absolutely stupid and doesn't have a clue
about economy and prosperity.

~~~
pluma
> I think it's pretty clear where his second wage is coming from. Or he's
> absolutely stupid and doesn't have a clue about economy and prosperity.

Look into his relationship with lobbies and consumer rights' organisations
some time. Also, his speech about the Taliban-like evils of net neutrality
(yes, really).

EDIT: And if you understand German, there's even a great remix:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkORC6FcSH4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkORC6FcSH4)

------
hmmdiggy

        A link to a website which publishes photos without authorisation of the author does not in itself constitute a copyright infringement
    

Sorry for my naivety here but the way this is worded is creating confusion for
me. Does the article mean:

1) Linking to photos that you don't have authorisation to use on your website
isn't copyright infringement.

2) Linking to a website that doesn't seek authorisation to use photos on their
website.

To me it reads like the latter, in which case how is one meant to know if a
website has sought and gotten authorisation for each photo they use?

~~~
blktiger
It sounded to me like the latter as well. I think the Advocate General is
saying you can't ban hyperlinks unless they are the only way to access a
copyrighted work.

As an example, I would think a link that allowed someone to get around the
requirements to login to view something (maybe username/password as query
parameters or something?) would be considered illegal.

~~~
calgoo
There was also the comment about being freely available already. So a page
behind username / password would not be freely available and you would be
breaking the law.

Now, if a user on a private page, marked something as public, but did not
publish the link, then it would be legal as you could argue that its freely
available.*

* Not a lawyer, so just my own understanding.

------
ricksplat
Oh thank god I'll be able to link to Irish news websites again without fear of
prosecution!

[http://boingboing.net/2013/01/02/newspapers-demand-to-be-
pai...](http://boingboing.net/2013/01/02/newspapers-demand-to-be-paid-i.html)

~~~
nkrisc
Reminds of when Spain tried something similar: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-s...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-spains-google-tax-has-been-a-disaster-for-
publishers/)

However in this case I believe it centered on snippets of the news content
itself, not only a link.

~~~
candeira
In Spain they illegalised links to infringing content (mostly movie/music
downloads) by creating a "Commission of experts" which would rule on
takedowns. The reason for this, of course, is that judges and courts were
deeming hyperlinks were legal.

This is El Pais singing praises:
[http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/05/01/inenglish/1335894807_391...](http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/05/01/inenglish/1335894807_391833.html)

Techdirt is second-hand reporting, but fair:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120104/04252517273/spani...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120104/04252517273/spanish-
government-adopts-its-own-version-sopa-sinde-law-approved.shtml)

If you can read Spanish, google "Sinde-Wert jueces". This one is good:
[http://www.eldiario.es/zonacritica/ComisionSinde-
jueces_6_16...](http://www.eldiario.es/zonacritica/ComisionSinde-
jueces_6_169793025.html) (its author is David Bravo, a copyright lawyer who's
recently been elected to Spanish Parliament, and one of the most vocal
personalities on copyright in Spain).

~~~
nkrisc
Thanks for the good info. I can read Spanish, but too rusty at this point to
be reading about law.

------
amelius
What if I put base64 encoded content into the hyperlink? Will it be legal
still? :)

~~~
Natanael_L
Try magnet links instead. The opinion only really covers _pointers_.

~~~
__john
It was a joke, magnet links are base64 encoded hashes of the content iirc.

------
greglindahl
I wonder if this will have an impact on DMCA takedowns against search engines?

------
criddell
So I guess card catalogs in libraries are safe as well.

------
Esau
I honestly can't believe this is even being debated.

------
sschueller
So the pirate bay is legal?

~~~
overlordalex
This was my first thought, however there was this at the bottom of the
article:

    
    
      The advocate general added that this also depended on whether the link was indispensable in making the photos available, a matter which he referred back to the local Dutch court.
    

I believe the argument is that while The Pirate Bay only links to copyrighted
content, they are integral to making that content available (since very few
sites have these link listings).

If widely available search engines indexed magnet links then I think TPB would
be legal under this opinion.

~~~
saulrh
There are widely available search engines indexing magnet links; it's just
that they're all other torrent sites. Each individual site isn't integral to
making that content available, but the class "torrent site", taken as a whole,
may be. I'm not sure how the interpretation would work here - "would be
integral if it were the only extant illegal source"?

------
pvaldes
Given the legal uncertainty introduced by the new Spanish law, I think that is
not worth the risk to put links to spanish webs anymore in the 90% of the
cases. Definitely, not more free linking to news on online journals related
with AEDE by now.

Unless absolutely necessary, I now give just a couple of clues and let people
find the page for themselves in google if they want. Stupid measures for
stupid times...

Just my opinion.

------
brightball
Things like this are why I often wonder why people hail court verdicts so
much. We've clearly established that courts are rarely even close to logically
consistent, yet a court ruling in favor of or against an issue being discussed
is often hailed as absolute truth.

------
lutorm
I don't understand how a link could _ever_ be judged to infringe copyright. No
copy is made, any more than if I tell my friends, in person, to go and check
out the cool, copyright-infringing photo that one of us have.

~~~
rwjwjuwjudf
The text of the link itself could contain copyright material. Google says the
practical limit 10 years ago was ~100Kb, not sure now.

------
kzrdude
This doesn't really go into hotlinking, does it?

What's the legality of hotlinking? = embedding an image in your page by using
an URL directly to an image that is hosted & controlled by someone else.

~~~
pcr0
I'm no lawyer, but from an end user's perspective if you hotlinked an
unauthorized image instead of linking to a page containing the image, then you
aren't just "pointing" to the image anymore, you're practically displaying the
image on your website.

~~~
michaelmrose
The content you have merely contains a link to the provided resource. The user
can fetch your page without violating the law, the user can also legally fetch
the image from the owner. So neither you nor your user have committed a crime.

You could try to argue that the user requires a license to combine the 2 in
ways not considered by you however this has several problems.

\- Its laughably unenforceable

\- In the us it would probably be fair use

\- It would make literally the entire internet illegal

\- It would make adblocking on your end illegal

\- It would make you a world wide source of negativity and scorn.

Basically there is a technical solution to most hotlinking issues and every
imaginable legal solution would be a cure worse than the disease.

------
TheManuell
link to the CJEU press release, with details (PDF)
[http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2016...](http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2016-04/cp160037en.pdf)

------
nkrisc
This is at least reassuring. I don't think it's a big leap from saying that a
link to a site with infringing content is itself an infringing act to saying a
link to a site that links to a site [... etc] is itself infringing.

------
sspiff
So does such an advise also include things like magnet links, which do not
include the content, or its location, but instead a description of the content
by means of a hash or checksum?

------
known
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" \--Isaac
Newton

