
Supreme Court of Canada: No Liability for Linking - mef
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6069/125/
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Osiris
_The Internet’s capacity to disseminate information has been described by this
Court as “one of the great innovations of the information age” whose “use
should be facilitated rather than discouraged”. Hyperlinks, in particular, are
an indispensable part of its operation...The Internet cannot, in short,
provide access to information without hyperlinks._

It's nice to see some common sense in the ruling

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Wistar
"It's nice to see some common sense in the ruling"

No kidding. The first I've seen since the appalling Corley/Goldstein case.

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marekmroz
That case was in US though.

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redthrowaway
I wonder how this will impact on the legality of sites such as thepiratebay in
Canada. The first quote,

"I would conclude that a hyperlink, by itself, should never be seen as
“publication” of the content to which it refers."

would seem to suggest that merely hosting a torrent file, which is analogous
in function to a hyperlink, cannot be seen as equivalent to hosting the
material to which it grants access. While one of the judges said something to
the effect of "intentions matter", there could be a fairly strong case here.

IANAL, don't go starting a torrent site in Canada on my advice, etc.

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nobody314159
Not quite the same thing.

The ruling said that publishing a hyperlink wasn't the same as re-publishing
the original article.

Making a torrent file available is providing a way to download the copyright
offending file - that's a totally different charge.

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redthrowaway
Google provides access to same, not even counting torrent search. "Providing a
way to download" is a nebulous, slippery-slope distinction that covers just
about everything to one degree or another, whereas "making available for
download" (ie: hosting) is far more specific. It'll be interesting to see what
definitions they come up with. Regardless, I don't see the courts being able
to keep up with pirates without overstepping and making many innocuous things
illegal.

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nobody314159
The case was specifically about "was a link - a republishing of an article"
not, was the thing linked to legal.

In this libel case publishing the article was the offence. So 'if' making a
link was also publishing, then an article that only linked to the original
that was a new offence.

It doesn't mean that you can put up a message saying "riot at the mall
tonight" and then tweet a link to that claiming "you only sent a link" - it's
still inciting a riot!

In other words making a link doesn't suddenly protect you from what was in
linked to message - it just means that it isn't a new publication of the same
message.

In practice it has big implications for both Google (who don't have to police
the entire internet!) and for libel tourism - you can no longer pick a
convenient jurisdiction to sue in based on somebody there only publishing a
link

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redthrowaway
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. My question was whether or
not, just as linking to a libelous post is not itself libel, linking to an
infringing download would be similarly considered to not be infringement.

If the courts were consistent on this matter, then providing a magnet link to
a torernt could arguably be seen as no different than providing a hyperlink to
a libelous post. It is the poster/hoster, not the linker, who would be liable.

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nobody314159
I think (IANAL) is that in libel publishing is the offence - so if you publish
a copy of the libel you have committed the same offence - so "is a hyperlink
publishing a copy?" is the question.

In a torrent the offence is something like "making available a copyright file
for download" so the argument is that a torrent (which doesn't itself contain
any of the copyright file) and a link to the torrent are equally "making
available".

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gruseom
This is a good ruling, first because it protects freedom of expression, second
because it gets the internet in a way that bodes well for the future, and
third because the quoted excerpts are written in such clear English that
they're actually easier to understand than the surrounding post.

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ck2
It's going to be interesting when a dozen different countries have a dozen
different resulting rules for the same question.

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0x12
Already there is a significant pay-off in researching the laws of the place
where you intend to incorporate.

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egiva
Yeah, I would go one step further to say that there's a need for an
international treaty to standardize these laws and regulations for what in
essence is a very international internet.

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RyanMcGreal
The decision also drew reference to the "centrality of the role of hyperlinks
in facilitating access to information on the Internet" and that restricting
the use of hyperlinks "would have the effect of seriously restricting the flow
of information and, as a result, freedom of expression."

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silentific
I understand that this is an important ruling, but do they really need a pat
on the back for figuring out how the internet works?

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Shenglong
[Redacted: Not funny]

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pavel_lishin
There's nothing funny aboot that joke.

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Shenglong
Redacted :( Different type of humor I guess.

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pavel_lishin
I was actually trying to play along, with the about/aboot switch...

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Shenglong
Someone down-voted me, so I assumed they didn't like it :(

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zacharycohn
They downvoted because it (probably) didn't add anything to the conversation.

This isn't Digg.

