Sure, but the court isn't being asked to consider a personal ad page or comment thread, or a case in which the copyright status of the linked-to material was remotely uncertain. There are other precedents in favour of publishers to fall back on in those circumstances.
What's actually brought the case is a situation where (i) the publisher had good reason to believe the material was infringing when they initially published the link (ii) the entire purpose of running the story was to encourage people to access the infringing material and (iii) when the copyright holder objected and got the original material taken down, the publisher gleefully republished an alternate link to the same material. They weren't posting personal ads for pottery enthusiasts, they were posting "if your drug dealer just got busted then try calling these ones instead".
What they court is actually being asked to rule on is whether [intentionally] linking to unauthorised means of accessing copyrighted material can ever be a copyright violation, and if so, how wilful does the plaintiff have to prove the publisher's infringement was and should the plaintiff also have to prove other factors such as the linked-to copyright-violating site not being already well known to the public. The question concerns whether being one remove from the infringing content makes you immune from any threat of suit rather than who the burden of proof lies upon.
What's actually brought the case is a situation where (i) the publisher had good reason to believe the material was infringing when they initially published the link (ii) the entire purpose of running the story was to encourage people to access the infringing material and (iii) when the copyright holder objected and got the original material taken down, the publisher gleefully republished an alternate link to the same material. They weren't posting personal ads for pottery enthusiasts, they were posting "if your drug dealer just got busted then try calling these ones instead".
What they court is actually being asked to rule on is whether [intentionally] linking to unauthorised means of accessing copyrighted material can ever be a copyright violation, and if so, how wilful does the plaintiff have to prove the publisher's infringement was and should the plaintiff also have to prove other factors such as the linked-to copyright-violating site not being already well known to the public. The question concerns whether being one remove from the infringing content makes you immune from any threat of suit rather than who the burden of proof lies upon.