I'm not a fan of the EU at all, and I'm not a fan of unnecessary government regulation. However, this article is FUD. American readers tend to assume the worst

I'm not a fan of the EU at all, and I'm not a fan of unnecessary government regulation. However, this article is FUD. American readers tend to assume the worst about government regulation of the web, but a charitable reading suggests a pro-copyright ruling might not be completely ridiculous. They'd have to draw a tight boundary to ensure they only cover blatant cases (like the blog which linked to leaked photos), and avoid leaving all users open to accusations of copyright infringement. If they - limited it to cases where it was clear the intent was to link to copyrighted content the owner expressly didn't want to be linked to (assuming that if the owner hasn't expressed this, content posted online is, by default, OK to link to) - added exclusions for a) old links, b) user-submitted links, c) links to content which changed it wouldn't be an unreasonable law. I don't know if the final decision will be that sensible, but I wouldn't rule it out. The cookie regulation wasn't especially onerous and probably helped educate users about the legitimate role of cookies. I should also point out that this is a judicial decision, not something created by the legislature. The court has to decide how to apply the existing law to this case, and in doing so establishes new case law. (I made this comment as I don't think the EU can be criticised on the grounds of producing ill-thought-out regulations. As technocratic bureaucracies go, the EU is efficient and works well. Instead, I'm opposed to technocracy on principle, and I think 30-50 years out the EU will have evolved into inefficient Brezhnevism).