12 ms·

I agree, this is bad for the internet. However, some context is missing: The case was in the Netherlands, regarding the website GeenStijl linking to leaked play

by rahkiin 10y ago

I agree, this is bad for the internet. However, some context is missing: The case was in the Netherlands, regarding the website GeenStijl linking to leaked playboy pictures. The court said that 1) GeenStijl made money from it 2) they should and could have know, and most probably knew, that this content was illegal (because they posted it as 'leaked nudes!!'). The combination of these (earning money from content that is known to be illegal) was what made the decision. The court also said that these are requirements in the future. So, if I link to a page on a forum of my blog that becomes illegal alter, neither of the requirements are fulfilled. No problem. Also, Google does not know what is illegal and what is legal, so they can't be sued over this particular ruling. That is how I have understood it

cm3 10y ago
I hope that's the case, and I didn't read the legal text, but how would you protect yourself against that? Would we have to keep tamper-proof screenshots (or archive.is-like snapshots) for each external link posted?
- kuschku 10y ago
  Read the legal text please – the article that was submitted is basically full of lies.
  - cm3 10y ago
    Read now. The ruling acknowledges the target is mutable, but it also says that the poster of a link on a page that's for-profit must check the target content. However, I cannot find anything how one should prove it was legal at time of linking. The only sensible thing I can find is that once notified a link has to be taken down. Did I miss something?
    - Drakim 10y ago
      Perhaps it would work the other way around? The prosecutor has to positively prove that when you established that link, it was pointing directly at illegal content (and based on the context of your linking, that you knew it was illegal).
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        Assumption of innocence, are you mad? /s Next you'll be wanting trials instead of summary rulings.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Cryptographic, digital notaries. You could do screenshots and/or HTML pages. It's how I've always done it when I thought what's on a page would be significant and need proof later on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping EDIT: There's also newer ones that pull the site for you like a MITM to do what we're saying. Startups come and go, though, so I recommend scripted or manual scraping combined with long-running notary who will have evidence when trial happens. :)
  - cm3 10y ago
    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 that would archive each link too, and allow one to compare the decrypted archive. To achieve that, one would probably want to use an indirection for linking so that such archives do not have to archive everything that exists, but just those that go through said indirection. Then, the last question is how many independents you need to put trust in the verification, considering that motivated attackers could circumvent, say, the 3 most used archiving services. Or you could bind the archival of a link in a federated number snapshot services to a consensus algorithm. Then you'd ask yourself how many networks (which consist of multiple services) you'd trust.
    - sonoffett 10y ago
      TLSNotary is one approach: https://tlsnotary.org https://tlsnotary.org, although I'm not certain it provides trusted timestamps.
      - Natanael_L 10y ago
        It doesn't, but you can feed the content through a digital timestamping system
    - 10y ago
- unicornporn 10y ago
  Screenshots are terrible proof. They were however used in a Swedish piracy court case many years ago. That led to someone building the "proof machine"[1] which created screenshots of BitTorrent clients with any IP you entered. Try it: [1] http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/ http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/
  - amelius 10y ago
    See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence It could bring you into more problems than you started with.
    - unicornporn 10y ago
      Yes, this was a FTL proof of concept that was meant to show how worthless screenshots are as evidence.
Maarten88 10y ago
It may be bad for the internet, but it seems fair and also consistent with earlier EU rules, such as the "right to be forgotten". It places an extra burden on the big, commercial sites to remove links (or stop linking on the first place) to content that is considered illegal in the EU. Of course, that may be considered bad for the internet, because most people, as long as they are not the victim, like to see leaked nudes and download stuff for free, and the internet has grown in no small part because of this. 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. Like the Norwegian piece the other day about the famous Vietnam war picture that Facebook considered nudity this is yet another signal that local law and culture needs more consideration by the big web publishers.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > 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 -- otherwise they could just forward each other the censored information (and set up automated systems to do the same). The more you censor the more popular the countermeasures become until either everyone is using them and the censorship is completely ineffective, or we're all living in the sort of communist police state necessary to prevent that. And there is no point in engaging in censorship that is completely ineffective, so what you're really proposing is the police state.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    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.
    - 10y ago
logicallee 10y ago
What if the link had consisted of a prominent section "How to find it" consisting of the words (I'm making this up) "Search Google for leaked playboy pictures from 2011, and click on the first link, which should be a site named after a fish." Now it is a passing reference to how to find it -- but your criteria that 1) they made money from it, and 2) they could know and should know that this content is illegal. Well, all right. So let's say that is contributing to copyright infringement. Let's make it illegal. Now what if we change the passing reference to be "the pictures are pretty easy to find via Google." What if we imagine that this is how the reference now reads. What now? What if it's illegal and what if the site makes money off of it? How about Hacker News. It is a statistical certainty that at least one reader decided to find the pictures based on our report here. It's certain. With absolute certainty you can say that someone searched and found the pictures. Does YCombinator get value from the fact that this report contributes to interesting information being available here? Absolutely. So, should Hacker News be allowed to report on this court case as explicitly as it has done? Remember: it is absolutely certain that some people have found the pictures as a result, and it is also absolutely certain that they would know this would happen. They directly benefit from it. So where does it end? A good place to draw the line might be: reproducing content. Since, you know, that's what copyright ... wait for it ... actually limits...
- icebraining 10y ago
  I don't think reproduction is a good line at all; HN could still be guilty if someone posted an unlicensed copyrighted work (say, a news article). Intention and knowledge is the best dividing line, in my opinion, and courts certainly take it into account. HN blindly reproduces what people post, whereas the link in question was posted by the site editors themselves - that's a clear distinction, and in fact many lawsuits (in the US) were based on it. I do disagree with the court's decision to presume that any publication for financial gain is done with knowledge of the copyright status, though.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > I don't think reproduction is a good line at all; HN could still be guilty if someone posted an unlicensed copyrighted work (say, a news article). There are 100's of these on HN already. Just a few samples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862279
themartorana 10y ago
Making money is the point here. It's not illegal for me to point at a guy selling bootleg DVDs on the streets of NY. But if you pay me to show you where you can buy bootleg DVDs in NY, I'm pretty sure I'd be found to be at least an accessory.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
> Also, Google does not know what is illegal and what is legal, so they can't be sued over this particular ruling.// Only because "Google" chooses not to. Execs in control of what Google links to know that it links to illegal/tortuous/immoral content -- leaked nude images, say -- they make money from advertising alongside those links and by inclusion of such links so they can provide a 'comprehensive' search. Google will get a pass though, too big to prosecute. The result of that is there will always be a place to find such content. It's inequitable -- and hence contrary to democracy and the rule of law -- to convict someone of providing a link without also convicting search engine execs whose SE provides the same link. It also makes the process futile.
- kelnage 10y ago
  I think you've misunderstood - Google, I am sure, is aware that it probably links to illegal content. But it has no way of knowing what is illegal or not - so it would not meet those conditions. It's a completely different situation to the case in question.
  - codedokode 10y ago
    They can moderate sites before adding them to a search index. In newspapers usually there is an editor who checks articles before print, why not make google do the same? So there will be no illegal and immoral content and the users will feel safer. Google is very rich and therefore can afford moderation, they just don't want to respect european law.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    You don't think Google execs know for sure that Google links to copyright infringements. There's zero chance of that IMO. Criminal law only requires "beyond reasonably doubt", civil law (torts liked copyright infringement) only needs a "balance of probabilities". Those people have the same way of knowing what's unlawful or illegal or tortuous as the rest of us; actually they're more likely to be able determine it IMO. Google link to iTunes, iTunes provides a means (CD ripping, yes, for real) to circumvent UK copyright law ... go on tell me Google's lawyers don't know this essential basic of UK copyright nor that you can find iTunes (designed for copyright infringement!) on Google.co.uk. It's not like any of this is being done to serve the public interest, it's solely focused on narrow commercial interests.

by rahkiin 10y ago

cm3 10y ago

I hope that's the case, and I didn't read the legal text, but how would you protect yourself against that? Would we have to keep tamper-proof screenshots (or archive.is-like snapshots) for each external link posted?

kuschku 10y ago
Read the legal text please – the article that was submitted is basically full of lies.
- cm3 10y ago
  Read now. The ruling acknowledges the target is mutable, but it also says that the poster of a link on a page that's for-profit must check the target content. However, I cannot find anything how one should prove it was legal at time of linking. The only sensible thing I can find is that once notified a link has to be taken down. Did I miss something?
  - Drakim 10y ago
    Perhaps it would work the other way around? The prosecutor has to positively prove that when you established that link, it was pointing directly at illegal content (and based on the context of your linking, that you knew it was illegal).
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Assumption of innocence, are you mad? /s Next you'll be wanting trials instead of summary rulings.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Cryptographic, digital notaries. You could do screenshots and/or HTML pages. It's how I've always done it when I thought what's on a page would be significant and need proof later on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping EDIT: There's also newer ones that pull the site for you like a MITM to do what we're saying. Startups come and go, though, so I recommend scripted or manual scraping combined with long-running notary who will have evidence when trial happens. :)
- cm3 10y ago
  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 that would archive each link too, and allow one to compare the decrypted archive. To achieve that, one would probably want to use an indirection for linking so that such archives do not have to archive everything that exists, but just those that go through said indirection. Then, the last question is how many independents you need to put trust in the verification, considering that motivated attackers could circumvent, say, the 3 most used archiving services. Or you could bind the archival of a link in a federated number snapshot services to a consensus algorithm. Then you'd ask yourself how many networks (which consist of multiple services) you'd trust.
  - sonoffett 10y ago
    TLSNotary is one approach: https://tlsnotary.org https://tlsnotary.org, although I'm not certain it provides trusted timestamps.
    - Natanael_L 10y ago
      It doesn't, but you can feed the content through a digital timestamping system
  - 10y ago
unicornporn 10y ago
Screenshots are terrible proof. They were however used in a Swedish piracy court case many years ago. That led to someone building the "proof machine"[1] which created screenshots of BitTorrent clients with any IP you entered. Try it: [1] http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/ http://lekplatsen.org/bevismaskinen/
- amelius 10y ago
  See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence It could bring you into more problems than you started with.
  - unicornporn 10y ago
    Yes, this was a FTL proof of concept that was meant to show how worthless screenshots are as evidence.

Maarten88 10y ago

It may be bad for the internet, but it seems fair and also consistent with earlier EU rules, such as the "right to be forgotten". It places an extra burden on the big, commercial sites to remove links (or stop linking on the first place) to content that is considered illegal in the EU. Of course, that may be considered bad for the internet, because most people, as long as they are not the victim, like to see leaked nudes and download stuff for free, and the internet has grown in no small part because of this. 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. Like the Norwegian piece the other day about the famous Vietnam war picture that Facebook considered nudity this is yet another signal that local law and culture needs more consideration by the big web publishers.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> 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 -- otherwise they could just forward each other the censored information (and set up automated systems to do the same). The more you censor the more popular the countermeasures become until either everyone is using them and the censorship is completely ineffective, or we're all living in the sort of communist police state necessary to prevent that. And there is no point in engaging in censorship that is completely ineffective, so what you're really proposing is the police state.
- kuschku 10y ago
  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.
  - 10y ago

logicallee 10y ago

What if the link had consisted of a prominent section "How to find it" consisting of the words (I'm making this up) "Search Google for leaked playboy pictures from 2011, and click on the first link, which should be a site named after a fish." Now it is a passing reference to how to find it -- but your criteria that 1) they made money from it, and 2) they could know and should know that this content is illegal. Well, all right. So let's say that is contributing to copyright infringement. Let's make it illegal. Now what if we change the passing reference to be "the pictures are pretty easy to find via Google." What if we imagine that this is how the reference now reads. What now? What if it's illegal and what if the site makes money off of it? How about Hacker News. It is a statistical certainty that at least one reader decided to find the pictures based on our report here. It's certain. With absolute certainty you can say that someone searched and found the pictures. Does YCombinator get value from the fact that this report contributes to interesting information being available here? Absolutely. So, should Hacker News be allowed to report on this court case as explicitly as it has done? Remember: it is absolutely certain that some people have found the pictures as a result, and it is also absolutely certain that they would know this would happen. They directly benefit from it. So where does it end? A good place to draw the line might be: reproducing content. Since, you know, that's what copyright ... wait for it ... actually limits...

icebraining 10y ago
I don't think reproduction is a good line at all; HN could still be guilty if someone posted an unlicensed copyrighted work (say, a news article). Intention and knowledge is the best dividing line, in my opinion, and courts certainly take it into account. HN blindly reproduces what people post, whereas the link in question was posted by the site editors themselves - that's a clear distinction, and in fact many lawsuits (in the US) were based on it. I do disagree with the court's decision to presume that any publication for financial gain is done with knowledge of the copyright status, though.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > I don't think reproduction is a good line at all; HN could still be guilty if someone posted an unlicensed copyrighted work (say, a news article). There are 100's of these on HN already. Just a few samples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862279

themartorana 10y ago

Making money is the point here. It's not illegal for me to point at a guy selling bootleg DVDs on the streets of NY. But if you pay me to show you where you can buy bootleg DVDs in NY, I'm pretty sure I'd be found to be at least an accessory.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

> Also, Google does not know what is illegal and what is legal, so they can't be sued over this particular ruling.// Only because "Google" chooses not to. Execs in control of what Google links to know that it links to illegal/tortuous/immoral content -- leaked nude images, say -- they make money from advertising alongside those links and by inclusion of such links so they can provide a 'comprehensive' search. Google will get a pass though, too big to prosecute. The result of that is there will always be a place to find such content. It's inequitable -- and hence contrary to democracy and the rule of law -- to convict someone of providing a link without also convicting search engine execs whose SE provides the same link. It also makes the process futile.

kelnage 10y ago
I think you've misunderstood - Google, I am sure, is aware that it probably links to illegal content. But it has no way of knowing what is illegal or not - so it would not meet those conditions. It's a completely different situation to the case in question.
- codedokode 10y ago
  They can moderate sites before adding them to a search index. In newspapers usually there is an editor who checks articles before print, why not make google do the same? So there will be no illegal and immoral content and the users will feel safer. Google is very rich and therefore can afford moderation, they just don't want to respect european law.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  You don't think Google execs know for sure that Google links to copyright infringements. There's zero chance of that IMO. Criminal law only requires "beyond reasonably doubt", civil law (torts liked copyright infringement) only needs a "balance of probabilities". Those people have the same way of knowing what's unlawful or illegal or tortuous as the rest of us; actually they're more likely to be able determine it IMO. Google link to iTunes, iTunes provides a means (CD ripping, yes, for real) to circumvent UK copyright law ... go on tell me Google's lawyers don't know this essential basic of UK copyright nor that you can find iTunes (designed for copyright infringement!) on Google.co.uk. It's not like any of this is being done to serve the public interest, it's solely focused on narrow commercial interests.