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That's not what the decision said. At all. The decision said that a link to illegal content can be illegal in itself when 1. it's done for monetary purposes, a
by soufron 10y ago
That's not what the decision said. At all.
The decision said that a link to illegal content can be illegal in itself when 1. it's done for monetary purposes, and 2. when the person creating the link was aware of the illegal nature of the content being linked.
But who would have doubted about that? Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it?
On the other side, it clarifies the fact that a link to illegal content will not be illegal if it's done for free, or if it's done without knowing the illegal nature of the content being linked.
To quote the decision : "it is to be determined whether those links are provided without the pursuit of financial gain by a person who did not know or could not reasonably have known the illegal nature of the publication of those works on that other website or whether, on the contrary, those links are provided for such a purpose, a situation in which that knowledge must be presumed."
From my perspective, it's a good decision.
- kstrauser 10y ago> Did you really think you could create links to illegal content for money and get away with it? Yes, and that's a horrible ruling. Almost everything can be construed as "for money". Are you a newspaper with paid subscribers? Everything you link is "for money". Do you have a Google ad on your hobby blog? Technically, you're getting paid for it. Someone will make the argument that you're driving traffic to your ad-sponsored blog by linking to infringing content, so obvious you're profiting from piracy. It's also ludicrous to pretend that the linker is guilty of the crime. If I link to Silk Road and you go there to buy drugs, I am not involved in the transaction. I didn't buy drugs. I didn't sell drugs. I had nothing to do with you ordering drugs other than telling you where they were. Google links to things that are illegal all over the place. Should they be guilty of linking to Muhammad cartoons because that's taboo in certain countries? Of course not, even if they get paid for it.
- tormeh 10y agoThe law is rarely interpreted so literally in court. Accordingly, few laws are written for literally-minded courts.
- Dylan16807 10y agoThis isn't a hypothetical abuse of the law. This actually happens. Sites are shut down for linking to things. Sites are considered 'commercially' violating copyright because they have a banner ad that gives then a thousandth of a penny. Look at the current incarnation of the pirate bay. It doesn't even link to infringing content. It just gives you the ID code of a file that helps you find infringing files. There's no tracker, there aren't even .torrent files. Now look at how many places it's banned.
- tormeh 10y ago> Look at the current incarnation of the pirate bay. It doesn't even link to infringing content. It just gives you the ID code of a file that helps you find infringing files. There's no tracker, there aren't even .torrent files. Now look at how many places it's banned. Was this really the best example you could come up with? Because that's clearly the law working as intended.
- Dylan16807 10y agoEven if that's the intent, it's pretty hard to reconcile how copyright law acts nothing like anything else. If I make a website that describes the effects of various designer drugs in glowing terms, and the closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID, I'm very easily on the legal side of things.
- smallnamespace 10y ago> closest I get to helping you buy some is telling you the chemical ID How are those things in any way comparable? Knowing the chemical formula of a drug doesn't get you any closer to possessing it, but knowing the ID of a torrent lets you immediately download it. At the end of the day, would you want law to be based on technical trivia, which can rapidly change, or do you want it be based on the intent of the persons involved?
- 10y ago
- csomar 10y agoGoogle has an army of lawyers on the other hand.
- MollyR 10y agoProbably another law that will just be applied to the "little people".
- stephenr 10y ago> other than telling you where they were. That hardly seems like "nothing", if you're giving specific directions.
- 0x0 10y ago> Everything you link is "for money". Do you have a Google ad on your hobby blog? Technically, you're getting paid for it. So why do people have Google ads on their hobby blogs? Could it be that it's actually for money, not just "for money"? If it's not for money, why even bother running ads? Sounds to me like a pretty good indicator of intention.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoBecause hobbies cost money? It's not their day job, they're just looking to maybe pay for their hosting and a little more, generally.
- manmal 10y agoIf you can prove that you only took as much money as required for hosting (and donated the rest), a court might be fine with that.
- soufron 10y agoExactly.
- function_seven 10y agoIt's irrelevant what you plan to spend the revenue on. My hobbies cost money as well, but I don't subsidize them with ads. I pay for them with my own money. If you want to run a blog as a hobby, great. Spend your own money to buy hosting and be done with it. If you want to generate revenue off your hobby, that's fine as well, but know that it's not purely a "hobby" anymore. Even if the amounts are small or you're not profitable, it doesn't matter. EDIT: Sibling comment may be more accurate. If you show non-profitness, (I'm speaking abstractly, not in relation to linked court decision), that would be enough to sever the link between the otherwise infringing links and your revenue.
- plandis 10y agoI use ads on my hobby site to pay for my hobby site. I make like $10 a year off of it. I run ads because I'd rather not pay out of pocket but I hardly consider it as something that makes me money for the sake of making money.
- soufron 10y ago1. not everything is done for money, I see no ads on this website for example 2. If your question is to know wether a journalist would be concerned by the decision, it's easy to see he would not. 3. If the linker is linking to illegal content knowingly, and because he hopes a gain from it, I don't see how he would not be guilty. In your example, you would be guilty as hell. 4. Google don't know what is legal and what is illegal as long as nobody told them. They're protected in Europe as intermediaries by the Directive at least.
- kstrauser 10y ago> 1. not everything is done for money, I see no ads on this website for example A VC-sponsored tech chat website has monetary value.
- elmigranto 10y agoAre 1 and 2 `AND` or `OR`?
- FigmentEngine 10y agoagreed, you are correct. but this ruling also catches all search engines with advertising..
- kelnage 10y agoHow do search engines meet requirement 2 (knowingly linking to illegal content)?
- cjpdx 10y agodepends on how they defined "knowingly". DMCA clearly defined this, but without some specific legislative definition of what constitutes knowledge it's open to interpretation which is a dangerous ambiguity. Perhaps I could send a message somehow to some Google exed to remove a bunch of links that are to illegal content, wait 2 weeks then claim that was sufficient notice for them to be aware of the content and therefore meet requirement #2. To be fair, I didn't dig to see if this second requirement is clearly defined.
- nhebb 10y agoSearch for just about any desktop software with the words "crack", "serial", "torrent",... and search engines will show results. Most of it will be virus-laden crap, but that's a separate issue. Same goes for all forms of digital media.
- ekiru 10y agoWhat the decision said is much closer to "or" than "and". Such linking is, as your quote says, not infringement if it is done without pursuit of financial gain and is done by someone who does not or cannot reasonably know the illegality of the linked material. In other words, they decided that linking to illegally published material is copyright infringement if it was done for commercial purposes or by someone who knew that the linked material was illegally published. The court also concluded that, if the linking was done for commercial purposes, it must be presumed that the person publishing the links knew that the linked material was illegally published.
- Natsu 10y ago> The court also concluded that, if the linking was done for commercial purposes, it must be presumed that the person publishing the links knew that the linked material was illegally published. So... no more search engines, then?
- andylei 10y agohow are search engines supposed to figure out if a link contains illegal content or not
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoClairvoyance.
- Natsu 10y agoThe judges will likely wash their hands of the matter as they neither know nor care how people are supposed to comply with the law. So it will boil down to lobbying by the people with money to ensure that their businesses can continue to operate. And if the requirements for compliance crowd out competition, so much the better.
- nthcolumn 10y agoPresumption of guilt is fascist. Prosecuting the accessory before the crime. Content is not inherently illegal in and of itself. Was it was actually found to be illegally published by an EU court? No. I would argue they have no copyright here. She is very much in the pubic domain. (sic)
- cloudjacker 10y agoHow do you prove #2? When I go to Best Buy I just assume they have licenses to all the movies they are selling. For copyright infringement, distinct from theft,it has never been the burden of the consumer to know who has a license to distribute.
- paulddraper 10y agoSo....no search engines? Europe really doesn't like Google.