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The Supreme Court of Canada recently rendered a decision on a lawsuit in which the plaintiff accused the defendant of defamation for linking to third-party cont
by RyanMcGreal 15y ago
The Supreme Court of Canada recently rendered a decision on a lawsuit in which the plaintiff accused the defendant of defamation for linking to third-party content the plaintiff believed to be defamatory.
The plaintiff argued that linking constitutes republication, and that a link to defamatory content was therefore defamatory.
The Court decided that a link is a reference, not a publication, "analogous to a footnote or a card index in a library and should not be found to constitute republication of the defamation."
The decision also states: "A reference to other content is fundamentally different from other acts involved in publication. Referencing on its own does not involve exerting control over the content. Communicating something is very different from merely communicating that something exists or where it exists."
The court concluded that putting such a legal burden on hyperlinks "would have the effect of seriously restricting the flow of information and, as a result, freedom of expression."
Obviously this was a case specifically related to defamation, not copyright infringement, but it does seem to suggest a precedent with respect to the argument that hyperlinking constitutes republication for copyright purposes.
- netcan 15y agoIt seems so ridiculous that we still need to say things like "analogous to a footnote or a card index". A link is a link and its a common and standard enough part of our world to be considered as its own thing. How long do we have to play this stupid game? A link is like a reference to a site that's like a book that's hosted on something like a library which makes this behavior kind of like stealing my left shoe. It's like trying to regulate highways based on laws about herding pigs in a national forest.
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoIn the 1800s, to "broadcast" meant to stand in the middle of your field and throw seeds in every direction. It is profoundly human to understand and explain new things by pointing out ways they are similar to more familiar things.
- pfraze 15y agoYeah, it's also where our existing legal framework stands.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoThe existing law deals with X set of events. In order to adjudicate on this event a, different in form but one could argue not function from X, one must first relate it to similar elements in X. X is the corpus of existing law, a is the case at hand. This is, in a nutshell, part what the courts are for - refining and logically extending the law.
- netcan 15y agoSure, if we had laws about books and we needed to to make a judgement about pamphlets, that works. But we can't just pretend that we are extending some sort of logical rules from first principals. A link or an embedded video is not like a footnote in any way that matters.
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago> A link or an embedded video is not like a footnote in any way that matters. I would argue that for the purpose of copyright infringement, a link is exactly like a footnote - it's a reference to an external document. It just happens that hypertext makes it much easier for the reader to look up the reference.
- netcan 15y agoI would say its more similar to a magic spell that conjurs up the book.