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The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that a Court of Justice of the European Union ruling could threaten hyperlinking as we know it:
In a case which threatens to cause turmoil for thousands if not millions of websites, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided today that a website that merely links to material that infringes copyright, can itself be found guilty of copyright infringement, provided only that the operator knew or could reasonably have known that the material was infringing. Worse, they will be presumed to know of this if the links are provided for "the pursuit of financial gain".
The case, GS Media BV v. Sanoma, concerned a Dutch news website, GeenStijl, that linked to leaked pre-publication photos from Playboy magazine, as well as publishing a thumbnail of one of them. The photos were hosted not by GeenStijl itself but at first by an Australian image hosting website, then later by Imageshack, and subsequently still other web hosts, with GeenStijl updating the links as the copyright owner had the photos taken down from one image host after another.
The court's press release [PDF] spins this decision in such a positive light that much reporting on the case, including that by Reuters, gets it wrong, and assumes that only for-profit websites are affected by the decision. To be clear, that's not the case. Even a non-profit website or individual who links to infringing content can be liable for infringing copyright if they knew that the material was infringing, for example after receiving notice of this from the copyright holder. And anyway, the definition of "financial gain" is broad enough to encompass any website, like GeenStijl, that runs ads.
GS Media BV v Sanoma Media Netherlands BV and Others (C-160/15)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 10 2016, @09:08PM
It is official; Surveys now confirm: The EU is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered EU when Apple CEO Tim Cook described the power grabbing supranational's investigation of its Irish tax affairs as "political bullshit". Coming close on the heels of the EU centralized tax identification number, their attempt to subsume the taxation rights of sovereign states is now clear for all to see. The EU is collapsing in complete disarray, as dead in the water as one of Merkel's drowned migrants.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the EU's future. The writing is on the wall: The EU faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the EU because the EU is dying. Things are looking very bad for the EU. As many of us are aware, the currency is becoming worthless. Negative interest rates are a tax on capital.
Let's stick to the facts and look at the numbers.
Germany has admitted over 1 million migrants, 80% are unfit for anything other than menial work. Integration, housing and welfare costs will out-weigh their net economic contribution. Sex attacks committed by migrants have reached pandemic proportions across the entire continent. Tourism numbers in France and Germany have dwindled due to terrorism yet Angela Merkel continues with her migration push and Hollande suggests the French "embrace Islam". Greece is bankrupt and unable to escape the crushing debt burden imposed by its membership in the eurozone. Italian banks are insolvent. Deutsche Bank, one of Germany's largest banks has an estimated derivatives exposure equal to global GDP. The pension liabilities of the various EU institutions total over €63 billion.
All major surveys show that the EU has lost the confidence of Europe's peoples. The EU is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If the EU is to survive at all it will be as a third world hellhole. The EU continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save the EU from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the EU is dead.
Fact: The EU is dying
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11 2016, @04:02AM
The reason Merkel wants immigrants is because a nation's strength on the international stage is strongly correlated with its GDP, and that in turn is correlated with population. Western nations and Japan have suffered from sharply diminished population growth; the USA is somewhat of an exception because of its relatively permissive stance on immigration.
Russia, in particular, is a declining power because its population is declining. Although Putin has compensated in a small measure by annexing the Crimea and threatening the rest of the Ukraine.
Maybe she overdid it. I haven't looked closely so I can't say one way or the other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11 2016, @10:54AM
Meanwhile, here in the 21st Century... [cnn.com]