Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday September 10 2016, @04:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-go-there dept.

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)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday September 10 2016, @09:44PM

    by edIII (791) on Saturday September 10 2016, @09:44PM (#400114)

    Cyberbegging is a fine example of the immoral grifting economy.

    What?! As opposed to the perfectly moral economies of Big Advertising and proprietary software development?

    I guess by that standard, all of FOSS with their donation buttons everywhere represent evil people who engage in petty theft? By chance, does any of that apply to charities, NGOs, and/or private crowdfunding for people in need?

    We would be far better served, even if it may not work, by donation buttons on every website instead of the toxic and privacy evaporating Big Advertisement networks that have even less accountability than the alleged copyright infringing pirates that are sought out by this law.

    If anything is being begged, it is an explanation by you as to what constitutes a moral way of receiving money to compensate for services rendered regardless of compensation? (suggested donations, but free still works).

    For myself, when I hear "immoral grifting economy" I immediately think of Wall Street, Bankers, and the Military Industry Complex. Except that grifting states it was petty fraud to deprive people of money and/or possessions, and there are NO consequences of trivially low importance that the American people have suffered because of these businesses and elites.

    I think you need to have a thesaurus handy when you post. That, and if you're going to claim that so many are petty swindlers with the evil 'Donate' buttons, you better have a morally superior alternative to propose. I'll demonstrate:

    We should create an anonymous micropayment network funded by cryptocurrencies (Monero preferred). Websites can define "routes" to where they can get paid, in addition to funding targets. A user with the appropriate extension can define daily limits, personal preferences, special triggers (funding warnings), etc. that allow them to support various websites in direct proportion to their visitations (resource usage). Users can convert currencies in the same way that cryptocurrencies are converted today, while at the websites they are doing exactly the same. Privacy is maintained (assuming Monero), and websites can be directly funded by their visiting patrons.

    Now you try.....

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4