The Chilling Effects Of A No Linking To Infringing Content Rule

from the not-such-a-good-idea dept

Last Friday, we wrote about Fox's decision to send a cease-and-desist letter to a site that linked to (but did not host) videos of various TV shows. It was, basically, an aggregator of TV shows -- which could be quite useful if you wanted to see old episodes or catch up on an episode you missed. The question at hand, though, was whether or not this was a violation of copyrights. Simply linking to copyright infringement is not, by itself, against the law -- though, there do appear to be some situations where courts view it otherwise (see the 2600 case decision for example). In this case, it's possible that, based on the Supreme Court's decision last year in the Grokster case, this site could be seen as "inducing" infringement -- since all it does is aggregate and point to content that most likely infringes copyright. Even if you disagree with that concept, it's certainly how the case could be stronger than some suspect. Cory Doctorow, at BoingBoing doesn't acknowledge this possibility in a post about the case, but does point out a good reason why such a finding would be bad for everyone. He points out that some folks at Wikipedia are worried about linking to copyright infringing content on YouTube and suggesting that Wikipedia almost never allow YouTube links. This is a perfect example of the "chilling effects" that rulings like this have. There is a ton of content on YouTube that is perfectly legitimate and non-infringing. There are also cases where copyrighted content on the site may be covered under fair use. But, now when you see people suggesting that linking to such content represents a risk and should be stopped, you see the kind of activities that get stopped not because the law says it's illegal, but because of the fear that it might possibly be illegal.
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  • identicon
    a man, 4 Dec 2006 @ 2:37pm

    ban Anonymous Coward from this site

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 2:53pm

    Stop being stupid

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    a man, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:03pm

    go fuck yourself, your petty comments make me sick

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Spud, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:15pm

    Harsh

    I feel that it’s a little harsh to pick on the person who is linking to the content.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:23pm

    a man, anonymous coward, take it outside

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:26pm

    seriously

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    a man, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:26pm

    kiss my arse

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Another Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:43pm

    Grow Up! and more

    what are you guys, seven or something?

    To the point:
    Take down the infringing content! (if it does not conform to fair use, of course) Don't go after the person who didn't actually infringe on anything. Also, how is the linking party supposed to know that the content is infringing (at least for the situations that are not totally obvious). Site-wide bans (Wiki --> YouTube) are not the answer. Also, that court ruling is scary.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Aonemouse coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 4:31pm

    no, we are not seven

    We are Eight, so again, go fuck yourself!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    biz, 4 Dec 2006 @ 4:55pm

    On one hand: Linking is the most important thing in getting high search rankings. So sites would be a fool to not want people to link to their site.

    On the other hand: Sites like boingboing.net are making $1million a year using other peoples content.

    source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/09/01/8384325/ (3rd paragraph)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Somone unimportant, 4 Dec 2006 @ 6:09pm

    If the companies are afraid that we wont watch prime time TV so we can wait till its online and view it commercial free, just put up a rule that says videos are allowed to be shown on the interenet after 1 month (or something).

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    The infamous Joe, 5 Dec 2006 @ 4:44am

    Wikibrary.

    Just classify wikipedia as an "online library" or some such.. that makes pretty much everything "fair use" doesn't it? Of course, that's just a band-aid on the bigger problem of The Decade of the Copyright.

    Oh, IANAL, and am usually borderline retarded, so if I just said something exceptionally dull, correct me and we can move on. :)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2006 @ 5:30am

    Ok now, infringing later?

    This has a slippery slope though. What if the content is ok now, but at some point in the future becomes infringing? Say a company initially allows certain things to be linked to, but a change in management decides it's no longer ok. Imagine having to check every link on your site all the time forever. If you have a very big ongoing site this is really impossible.

    The bottom line is that linking is not the actual problem, it's hosting.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2006 @ 7:19am

    FUCK copyright. We don't need it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      PT, 5 Dec 2006 @ 8:22am

      Re:

      I guess you have never wrote, painted, drew, crafted, or took a photograph before. Drawings of stickmen don't count. So of course copyrights would be meaningless to you. Its funny how you assume that everyone is like you and never did those exact things either.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    |333173|3|_||3, 5 Dec 2006 @ 6:07pm

    Any DRM which prevents legal activity should be illegal, and the producers should be required to release a program to rectify the problem by converting the file, for free, and which does nothing else.

    If linking is a problem, just say that the information is available, and post a google link, or reccomend a search term (even better, because then they have to open a new tab, copy-paste it into the search box, and hit the hourglass, which requires one click and theree key presses or more clicks, before they have to find the page. of course, if you make the search term you reccomend specific enough, then they can get just one page).

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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