The Chilling Effects Of A No Linking To Infringing Content Rule

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

Mon, Dec 4th 2006 2:19pm — Mike Masnick

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.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

16 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

a man, 4 Dec 2006 @ 2:37pm

ban Anonymous Coward from this site
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 2:53pm

Stop being stupid
[ link to this | view in thread ]
a man, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:03pm

go fuck yourself, your petty comments make me sick
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:23pm

a man, anonymous coward, take it outside
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:26pm

seriously
[ link to this | view in thread ]
a man, 4 Dec 2006 @ 3:26pm

kiss my arse
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
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 thread ]
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 thread ]
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 thread ]
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 thread ]
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 thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2006 @ 7:19am

FUCK copyright. We don't need it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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 thread ]
|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 thread ]