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Comment by hmmdiggy | Hacker News Reader

    A link to a website which publishes photos without authorisation of the author does not in itself constitute a copyright infringement

Sorry for my naivety here but the way this is worded is creating confusion for me. Does the article mean:

1) Linking to photos that you don't have authorisation to use on your website isn't copyright infringement.

2) Linking to a website that doesn't seek authorisation to use photos on their website.

To me it reads like the latter, in which case how is one meant to know if a website has sought and gotten authorisation for each photo they use?

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It's the latter. The specific case that prompted this general inquiry was of an Australian website posting a copyright infringing photo, and a Dutch website linking to that photo. Assuming it's given that the Australian site is infringing copyright, the question being considered is: does the Dutch site also then infringe the copyright?

If the court rules that yes, the Dutch site also infringes copyright, it basically breaks how the internet works. You are liable for copyright infringement on any content linked to from your site. Imagine a forum, for instance..

>"Hyperlinks which lead, even directly, to protected works are not 'making them available' to the public when they are already freely accessible on another website, and only serve to facilitate their discovery," the opinion said.

First case seems to be fine as well. Unless of course you're hosting the images yourself, then you need to get permission.

It sounded to me like the latter as well. I think the Advocate General is saying you can't ban hyperlinks unless they are the only way to access a copyrighted work.

As an example, I would think a link that allowed someone to get around the requirements to login to view something (maybe username/password as query parameters or something?) would be considered illegal.

There was also the comment about being freely available already. So a page behind username / password would not be freely available and you would be breaking the law.

Now, if a user on a private page, marked something as public, but did not publish the link, then it would be legal as you could argue that its freely available.*

* Not a lawyer, so just my own understanding.

I read it more that if the GreenStijl website which was in the EU jurisdiction was posting the links to the pages hosted on a computer within another jurisdiction, but that the pages were not generally available (ie they weren't being hosted on an actual website where they were part of that that website) then GreenStijl would be liable for copyright infringement because the only way to access the published content would be through them.

so GreenStijl can't just host the pages anonymously on mega.com and link to them.. in that case they would deemed to be part of their website.

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