Techdirt. Stories filed under "hotlinking" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "hotlinking"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:30:00 PST Dutch Judges Plagiarize, Potentially Infringe, Blog Post In Decision About Copyright Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100128/0044267959.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100128/0044267959.shtml embedding/hotlinking is infringement when the original content is hosted/served from elsewhere (in an authorized manner). I cannot see a truly defensible legal explanation for how that is infringing (the content exists solely in two places -- the original server and the browser of the user, both of which are authorized). However, some lawyers clearly disagree. Over in the Netherlands, in fact, a court has disagreed and claimed that embedding is, in fact, infringement. While I think this is a poor ruling that makes little sense, there's something more interesting in this particular ruling (sent in by an anonymous reader). It turns out that, in explaining why embedding should be considered infringing, the judges plagiarized the exact wording of a blog post by a Dutch lawyer.

Now, plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different (though sometimes overlapping) things, but it does seem a bit ironic -- and even under Dutch copyright law, this bit of copying could be seen as infringement as well. Apparently, the judges directly cut and pasted the following two sentences:
"in case law and legal literature it is generally held that an embedded link constitutes a publication. After all, the material can be viewed or heard within the context of the website of those who placed the link, and placement causes the material to reach a new audience."
The exact quote above came from a blog post by lawyer Douwe Linders, who had no idea the judges were going to copy it. While it seems like a simple quote like this should be perfectly legal in any context, let alone a legal decision, the discussion of this notes that while Dutch copyright law does let you quote short bits of content from others for a variety of reasons, it requires attribution. In this particular case, no attribution was provided.

What makes it even worse, of course, is that the quoted/plagiarized/infringing bit might not even be accurate. As we discussed in our own post on the subject, there appears to be significant disagreement over whether or not embedding authorized content could be seen as infringing -- and apparently, there is a widespread debate about it in Dutch legal circles as well, saying that it is far from readily agreed upon in the legal literature.

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]]> pot,-kettle http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100128/0044267959 Wed, 6 Jan 2010 07:28:00 PST Is Inline Linking To An Image Copyright Infringement? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100105/0109067611.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100105/0109067611.shtml Copycense points us to a writeup by a patent attorney named Steve O'Donnell about copyright and blogging. Why a patent attorney is writing about copyright is not clearly explained. Initially, since the title of O'Donnell's post was "How many copyrights does your blog infringe?" I thought the post might be one of those blog posts that reminds us how frequently everyone "technically" infringes on copyright incidentally and how this demonstrates how screwed up copyright law is. But, no, instead, this appears to be a serious "warning" claiming that most bloggers are risking the potential of $150,000 fines by using images they find online.

Copycense points out the irony that O'Donnell uses an image in the post itself and notes that the image appears to be in the public domain, but isn't sure. However, I think a bigger issue with the post is hidden in this sentence:
If you find a picture on Flickr, another blog, or somewhere else online and upload it to your own blog (or worse yet, inline link to it from your blog) without permission, you're committing a copyright violation.
First of all, that's not necessarily true. Obviously it depends on lots of other factors -- but I really question the parenthetical. Would inline linking (usually called "hotlinking") to an image be copyright infringement under any circumstance? I understand that it's considered rude and generally frowned upon in internet circles (and, in some cases the hoster of the original file will "get back" at the hotlinker by changing the image to something different... and potentially nasty). But is it copyright infringement? Technically, a hotlinked image is no different than a link to an image. The difference in code is minimal. The image itself is never "copied" onto your server. All you are doing is telling a computer to go visit the original version of the image, which was put there on purpose.

We've had similar discussions in the past about whether or not it could be copyright infringement to embed an infringing video on your site -- and the situation is basically the same with hotlinked images. The content still resides on the original server and is not copied to the new server at all. If the content itself is infringing, then perhaps there's a (really, really, really) weak case for contributory infringement, but in O'Donnell's post, he seems to be implying that even hotlinking to an authorized image would be copyright infringement, and I just don't see how that makes sense from a technological or legal perspective at all.

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]]> i-don't-think-so... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100105/0109067611 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:59:25 PDT Um, Sorry, But You Don't Get To Sue When Somebody Moves Images You're Hotlinking Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090615/1337115242.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090615/1337115242.shtml who threatened the host of a site whose images he was hotlinking with a lawsuit (via Kottke.org) after the host took the original site down and deleted the images. Again, while courts differ on their views about hotlinking, it's pretty unlikely that any court would agree that the person doing the hotlinking has a right to the continued use of the images. This guy felt otherwise, at least until he actually spoke to his lawyer about it, who apparently clued him in. In some way, it's sort of disappointing that the guy's lawyer didn't want to move forward, since the suit would been pretty amusing.

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]]> so-many-stupid-people http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090615/1337115242