The Chilling Effects Of A No Linking To Infringing Content Rule

Predictions

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.