The Illegality Of Links... Again

from the no,-not-this-again... dept

It's scary that we're still talking about this issue, but over in Germany, it appears that just linking to illegal information is considered illegal. The case against 2600 has already said linking to illegal info can be illegal in the US as well, but it looks like the German courts have agreed. In this case, a German newspaper was accused by the IFPI (sort of the international RIAA) of linking to a site that offers copy protection circumvention software. The newspaper had written an article about circumventing copy protection, and figured it was sound journalism to include a link to one such site. However, the German courts have sided with the IFPI and said no linking. The original claim apparently wanted the courts to go further and say that the newspaper couldn't even write about circumvention -- but the courts denied that request. What's really scary about all of this is that the recording industry actually thinks this is somehow helping. Pretending that people don't know how to circumvent copy protection isn't solving the problem. It's pretending the issue doesn't really exist.