Dutch Court Rules Hyperlinks Can Constitute Infringement

Ubi_NL writes "In yesterday's ruling of Playboy (via publisher Sanoma) vs Dutch blog Geenstijl, the court ruled that hyperlinking to copyrighted material was itself infringement of copyright. The court ordered the blog to remove all links to the infringing links (court ruling in Dutch). How this ruling fits into the supreme court ruling that hyperlinks cannot by themselves infringe copyright is still to be discussed, possibly in an appeal."

The specific ruling:

[Anonymous Coward]

The court considered if the publishing of the hyperlinks by GeenStijl.nl constituted a publication (Dutch: ‘openbaarmaking’) as defined in article 12 of the Dutch Copyright Act. In principle, placing a hyperlink on a website is not a publication, unless three criteria are met: there must be an intervention, a new audience and profit.

- Intervention: The leaked pictures of Britt Dekker were stored on FileFactory.com, a cloud service to store files and share them with others. However, these files can’t be found through search engines, only users with the exact URL have access to the files. The URL to the file with the leaked pictures was publicly unknown, until GeenStijl.nl made it available to its large audience by publishing an article about it, the court says. Therefore, the actions of GeenStijl.nl are an intervention, according to the court. Without this intervention, the public wouldn’t have had access to the pictures before their official publication in Playboy.

- New audience: According to the court, there wasn’t an audience for the pictures before GeenStijl.nl published its article.

- Profit: By publishing the URL to the pictures, GeenStijl.nl had the unmistakable intention to attract more visitors, the court states. With success: in 2011, the article about Dekker was the best viewed topic on GeenStijl.nl, according to the statistics.

Taking the three criteria and the circumstances of this specific case into account, the court concludes that GeenStijl.nl has infringed on Sanomas copyrights by publishing the URL to the leaked nude pictures of Britt Dekker.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"However, these files can’t be found through search engines, only users with the exact URL have access to the files"

trolololo:

https://www.google.nl/search?q=site%3Afilefactory.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=site:filefactory.com+filetype:zip&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=QUX&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&filter=0&fp=1&biw=1440&bih=770&cad=b&sei=Gd9RUKvyD-mc0QWBmoCQDA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&sei=2fRSUNy8KKGm0QWOroH4Cw

https://www.google.nl/search?q=site%3Afilefactory.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:filefactory.com+720p&oq=site:filefactory.com+720p&gs_l=serp.3...4732.8524.4.9049.5.5.0.0.0.0.365.1238.0j3j0j2.5.0...0.0...1c.1.B59GNHkYEVg&pbx=1&fp=1&biw=1067&bih=493&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&cad=b&sei=2_RSUOvGGqet0QWXrICoCw

https://www.google.nl/search?q=site%3Afilefactory.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:filefactory.com+HD&oq=site:filefactory.com+HD&gs_l=serp.3...27593.28006.8.28612.2.2.0.0.0.0.86.123.2.2.0...0.0...1c.1.cBIjdvh2Hig&pbx=1&fp=1&biw=1067&bih=493&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&cad=b&sei=3fRSUL6iBM2Z0QX2koCoDw

Re:The specific ruling:

[Walterk]

They're appealing: Dutch link [geenstijl.nl]

Re:The specific ruling:

[Walterk]

[..] FileFactory.com, a cloud service to store files and share them with others. However, these files canâ(TM)t be found through search engines, only users with the exact URL have access to the files.

Wrong. As some other posters have already shown [slashdot.org], google happily indexes and searches FileFactory.

Re:What's up Netherlands?

[Anonymous Coward]

the cookie deal is european wide legislation. each nation is free to implement it with their own law provided it at least satisfies the requirements in the european law.

Re:Extremely interesting case

[joostje]

At the time GeenStijl published the link, the link wasn't indexed by Google. That was the whole point of the reasoning of the judge.

Re:Security by obcurity?

[Jedi Alec]

Actually, the person who first published the link...was Britt Dekker, the model for the pictures, who published the links on Twitter, so it was only available to her over 100k followers.