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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

> Whatever response comes back to a request directed at that address is entirely determined by whoever controls the address, and outside the control of the publisher of the hyperlink.

It's actually even worse than that. The content can change depending on who is making the request, and can also change from one request to the next. There is absolutely no guarantee that if you check the content of a URL at one time and find that it doesn't infringe any copyrights (and how would you know anyway?) that the next time you check, or the next time someone else checks, that the content won't be different.

That the court would even consider this is an indication of deep and profound ignorance on their part.

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On the other hand, and not that I'd like to be sued for placing links, if the link in my page is something like <a href="ftp://thepiratebay.com/avatar.mp4">Avatar Movie Download</a>, the argument that the page had the text of the Holy Bible in it last time I checked might not be very convincing.

So I can see how someone might mull.

I think that's more where this legislation is coming from. Some people have built a business on aggregating links or embeddings of copyrighted material and those sites always use the legal defense of "we don't host any of the content so it's not our problem." I imagine this is very frustrating to copyright holders, so it's reasonable that they would seek redress of some kind.

Of course, making any copyright-infringing link illegal would be far too heavy-handed, but I don't think that's a likely decision here.

If someone published only the names and addresses of known drug dealers in a phone book, the publisher still wouldn't be responsible for any drug deals.

Aiding and abetting is a federal statute in the US, so I don't think that would be considered 100% OK. The evidence must show beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted with the knowledge and intention of helping that person commit [specify crime charged].

http://www3.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/367

PS: A more interesting question is if saying we don't host Hollywood crap if you want that go to [the pirate bay] without linking to any specific material.

If they put it under a section titled "drug dealers", then it would probably be a problem.

The elephant in the room is that Google actually do host copyrighted content on YouTube (which is its primary use case), but they're so big they're untouchable.

Let's go after the big guys before the little guys, eh?

[citation needed]

Have you ever used the Pirate Bay? The links there are actually magnet links (i.e. BitTorrent links) and they just look like random gibberish.

What you get on the Pirate Bay is descriptions of these links. So it's more like:

<a href=magnet:some-random-string>Avatar HD</a>

Trick is, that description may or may not actually be true. The content is submitted by PB users. The PB, AFAIK, doesn't actually vet this information. And, BTW, not all of the content linked to on the Pirate Bay is actually pirated. You can find Linux distros there, for example.

None of this is any excuse if the intent is so clearly to profit illegally off of other people's content. Trying to paint Pirate Bay as this altruistic organization that just wants to distribute some Linux distros is such bullshit. The information wants to be free brigade always seem to overlook the tons of sleazy ads and malware that accompanies all of these file sharing sites.

Well, large corporations using political influence to extend copyright terms effectively forever to prevent works from ever entering the public domain against the express intent of the Founders (at least in the U.S.) aren't exactly the white knights in this story either.

Look, I'm a filmmaker. I believe in copyright (for limited terms), and I believe in using the law as a mechanism to enforce the interests of copyright holders. But making it a crime to link to a page that contains unlicensed material is going way too far IMHO.

(BTW, the sleaze and malware make pretty effective deterrents for the general public to use the PB. You may have noticed that Hollywood is still in business despite the fact that the PB is still operating.)

> Well, large corporations using political influence to extend copyright terms effectively forever to prevent works from ever entering the public domain against the express intent of the Founders (at least in the U.S.) aren't exactly the white knights in this story either.

Exactly this. Get back to me when we have a sane copyright regime in the US and, for that matter, the rest of the world. Until then, pardon me if I'm not bothered when people pirate content.

"large corporations using political influence to extend copyright terms effectively forever"

Yup. However, don't forget that it takes two to do the crony capitalism tango -- private- and public-sector actors. :-)

Intent is the key word here.

Profiting off illegal content is already illegal by itself and all these special cases should be left to courts to decide instead of throwing around overly broad blankets

And this case is exactly to provide a framework for lower courts to decide intent. In fact, it was a court that asked this question to the CJEU to be able to judge a specific case. It's much better to have clear rules what is allowed and what isn't than operating in a grey area and being dependent on courts deciding in your favor without being able to asses the risk beforehand.

> Profiting off illegal content is already illegal by itself

That is not so easy and depends on your definition of "profiting".

Have I ever used the Pirate Bay? Why, it's illegal! Have you ever used the Pirate Bay?

Anyway, I crafted my link for comedic value rather than "realism", and then my point was that someone could put, on a web page in their own full control, a link that points to pirated copyrighted material beyond reasonable doubt. You talk about the difficulty of a site with user-submitted content to place limits on what that content can be, which is relevant if someone proposes draconian copyright enforcement measures, but it does not refute my point. As to PB having non-pirated content - sure, and the red light district probably has businesses that sell food, but PB is like my link example in that nobody would buy a claim that its main use isn't pirating copyrighted content.

Again - perhaps it's reasonable to have laws letting people get away with it because any alternative laws are worse (or we could have no copyright law, etc.) All I'm saying is, you don't have to be completely ignorant to say, hey, there are guys who don't only piss into the swimming pool but they do so standing on the springboard, and how about we discuss ways to stop them.

Also, and somewhat independently from the above, you mention in a sister comment that you're a filmmaker. That's interesting - I didn't know you were - and I guess I'm an aspiring filmmaker myself. But that is different from being dependent on the income from filmmaking. Someone trying to live off their own films is in a pretty tight spot right now because basically they compete against a near-infinite amount of de-facto free-as-in-beer content. You mention that Hollywood is alive and well but many in Hollywood disagree, it hurts them a lot - as to someone with a smaller budget, making a profit is unlikely. I don't know how matters could be better, though perhaps if it were illegal to sell/give up the authors' rights, and if we'd be forced to pay per view or some such, and the enforcement of it all was practical, things would be better. Or they might have been worse, I dunno...

Just like someone's phone number could be replaced by someone else, now you're calling a drug dealer instead of your grandmother, who is to blame then? Same thing can happen to URLs. Every time I let a domain of mine expire (well not EVERY time, but sometimes) some company buys it out and stuffs it up with advertisements.

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