News EU rules on copyright infringement via hyperlink

Requires foreknowledge, for-profit.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2016/09/09/curia-copyright-hyperlink-ruling/1

 

That's "and" rather than "or". In other words, you have to not know that it's infringing *and* you have to not profit from its posting. If you didn't know it was infringing but you're profiting, you're in trouble; if you did know it was infringing but aren't profiting, then you're still in trouble. Your only excuse under the ruling is that you didn't know it was infringing *and* you didn't profit from posting the link.

 

Yes, you can. You could be in breach of the CURIA ruling if, and only if, the article you write is commercialised and the site you linked to is hosting the content illegally.

To build an example:

You see Scientific Paper A on Arqiv's open-access section and link it in your article. No problem there.

You see Scientific Paper B on some random's website and link it in your article. Whoops: the random didn't have permission to host the copyright paper. The random's website gets a takedown notice, and you potentially get in trouble if your article is for-profit.

No, you may use neither.

Let's say I take a bunch of photos. I own the copyright, right? Right. So, I can licence said photos to whomever I want, and they are free to publish them.

Now let's say Site A publishes a bunch of my photos without my permission. That's copyright infringement, right? Right. So, I can issue 'em a takedown notice.

Before Site A takes down the photos, though, Site B runs a story about 'em and copies them to its own site, embedding them in the article. Copyright infringement again. Takedown. Bosh.

Now, Site C sees Site A's coverage and writes its own piece, but doesn't take copies of any photos. Instead, it just has a "click here to see the photos" link to Site A. Under the CURIA ruling, Site C is infringing copyright too if it can be proven that it is publishing the article for profit or that it knew the images were hosted illegally by Site A. Basically, if Site C has adverts, it's infringing my copyright despite not actually hosting any of my files. Takedown. Bosh.

In the matter of the case in the article, the site in question made it really, really easy for Playboy to win 'cos every time the site they linked to got taken down they updated the article with a link to a new host. Hard to argue you didn't know the images were illegally hosted if you're doing that!

 

If you're linking to my site which is hosting my original material on which I own the copyright, and any extract or quotation you're including in the body of your work doesn't exceed fair use guidelines, then you're absolutely A-OK - but see my penultimate paragraph for a possible complication.

Going to the original source for Scientific Paper B is exactly what you should be doing, and is absolutely fine. If the source isn't open access, then as long as you don't break through any paywalls (linking directly to a cached PDF in a CDN, for example) then you're fine again. Anyone following your link will need to get themselves a licence for viewing the original source.

Not necessarily. Using extracts of texts or copies of images is a completely different matter to the CURIA ruling of the article; that's just standard copyright law. If I put a photograph A. Photographer has taken and stick it in my article, then I've broken copyright - even if I put a "Image copyright A. Photographer" caption on it. I would need to contact the photographer and negotiate a licence; that may be as simple as the photographer saying "sure, use it, that's great" or as complex as licensing it for specific uses via Getty or similar.

This is made still more complex by the fact that in the UK there isn't really a 'fair use' exemption, or rather it's not as firmly codified in law as in the US. That's a whole other can of worms, though!