Unknowingly Linking To Infringing Content Is Still Infringement

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We've all heard the old saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse" but this seems a bit much. This is why you don't hotlink images from other sites or use images without permission.

A court in Germany has held the operator of a commercial website liable after it unknowingly linked to infringing content hosted elsewhere. The Hamburg Regional Court found that the link to a Creative Commons image, posted to another site without the correct attribution, amounted to a copyright infringement.
 
I'm fairly sure everyone on this forum links images from other sites and use them in their posts without permission.
 
Ducman69 said:
It should only matter IMO if you're making money off of it. If I link to some random BS, but am not making money from it, big woop.
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But you also have an ad link on your web site, and you made $1.23 of the shared ad revenue last year, so you DID make money of the imaged link. :whistle:
 
So how about the inverse? I unknowingly link to an ad, it is the ad company's responsibility to pay me a cut for the service I provided.
 
lilbabycat said:
So how about the inverse? I unknowingly link to an ad, it is the ad company's responsibility to pay me a cut for the service I provided.
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That's nonsensical. This case is very straightforward. You are making money by selling a photo you took. Company #1 steals the photo and makes money by posting it on their site; you'll be wanting your cut of that. Company #2 makes money by linking to Company #1's copes of the photo; you'll be wanting your cut of that too.

"But Company #2 didn't know it was stolen goods so they're innocent!" Sure, and you'll be feeling just as sympathetic towards the ignorance of the pawn shop that sold the stuff that someone else stole from your house.
 
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There's little in English about the case, but the issues are not as they are misrepresented by the torrentfreak article.

The EU court of justice had earlier found that linking wasn't necessarily an infringement. There had to be proof that it was done for financial gain or the poster knows that it contains content that is infringing. The latter thing is what's at issue. The case against the owner of GeenStijl.nl is summarized by this:

In this case, GS Media, which operates entertainment website GeenStijl.nl, published an article about nude photos of Dutch celebrity Britt Dekker, which had been taken for an edition of Playboy. The article contained a hyperlink to the photos hosted by a file-sharing website. Playboy’s publisher, Sanoma, requested the removal of the files but GeenStijl.nl then published a hyperlink to another site on which the photos could be seen.
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You can argue that linking shouldn't be considered a crime, but "unknowingly" is not the issue here. The issue here is that there's someone worth going after who refused to play by safe harbor (or the EU's more limited version of it) rules.
 
evilsofa said:
That's nonsensical. This case is very straightforward. You are making money by selling a photo you took. Company #1 steals the photo and makes money by posting it on their site; you'll be wanting your cut of that. Company #2 makes money by linking to Company #1's copes of the photo; you'll be wanting your cut of that too.

"But Company #2 didn't know it was stolen goods so they're innocent!" Sure, and you'll be feeling just as sympathetic towards the ignorance of the pawn shop that sold the stuff that someone else stole from your house.
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The advertising services I provide are just as valid. The same process they go about finding these """stolen""" images can be used to find valid examples of inadvertent advertising. Just do it. (Cha-Ching)
 
I heard some A-hole on Fox News (I watch a few programs on there, that are pretty good) who said "Well, with all the fake news stuff floating around, I hope people start realizing they can and will be sued for posting something without doing their due diligence in vetting it". So I'm gonna get sued because I "liked" my friends post about Pelosi's food joint she owns that's smuggling money to the DNC? Just because it hasn't been proven and approved by the WH or one of their paid shills., MSLSD, CNN or the AP? I didn't even post it! It was crosslinked!

FYI I don't use facebook.

And F that. You will not stifle our freedom of speech! I post what ah wahnt!
 
Steve said:
This is why you don't hotlink images from other sites or use images without permission.
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but when a website is publicly viewable... it's kinda fair game .... since it's like public access and not in private.... >->;

if your linking and eating up bandwidth resources from other peoples web server, well as a web admin, there are ways to prevent off site linking as it will redirect if linked from elsewhere (i too get annoyed by this when it's my own web server involved, but there are solutions...).... so what is the issue?

and if people decide to copy an image then upload to imgur or add as an attachment hosted on a different server, well you gave them public access to the image.

I guess crossing the line is when they monetize off your company logo to pretend their you perhaps ?

the only other type of site that may use a bunch of images would be like deviantart, so if somebody cloned their site (and added on adverts to monetize), the art uploaded to that site is still by other individual members of that site, and not solely belonging to deviantart. So that kind of site which uses a lot of images by many people, how exactly are you to hold them to account ? o_O; doesn't seem possible cause even the original site clearly don't own those images themselves (even though their users willingly upload them to their account to display in the website gallery format).
 
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Pretty straight forward. It's your responsibility to obtain a license to use content you didn't create.
 
evilsofa said:
This case is very straightforward. You are making money by selling a photo you took. Company #1 steals the photo and makes money by posting it on their site; you'll be wanting your cut of that. Company #2 makes money by linking to Company #1's copes of the photo; you'll be wanting your cut of that too.
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Should Google also be held accountable, because they also have adverts and a link to this site?
 
I suppose you COULD say that if people do not want their creations copied, maybe they shouldn't put them in an ecosystem that was designed to copy things.

Everyone wants to enjoy the ease of life that computers give us, yet they want to retain the exclusivity that computers were not made for.
 
evilsofa said:
"But Company #2 didn't know it was stolen goods so they're innocent!" Sure, and you'll be feeling just as sympathetic towards the ignorance of the pawn shop that sold the stuff that someone else stole from your house.
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Actually yes, because the pawn shop did check the police reports (the officer filed it incorrectly). So why would I be mad at anyone but the person who took my bikes (and the apartment complex that failed for months to fix the D##M lock).

Oh, and also as someone who has had pictures bought and put on the internet... Anyone who expects to be paid for an image multiple times for placement on multiple sites is fooling themselves. And since there seems to be some kind of misunderstanding as to how selling photos works... For the VAST majority of photos you as the photographer don't get "royalties", you get paid by the site wanting to post the picture once and that is it.
 
Unknowingly being stupid is still being stupid

Courts in germany should be busy going after migrants attacking random women on the streets for no reason, but no, "We can't be dealing with that, look, here is someone linking a creative commons image on the internet without the proper disclaimer"
 
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