Most people agree that sharing up copyright protected content, housed on a computer you own, via a peer-to-peer network is an infringing act. But now, society and technology has reached a point to where we need to decide where the infringement ends.
It’s all too easy—encouraged, even—to share links these days via social networks. People like me, who scan hundreds of news and blog links per day because of our professions, make a habit of sharing links on Twitter and posting reference links in the content we post. Some of those links host controversial topics or links to other sites and material. It would never occur to me that, if a site I link to gets in trouble for hosting copyright-infringing content, I might get in trouble for linking to it. Never.
And why would it? If a copyright holder had a problem with their content being posted, they would work with the site owner where the content originated to get it removed, right?
Actually, several recent incidents are showing us that many people don’t think that going after the source is enough anymore.
Consider for a moment the BitTorrent aggregator that was shut down last month when their domain was seized by the Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). Torrent-finder didn’t house any infringing content on their servers, but were still shut down because their service provides links to people via search results.
IsoHunt is similar to Torrent-finder, and has been fighting four years in a legal battle that has driven the company’s hosting to Canada and imposed censorship that transcends international borders.
Jon Newton of P2Pnet mentions the recent ICE actions when referring to his own situation. Newton is currently on the defense in a case currently being heard in the Supreme Court of Canada because he is being sued for refusing to remove a link to a post that allegedly defamed someone.
Newton notes that it could be up to a year before the Supreme Court of Canada decides whether linking amounts to publishing, and is a punishable offense. He also aptly points out that the RIAA has “already ruled it does.”
“Forget about legally appointed courts, proof or due process,” he adds.
And he’s right. The entertainment industry organizations have pushed the federal government to take these actions and encourage international governments to take similar actions.
Let’s think about this rationally for a moment: If you take down a link, the source remains. If you take down the source, the links are rendered useless… In fact, taking out the source removes the issues of infringing search engine results too.
If this is true, then why is there all of this melodramatic legal action over links?
Is linking to pirated content infringement by proxy? I don’t think so, and I hope the legal system doesn’t think so either. If I’m wrong, life just got a great deal more complicated for a lot of people.
