FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
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------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 13:51:00 -0400 To: politech@politechbot.com From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: Dutch court says news-linking OK; DVD ruling imperils links Send reply to: declan@well.com
http://search.ft.com/search/multi/index.jsp?do=basic&query=kranten&Search.x=27&Search.y=6
WORLD NEWS - EUROPE: Dutch papers fail in internet copyright case Financial Times, Aug 23, 2000, 309 words
Leading Dutch newspapers yesterday failed to prevent an online news service from providing direct links to articles on newspaper websites, in a legal ruling that helps define the limits of internet copyright.
PCM, publisher of most of the country's national dailies, had sought an injunction against the recently established Kranten.com, whose site consists largely of news headlines. Clicking on any of these takes an internet user to the full text of the article, displayed on the site of the newspaper itself.
The company said this bypassed the main home page of its titles, which were the most lucrative for advertising revenue. A Rotterdam court found, however, that PCM could just as easily place advertisements next to individual news items, and that external links only brought it extra traffic.
The judgment supports Kranten's contention that the basis of the internet relies on hypertext links, where a mouse-click on one site can take the user to related information in a domain controlled by a third party. PCM had argued that this was equivalent to "knocking a hole in a side wall of a cafe" owned by someone else, and demanding that those who entered by that route "bought a drink from a stall set up outside". This was a reference to the advertising that funds the Kranten site - on which space has been taken by large Dutch groups including ABN Amro Bank and Ohra, the insurer owned by CGNU of the UK.
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38360,00.html
Only News That's Fit to Link by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
3:00 a.m. Aug. 23, 2000 PDT WASHINGTON -- Internet journalists, beware: A recent ruling by a federal judge could imperil your ability to place hyperlinks in some news articles.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan last week surprised few courtroom observers when he sided with the motion picture industry and ordered 2600 Magazine to delete a DVD-descrambling program from its website.
But almost nobody expected Kaplan to agree with Hollywood's request to ban the hacker-zine from even linking to the DeCSS utility.
Kaplan's ruling, legal experts say, appears to be an unprecedented expansion of traditional copyright law. No longer is it merely illegal to distribute a potentially infringing computer program -- but now even linking to someone else's copy could be verboten.
That could create legal problems for reporters and editors at sites like Wired News, Slashdot, and CNET's news.com, who have included links to DeCSS in news stories as part of their coverage of the lawsuit.
"I think that Judge Kaplan does not know his head from his ass," says Adrian Bacon, owner of Linux News Online. "Outlawing a site from linking to another site that has DeCSS is just plain wrong."
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