As long as one does not use any of the actual words and simply paraphrases, is URL-hyperlinking essentially something you can do in an almost unlimited fashion, without infringing on some copyright? (So for instance, linking like “Scientists claim to have engineered cold fusion” and making that the clickable link)
As long as you’re paraphrasing, you’re fine, I don’t see what the linking has to do with it.
Right, but can the New York Times or CNN say, “Linking to our articles violates our copyrights?”
They can say whatever they want, but no, they can’t get the courts to take your page down if you post a link.
One of the problems these days with large copyright holders is it almost never goes to the courts. Instead, on youtube, a copyright holder can just claim you stole their stuff - even if you didn’t - and youtube will take it down. Similarly, ISPs will do the same thing.
If you look back in history, this was actually debated and tested in the courts in the early 2000s when Google got sued a few times for linking to other people’s articles and/or pictures:
In general, in the USA it’s OK, except maybe in Texas, because Texas is Texas.
As for YouTube copyright claims, that’s more of a DMCA thing that doesn’t have to do with linking at all, but legal obligations for content hosts. There is an appeals process by which you can theoretically get your content put back up, but it’s a pain.
Tangentially, the current congress passed a bill (SESTA) forcing content hosts (not creators, but just websites hosting stuff) to be responsible for certain kinds of sexual material. It is feared (and probably quite likely) that one day soon this will extend to copyright infringement as well, replacing the current (already flawed) DMCA process with something even worse.
Are you talking about copying all or a significant part their content onto your own page, then attributing it with a link? Because sure, that could easily be unauthorised reproduction of the content.
Likewise hotlinking or embedding their content in your own page (it’s potentially unauthorised use of both the content, and their hosting resources)
But just posting a link to a source? No - I don’t think so - I mean, inbound links are what content creators and owners *crave * - why would anyone even try to argue that it’s wrong?
As I recall, TheRegister.co.uk (byting the hand that feeds IT) was most irritated by people “stealing” their headlines, and most pleased that ???Google??? was prevented from doings so by the courts.
The word “hyperlinking” has a slightly different meaning to just “linking”, it implies some content. If that content is from someone else, and is a “significant” amount of content from someone else, then there is an issue even if the content is linked to the original source
Sure they can; it’s happened several times in several jurisdictions. Since these judgments are idiotic and the precedents they set have chilling, wide-ranging consequences, they sometimes make the headlines, and often get overturned on appeal. But not always.
Highly controversial sites (and therefore good test cases) like The Pirate Bay, which contain no original content, only links, are legally blocked in some jurisdictions, e.g., Sweden, while in other jurisdictions they are ok.
So the answer to the original question is, depends on where and when you are and/or the site is.
The Pirate Bay is different, though, in that most of their links are to illegal sites. That’s different from linking to the legitimate owner’s site.
Actually those words are exactly synonymous in the context of web content.
Perhaps you are thinking of “hot linking” vs. “linking”. Hot linking is the practice of showing another page’s content on your page as if it were your own page’s content. For example, here is a link/hyperlink in text:
<a url=“https://www.straightdope.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/dope_180323_woodpeckers_online.gif?w=296”>Here is an image from a Cecil column</a>
Here is a hot link, which displays the image rather than having a text link that the user has to click:
<img src=“https://www.straightdope.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/dope_180323_woodpeckers_online.gif?w=296”>
This allows my web page to display content that is not hosted by me, ultimately at the expense of the site that really does host it. Every time users load my page, the site that is hosting the image also gets a bandwidth hit.
Many sites explicitly disable hot linking to their content so they do not lose control over how that content is presented.
With regard to the OP, I do not know if hot linking violates copyright.
None of The Pirate Bay’s links are to illegal sites. In fact, they don’t link to any sites at all. All they do is host files containing metadata about files to be distributed (such as their names and cryptographic hashes). Actually, in recent years they don’t even host such metadata files themselves; they just provide cryptographic hashes that allow users to locate this metadata on their own.
Correct; this cryptographic hash is what I meant by a “link”, in the sense that people can click on it and content will be downloaded (perhaps illegally, perhaps legally) to their computer. It is not a URL, though it may be a URN or URI or URC or something(?).
If the OP is only interested in URLs, then mention of the Pirate Bay may not be relevant, but since a lot of heat is directed towards it and similar sites because many of the “links” result in unauthorized reproduction of content, the fact that such sites are allowed to operate (in some places, not in other places) may be a litmus test of the legitimacy of linking.
Having clickable text links on your site that all lead to my site - making that section of your site sort of like an index to mine - can’t be violating copyright, can it? In essence, you’re just telling people where my site is; they could have found it themselves.
Are you in fact talking about something else?
No, but that hasn’t prevented some lawyers from making flawed arguments to the contrary. Sometimes these arguments have been convincing enough to get judges to rule in their favour.
I don’t see how it is different from putting a citation in a paper. In fact, you put in a link and the user discover it is behind a paywall anyway. Just like you may have no place to look at a citation.
It’s different by how easy it is to click vs going to the library, but I agree that it’s the same idea anyway.
One big difference the lawsuit-happy web sites note is the difference between linking to the full page vs. linking to an object on the page. E.g., they are not happy about links to just an image on the page.
Their view is that the whole page is an artistic creation and linking to just one part of it “breaks” their creation. (In addition they don’t get ad revenue for people viewing such objects. But since this is not an IP issue, they can’t make copyright threats based on this.)
A few sites are even worse. Either you link to the homepage or they become very unhappy. Nevermind how on Earth you’re supposed to easily direct people to a particular page on that site by giving just a homepage link.
Sucks to be them.
To be fair, if the title of your link is itself a sentence from the page - or a headline - or if you actually pull an image from the page and make that the link - in those cases the link is more than a directory listing, it’s a copy of the page content itself.
The thing about the pirate bay is it isn’t just a location where links are posted. It actively participates in copyright infringement - one notable way is that if you complain a listing on TPB is copyrighted material, they’ll tell you to pound sand. If you complain to the admins of the site that the link is fake - meaning it probably isn’t copyrighted material - they’ll take it down.
Yes, makes sense.
A link to something that’s already publicly accessible, and which shows none of the target content, is (in my eyes) obviously acceptable.
Posting someone else’s content without a link, even if the original is publicly accessible, seems wrong to me.
But … Hey, why is it that news outlets aren’t suing each other every single morning, over the fact that they both ran the same story last night?