The Court of Amsterdam Rules that Posting HYPERLINKS to Playboy can be a Copyright Infringement

Because of the brazen way Dutch website GeenStijl.nl continued to ignore warnings from from Playboy to stop linking to photos that had not yet been published in magazine form a confused Court of Amsterdam has ruled that hyperlinks can be considered an infringement of copyright in some cases.

Future of Copyright explains:

In October 2011, website GeenStijl.nl published an article about leaked nude pictures of Dutch television presenter Britt Dekker. The pictures were shot for Playboy and were planned for the December edition of the magazine. The article on GeenStijl.nl contained a hyperlink to a zip file with the pictures, hosted by Australian file sharing website FileFactory.com. Sanoma, publisher of Playboy, ordered FileFactory.com to remove the zip file.

Thereafter, GeenStijl.nl updated its article with a hyperlink to Imageshack, where the photo shoot could be viewed directly. Sanoma also ordered Imageshack to remove the pictures. Meanwhile, the pictures were spread across the internet and new links to the photo shoot kept popping up.

Notwithstanding several letters in which Sanoma requested GeenStijl.nl to remove the article and the links, GeenStijl.nl published two more articles with hyperlinks to the pictures. Sanoma sued GeenStijl.nl for copyright infringement and for violation of Britt Dekkers portrait rights and privacy.

The court considered if the publishing of the hyperlinks by GeenStijl.nl constituted a publication (Dutch: ‘openbaarmaking’) as defined in article 12 of the Dutch Copyright Act. In principle, placing a hyperlink on a website is not a publication, unless three criteria are met: there must be an intervention, a new audience and profit.

Here's the legalese.

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