Simply adding a hyperlink to content online doesn't qualify as a breach of copyright laws

Feb 14, 2014 14:50 GMT  ·  By
If the content is freely available online, everyone is free to link to it in Europe
   If the content is freely available online, everyone is free to link to it in Europe

The European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that publishing a hyperlink to content available online cannot be considered a breach of copyright laws.

The case the EU Court of Justice ruled upon was referred to it by the Swedish Court of Appeal. This sometimes happens when it’s best for local cases to be ruled based on European laws since they could impact decisions taken in other member countries as well.

In this particular case, a company that indexes links to online articles published links to articles written by Swedish journalists. The company did not consider it owed journalists anything for linking to their articles, nor that embedding their articles would be considered copyright infringement.

“In the circumstances of this case, it must be observed that making available the works concerned by means of a clickable link, such as that in the main proceedings, does not lead to the works in question being communicated to a new public,” reads the court’s decision.

Therefore, given how everyone with an Internet connection could reach those articles, sharing the links did not violate the laws of copyright.

“Therefore, since there is no new public, the authorization of the copyright holders is not required for a communication to the public such as that in the main proceedings,” the document reads.

While this may sound extraordinary for everyone out there, there is a “but” in this story. The Court of Justice made sure to point out that there could be exceptions to the rule.

“Where a clickable link makes it possible for users of the site on which that link appears to circumvent restrictions put in place by the site on which the protected work appears in order to restrict public access to that work to the latter site’s subscribers only, and the link accordingly constitutes an intervention without which those users would not be able to access the works transmitted, all those users must be deemed to be a new public,” the Court writes.

Basically, if the access to the site is restricted in any way, such as by a subscription, linking to or embedding the content breaches EU laws.