IP: Dutch court says news-linking OK; DVD ruling imperils links

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> http://search.ft.com/search/multi/index.jsp?do=basic&query=kranten&Search.x=27&Search.y=6
>
> http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarchive.jsp?docId=000823000356&query=kranten&resultsShown=20&resultsToRequest=100
>
>    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.
>
> [...]
>
> **********
>
> 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."
>
> [...]