On 5/4/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/4/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/4/07, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:
I'm just curious. Isn't it a technical violation of US law/DMCA to link back to pages that include infringing material?
I don't think that has ever been decided in court one way or another. But someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
It has. It's illegal if you knowingly do so for the purpose of disseminating the circumvention device.
See Universal studios and friends vs 2600, and the court of appeals ruling which upheld it.
The Court went on to hold that when the Defendants [2600, who had previously distributed DeCSS itself] "proclaimed on their own site that DeCSS could be had by clicking on the hyperlinks" on their site, they were trafficking in DeCSS, and therefore liable for their linking as well as their posting.
That's fairly narrow. It only applies to trafficking in cracking tools, and not to all "infringing material". And it is applied to a defendant who previously distributed the tools directly, and then later linked directly to the tools with a message essentially saying "download here".
It's still pretty damning though, especially wrt the current situation. And 2600 claims that all the lawyers they spoke too said they would probably lose a Supreme Court appeal on First Amendment grounds.
Anthony