Thursday, December 7, 2006
Linking to Copyright Materials Now Illegal?
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 06:12 PM
"QuickSilverScreen is a US based website that is being forced to shut down or be given away for free after Fox claimed that LINKING to TV Shows on video sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion is illegal. Fox also alledgedly claims the site cannot be sold by the owner so therefore it must be given away for free."
As someone who earns a living running Web sites that largely link to other sites and pieces of content, this is a very scary thing. I can't imagine it would hold up in court, because I know linking has been challenged before. I did a bit of research, and this situation is a little bizarre: QuickSilverScreen is a text directory listing of all the TV shows at a site called Dailymotion. The Dailymotion people are the ones that Fox should be going after, since they host the actual content, but I suspect Dailymotion is based in a country where Fox has no ability to launch a lawsuit. All in all, this is ugly and I'm very surprised that the EFF didn't step up and take this case - because if plain old hyperlinks become a problem, things are going to get ugly in the blog world of linking....
As someone who earns a living running Web sites that largely link to other sites and pieces of content, this is a very scary thing. I can't imagine it would hold up in court, because I know linking has been challenged before. I did a bit of research, and this situation is a little bizarre: QuickSilverScreen is a text directory listing of all the TV shows at a site called Dailymotion. The Dailymotion people are the ones that Fox should be going after, since they host the actual content, but I suspect Dailymotion is based in a country where Fox has no ability to launch a lawsuit. All in all, this is ugly and I'm very surprised that the EFF didn't step up and take this case - because if plain old hyperlinks become a problem, things are going to get ugly in the blog world of linking....
