Linking to Free Web Content Is Legal, Says EU Court

Free online content can be freely linked by others and does not violate copyright law, so rules the European Court of Justice. A Swedish court requested the ruling after disputes between journalists and a web company that posted links to online news articles, reports BBC News. “The journalists argued in the original case that users of Retriever Sverige's website would not know that they had been sent to another website by clicking on the links and therefore had made their articles available without authorization,” the report notes, adding the journalists claimed they were due compensations. “Under EU copyright law, authors have the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of their works.” The court suggested the ruling would have gone the other way had the articles been protected by a firewall and users charged a fee. The internet is about sharing, and one technology lawyer said restrictions on linking to free content would have “broken the internet.” – YaleGlobal