Playboy wins links fight at ECJ

The European Court of Justice ruled Thursday that a Dutch celebrity news website violated copyright law by linking to images owned by the Netherlands' national Playboy affiliate and posted without authorization elsewhere.

The ECJ found that that such linking infringes on copyright when websites seek to profit from pictures published without permission. Sanoma, which publishes the men's magazine in the Netherlands, had sought to get the website GeenStijl (No Style) to remove a link to photos of the TV celebrity Britt Dekker.

"When hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published," the ECJ announced in a statement.

Links have emerged as the latest online battleground as the internet continues to redefine content creators' control over their work. Many websites - large and small - link to content without ensuring that it is posted legally by the outlets that host it.

'Freely and fearlessly'

Not only did GS Media refuse Sanoma's request to remove a link to an Australian site illegally hosting the photos of Dekker: It replaced it with another when the outlet took the pictures down - and did it again when the second site dropped the images. Finally, Sanoma took the case to a court in the Netherlands, accusing GS Media of copyright infringement. That tribune referred the case to the ECJ in Luxembourg. The court in the Netherlands now must make a final decision based on the ECJ's advice.

In a statement, GS Media called the decision an attack on the press: "If commercial media companies - such as GeenStijl - can no longer freely and fearlessly hyperlink, it will be difficult to report on newsworthy new questions, leaked information and internal struggles and unsecure networks in large companies."

The ECJ recognized that the internet "is of particular importance to freedom of expression and of information and that hyperlinks contribute to its sound operation and to the exchange of opinions and information as well."

Therefore, judges acknowledged, it could prove difficult for individuals posting such links to know whether they had overstepped the boundaries of the law. However, if a site's administrators have been informed by the copyright holder or are linking for profit, then the posting of such links infringes copyright law, the court ruled.

The European Commission, the EU's executive body, appears set to propose its own tougher rules on publishing copyrighted content - including a new exclusive right for news publishers to ask search engines such as Google to pay to show snippets of their articles.

mkg/sms (Reuters, dpa)