Court of Appeal: Linking to Files Does Not Infringe Copyright

A link to files posted elsewhere online cannot infringe copyright if those files were not ‘perfectly private’. That is what the Court of Appeal says in the appeal of the case between the Playboy magazine and the GeenStijl website.

A lower court ruled last year that a link to a file elsewhere online could be seen as ‘re-disclosing’ a file and thus a new copyright infringement. The Court of Appeal is now overturning that judgment on appeal, according to the pronunciation. The linking itself cannot be considered copyright infringement, as Playboy was unable to prove that the files hosted at FileFactory were “perfectly private.” It concerned nude photos of Britt Dekker, which would later appear in Playboy magazine.

Nevertheless, GeenStijl should not have posted the links to the photos, the Court ruled. GeenStijl invoked ‘exposing an abuse’ by proving with the links that the photos had indeed been leaked. The Court did not accept that argument. “Discovery of all photos was not in the public interest, but apparently, the context in which the hyperlink is placed points to this, intended to satisfy the curiosity of the GeenStijl public.” GeenStijl therefore still has to pay compensation to Playboy and Britt Dekker. In addition, there was a crop of one of the photos in the topic and that is a copyright violation.

It is unclear whether the case will now come to an end. There is always the possibility that GeenStijl or Playboy will appeal in cassation and submit the case to the Supreme Court, but whether that will happen is unclear.