EFF: What if You Had to Worry About a Lawsuit Every Time You Linked to an Image Online?
What if You Had to Worry About a Lawsuit Every Time You Linked to an Image Online? A photographer and a photo agency are teaming up to restart a legal war against online linking in the United States. When Internet users browse websites containing images, those images often are retrieved from third-parties, rather than the author of the website. Sometimes, unbeknownst to the website author, the linked image infringes someone else’s copyright. For more than a decade, courts have held that the linker isn’t responsible for that infringement unless they do something else to encourage it, beyond linking. Liability rests with the entity that hosts it in the first place—not someone who simply links to it, probably has no idea that it’s infringing, and isn’t ultimately in control of what content the server will provide when a browser contacts it. Justin Goldman, backed by Getty Images, wants to change that. They’ve accused online publications, including Breitbart, Time, and the Boston G...