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Strowel, Alain; Hanley, Vicky --- "Secondary liability for copyright infringement with regard to hyperlinks" [2009] ELECD 331; in Strowel, Alain (ed), "Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Secondary Liability in Copyright Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Secondary Liability in Copyright Law

Editor(s): Strowel, Alain

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847205629

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Secondary liability for copyright infringement with regard to hyperlinks

Author(s): Strowel, Alain; Hanley, Vicky

Number of pages: 39

Extract:

3. Secondary liability for copyright
infringement with regard to hyperlinks
Alain Strowel and Vicky Hanley
Without hyperlinks,1 the World Wide Web would not be so compelling.
Hyperlinks are, in a way, the threads with which the Web is spun. Instead of
users getting tangled in information overload, they find what they are looking
for by following links for further reference. Without these links, and without
the search engines based on hyperlinking, the information posted online would
lose much of its value as it would not be easy to find.
Despite their clear utility, hyperlinks can raise legal liability issues in
certain circumstances. For instance, infringements to personality rights exist if
the links have been intentionally posted to refer to content that prejudices a
person's reputation, or certain types of links may raise unfair competition
concerns or result in trademark infringement; similarly, copyright violations
can arise if hyperlinks are clearly made to promote the dissemination of
infringing files. It is this latter issue ­ (secondary) liability for copyright
infringement involving hyperlinks ­ into which this chapter delves.
We will begin our discussion in Part I on the dual character of hyperlinks
as a technique and as a form or expression that can nevertheless be limited by
the law, followed in Part II by a summary of the forms of (copyright) liability
that hyperlinking can entail. Parts III and IV then discuss current case law on
copyright liability for linking. Finally, we will conclude with a discussion on
how some links that ...