Top EU court hedges on question of hyperlinking legality in Playboy case
To the old legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the European Union's highest court has added another: Innocence until proven profitable.
It's OK for websites to hyperlink to an image published elsewhere without the rights holder's permission -- as long as they don't know that, and don't make a profit from it, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled on Thursday.
The ruling concerned Dutch website GeenStijl, accused by Playboy of linking to an Australian website that published, without the magazine's permission, a photoshoot it had commissioned with Dutch TV personality Britt Dekker.
Playboy's lawyers wrote to GeenStijl asking it to remove the link, but it refused -- and published a new link to another website hosting the photos without permission when they were removed from the Australian site. When the pictures disappeared from that site too, GeenStijl allowed its forum users to link to the photos on other sites.
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