This is worrisome…
(A) Hamburg court ruled that the operator of a website violated on copyright by publishing a link to material that was infringing, even though the site operator was unaware of this fact.
Ars Technica: Commercial sites must check all their links for piracy, rules Hamburg court »
Pre-clearing all links with the linked websites would be a very complicated and time-consuming task – for both parties. Not to mention all the paperwork to document this, to avoid future problems.
And exactly what constitutes a »commercial site«?
The Hamburg court ruled that even though the link in question was not used to generate revenue directly, the site as a whole was commercial, since it sells learning materials via one of its Web pages.
So – I guess – if you have ads on your site, if you sell stuff or if you lead your readers to anything of commercial interest (like services that you provide) the purpose can be deemed »commercial«. This resulting in most sites on the net falling into this category.
This is leading to a very real dilemma. Links are the nerve system of the Internet. Most site owners would love to have you link to their pages. And for reference, an open and democratic debate and knowledge building links are essential. (Like in this blog post.)
But according to the Hamburg court, you can get in serious trouble if you don’t obtain a pre-clearance.
Even if you have the time and resources to pre-clear every link – it is likely that people running the sites you would like to link to simply do not have the resources to reply to every request to link.
So if you run a blog or a site that you want people to link to, you better state that it is published under Creative Commons license CC=BY or CC=0.
/ HAX