[redthrowaway]

Google provides access to same, not even counting torrent search. "Providing a way to download" is a nebulous, slippery-slope distinction that covers just about everything to one degree or another, whereas "making available for download" (ie: hosting) is far more specific. It'll be interesting to see what definitions they come up with. Regardless, I don't see the courts being able to keep up with pirates without overstepping and making many innocuous things illegal.

[nobody314159]

The case was specifically about "was a link - a republishing of an article" not, was the thing linked to legal.

In this libel case publishing the article was the offence. So 'if' making a link was also publishing, then an article that only linked to the original that was a new offence.

It doesn't mean that you can put up a message saying "riot at the mall tonight" and then tweet a link to that claiming "you only sent a link" - it's still inciting a riot!

In other words making a link doesn't suddenly protect you from what was in linked to message - it just means that it isn't a new publication of the same message.

In practice it has big implications for both Google (who don't have to police the entire internet!) and for libel tourism - you can no longer pick a convenient jurisdiction to sue in based on somebody there only publishing a link

[redthrowaway]

I don't think we're talking about the same thing. My question was whether or not, just as linking to a libelous post is not itself libel, linking to an infringing download would be similarly considered to not be infringement.

If the courts were consistent on this matter, then providing a magnet link to a torernt could arguably be seen as no different than providing a hyperlink to a libelous post. It is the poster/hoster, not the linker, who would be liable.

[nobody314159]

I think (IANAL) is that in libel publishing is the offence - so if you publish a copy of the libel you have committed the same offence - so "is a hyperlink publishing a copy?" is the question.

In a torrent the offence is something like "making available a copyright file for download" so the argument is that a torrent (which doesn't itself contain any of the copyright file) and a link to the torrent are equally "making available".