[farginay]

I'm still not sure what the legal rationale is for treating link publication as copyright violation. When you publish a link, you are not copying anything, the person following the link is.

By analogy, a person who told people that Tarantino's script was under a box behind a grocery store would be violating copyright.

[Luc]

First encouraging the copyright infringement, then profiting from it, does not speak in Gawker's favour.

In my (European) country a kid was convicted and fined for copyright infringement for maintaining a list of links to pirated movies. It all depends on details and interpretations, and the analogy and logic you provide may not apply in a court of law.

[lordCarbonFiber]

I think the biggest deal is the profit aspect of the situation. If there was a person earning money for every person that he tells where Tarantino's script (in some fashion analogous to Gawker's add revenue from site hits) is your analogy sounds a lot worse. Publishing that link wasn't any kind of public service, they were using Tarantino's unreleased work to make a profit and he has grounds to sue for that.

[farginay]

But is it illegal, or is this simply a civil thing?

[lordCarbonFiber]

As the law stands it looks like it is illegal (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html section 3 subsection D [or search for link]). It looks like the linker is only protected if they don't have knowledge that the link is infringement and doesn't receive any financial benefit from the action.

[Argorak]

There is a fine line. The argument often goes that linking for informations sake is fine.

However, the whole post is written in a fashion that shows how proud Gawker is of their scoop and that they can show the script. This would mean that the encourage others to follow and download it, which is - without question - copyright infringement. An argument can be made that encouraging people to follow a link that _you definitely know_ is infringing copyright is illegal.