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Is Simply Linking To Copyright Material Illegal?

Boing Boing reports that Fox is trying to extend copyright law by sending takedown notices to sites that just link to supposedly infringing clips on YouTube. The target sites aren't hosting the clips themselves; just linking to them. The law is "somewhat murky" on whether linking to infringing materials is itself infringing, says Electronic Frontier Foundation senior intellectual property attorney Fred von Lohmann. The site in question, QuickSilverScreen, posts the text of the letter from Fox.

Here's a question for our company's lawyers: Is this very post illegal? In addition to the letter from Fox, the QuickSilverScreen page I linked to also contains a list of links that Fox asserts contain bootleg material, including episodes of 24, Family Guy, and My Name Is Earl. We're not linking to bootleg material here, but we're linking to links of bootleg material. Is that illegal, too? Does it make a difference that the links are contained in the text of the Fox letter that QuickSilverScreen quotes?

These issues need to be straightened out. People need to be able to know when they're breaking the law.

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