A Dutch appeals court has ruled that providing hyperlinks to infringing copyrighted material does not count as a breach of IP. The Amsterdam Court of Appeal cleared website GeenStijl.nl of infringing Playboy’s copyright when it linked to leaked nude pictures due to be published by the adult magazine. GeenStijl.nl, a blogging site, had published an article in October 2011 about pictures of Dutch TV presenter Britt Dekker that were set to be released by Playboy in two months. The article contained a link to a zip file with the pictures, hosted on file-sharing site filefactory.com, before being updated with a link to ImageShack, a site that hosts photos. Two more articles with links were later published. The ruling is the second in the Netherlands to confirm that linking to infringement is not a copyright breach itself, while a third decision said otherwise.
