Hyperlinks And Copyright Law – Where Does Responsibility Lie?

In recent weeks, Advocate General Wathelet ("AG") – an independent advisor to the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") – delivered his Opinion in GS Media v Sanoma ¹.   The Opinion is significant as the AG found that posting a hyperlink to content on another website, which was made available without authorisation, is not in itself copyright infringement. The AG found this to be the case even where the hyperlink provider knew, or should have known, that the material hosted on the linked website was infringing copyright.

Questions to the CJEU

Sanoma, publisher of Playboy magazine, commissioned a photo-shoot of Dutch celebrity Britt Dekker. The photographs were leaked before Playboy's monthly issue was published and appeared on an Australian file-hosting website. GS Media, through its website Geenstijl, advertised hyperlinks that brought its users to the Australian website hosting the leaked images.