Following a ruling last month by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which said that linking to material freely available elsewhere on the internet is not an act of copyright infringement, the Government has agreed in principle but argues that laws should not allow website operators and others to link widely to infringing content.
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) put out a statement saying that, as a hyperlink is little more than a pointer to where content can be found, it seems clear that the mere provision of a hyperlink is not a communication to the public of that work and, as such, it should not be subject to the authorisation of right holders.
The statement went on to say that the Government therefore welcomes the finding of the recent case, as a requirement to seek permission for linking to copyright works would be excessively burdensome for users of the Internet, including European businesses.
However, the IPO insisted that it is important that the law supports efforts to tackle online copyright infringement and for the interests of right holders that the law continues to forbid systematic provision of links that are known to lead to infringing content, which, in the UK is done partly outside the copyright code, through fraud offences for example.
The IPO also gave an opinion on another copyright case, yet to be ruled on by the ECJ, where it agreed that temporary copies of copyrighted content could be made with rights holders’ permission in the context of website browsing.
Its statement said that it seems clear that the making of temporary copies during the course of browsing, whether on the screen or in a cache, fall within the temporary copying exception, as rights holders have the option of putting such content behind a pay-wall or applying other technological restrictions if they wish to control access to it.