I Hereby Commit a Blatant Act of Plagiarism
Copyright law’s a funny thing. What’s fair use? Sometimes, it seem, that precept doesn’t even exist anymore. The Australian Federal Court has now determined that linking to copyrighted material is an actionable infringement. While the ruling was delivered in the context of a case involving music downloads, all the defendant did was provide links to sites offering downloads, not the downloads themselves, so the ruling now makes bloggers potential targets if anyone uses a link to copyrighted material to publish or make other unauthorized use of that content, including my link, above, to the Sydney Morning Herald. Not only that, but comments containing links left on a blog are also the responsibility of the blog operator or owner. Do I care? I do not. Go ahead, link some stuff in comments. I’ll do the same in the posts.