"Caveat emptor" (or "buyer beware") has long been a guiding principle for consumers. But as more business -- and copyrighted content -- moves online, mavens of e-commerce might want to formulate an additional maxim: "caveat linker." As recent decisions in the United States and Australia demonstrate, webmasters -- and, in some cases, the Internet service providers that host their sites -- have several reasons to link with care. In Live Nation Motor Sports, Inc. v. Davis, a federal court in Texas held that by including links to live audio webcasts owned by Live Nation on his website, the defendant had likely infringed upon the plaintiff’s copyright. And in Cooper v. Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd., the Federal Court of Australia upheld a judge’s ruling, on which we reported earlier, that a website operator and his ISP had "authorized" copyright infringement by linking to third-party sites that hosted pirated music files. These two decisions suggest that webmasters and ISPs should be wary when linking to content, particularly if they suspect that it may be copyrighted.
© Copyright 2006 Steptoe & Johnson LLP. Steptoe & Johnson LLP
The law blog that focuses on ICT and IP Law in South Africa, EU and the USA
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