Re: Another prosecution-for-linking case

On 6/28/11 8:31 AM, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
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> Here's the misleading part of the Guardian article [1]:
>
>    "The (computer) server was not based in the US at all," O'Dwyer's
>    barrister, Ben Cooper, who has also been heavily involved in the
>    McKinnon case, told Tuesday's hearing at Westminster magistrates
>    court. "Mr O'Dwyer did not have copyrighted material on his website;
>    _he simply provided a link_. The essential contention is that the
>    correct forum for this trial is in fact here in Britain, where he
>    was at all times."
>
>    Some experts on digital law question whether _providing links to
>    illegal downloads rather than directly hosting them_ would even
>    constitute an offence in the UK. In February last year charges
>    involving fraud and copyright against a similar site, TV-Links, were
>    dismissed after a judge ruled that linking alone was not illegal.
>
>    (emphasis added)
>
> So the _three_-way distinction, between linking/embedding/hosting, is
> just not understood. . .
>
> ht
>
> [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jun/17/student-file-sharing-tvshack-extradition
> - -- 
>         Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
>        10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
>                  Fax: (44) 131 651-1426, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
>                         URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
>   [mail from me _always_ has a .sig like this -- mail without it is forged spam]
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Henry,

I am copying in the LOD mailing list as this is quite important and 
ultimately bring clarity to a confusing matter, even in the Linked Data 
realm.

Links are Links i.e, reference.

The Name and Address matter continues to charge on. Referring to 
something by Name is not the same thing as making a New Address for a 
Resource. When you make New Resource Addresses (or Locators) where the 
"authority" part is changed, you open up vulnerabilities of the kind 
expressed in the misledaing Guardian article.

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
President&  CEO
OpenLink Software
Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen

Received on Tuesday, 28 June 2011 09:12:00 UTC