The ramifications of the GS Media case are already being felt, with numerous legal and media figures discussing the potential consequences of a ruling in the European Union’s favor. In fact, Matt Drudge of the widely-popular Drudge Report claims that the EU’s plot to criminalize hyperlinks will serve as an example to a similar scheme in America:
“‘If the CJEU rules that every web user, in Europe and beyond, is expected to verify the copyright status of every item on a page before linking to that page, it could effectively destroy the web as we know it today,’ write Matt Schruers And Jakob Kucharczyk for Project-Disco.org.
‘Would you have to repeatedly check back on the sites you link to, in case the content on the site you linked to has changed? Would you need to confirm that their licenses are all paid in full? Would you also have to verify the copyright status of links on the pages that you’re linking to?’
‘If any of this were the case,’ Schruers and Kucharczyk write, ‘social media, search, blogs, comment sections, online journalism could be faced with unmanageable legal liability.’
Meanwhile in the US, Internet pioneer and popular news aggregator Matt Drudge exclusively told Infowars last October that copyright laws which prevent websites from linking to news stories were being debated.
‘I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,’ said Drudge. ‘They’ve got the votes now to enforce copyright law, you’re out of there. They’re going to make it so you can’t even use headlines.’
‘To have a Supreme Court Justice say to me it’s over, they’ve got the votes, which means time is limited,’ he said.
‘That will end (it) for me – fine – I’ve had a hell of a run,’ said Drudge.
Source: Infowars
That’s dumb. Here’s an idea: criminalize unsolicited email and text advertising (AKA spam).
It’s time to bomb the$#%&!@*out of this fuckin’ EU court …..