Laws on linking to copyrighted material in USA?
By Yahoo User • Category: Copyrights in USAIs it against the law in the US (CA specifically) to link to material that is violating copyright laws? Like posting on a message board a link to a website that hosts illegal mp3s or videos?
It could be construed to be contributing infringement.
There is a law regarding the DMCA against *directly* hyperlinking to copyrighted MP3s, videos, software, etc. However, there are no laws against linking to websites which happen to contain such links, nor is it illegal to post even direct URLs as long as they are displayed in plain text format and cannot be clicked with a mouse (in other words, a clickable hyperlink can be considered a copyright infringement facilitation device, but a plain text URL is considered free speech). Otherwise, the guys running Google and every other search engine would have been sentenced to jail for a billion years already. However, you may want to check with the message board owner, as posting any such links could be in violation of his TOS.