(BLOOMBERG) Playboy’s Dutch publisher can stop a news and entertainment website from posting links to its images without permission, a top European Union court said in a ruling that could reverberate across the internet.
The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said GeenStijl, owned by GS Media, broke copyright laws when it published links to pictures of TV personality Britt Dekker without the permission of Sanoma Oyj’s Dutch unit, which runs Playboy in the Netherlands.
Thursday’s ruling, which guides a Dutch court making a final decision in the dispute, says the website may fall foul of copyright rules because the links were posted for profit in the full knowledge that the photos were published online without consent.
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