Gerechtshof Amsterdam [Court of Appeals Amsterdam], Civil law, GS Media v. Sanoma, ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2013:4019

The case is about leaked nude photographs of Dutch television-personality Britt Dekker that had yet to appear in Playboy magazine. An unknown person had stored the photographs online with Filefactory’s hosting service. Dutch entertainment website Geenstijl had posted a link to the file containing the photographs. The Court of Appeals of Amsterdam held that linking to copyright-protected material that is available on the web elsewhere is no different from a footnote referring to earlier published works. In principle, linking to copyright-protected works on the web does not communicate those works to the public and does not constitute a copyright infringement. This may be different if the works were untraceable and inaccessible to the public before the intervention. Although Geenstijl was not held liable for copyright infringement, Geenstijl was held liable under tort law for facilitating access to the leaked photographs.