This morning the Tuusula District Court found that a Finreactor user had committed a copyright infringement by posting a .torrent link on the P2P network. While admitting that there were no copies made of copyrighted works, the Court concluded nevertheless that the defendant had done something “comparable” to distributing copies. As the conviction is based on an analogy and not the wording of the Finnish Copyright Act, it is in my opinion a truly dangerous precedent.
If linking as such is can be considered illegal, the case will have implications far beyond copyright. The Court is in fact telling you not to speak the name of your Favourite Song or Movie in vain. Or, as Herkko puts it: if a taxi driver tells his passengers where the whorehouse is, it does not make him a pimp.
