Court Ruling: Embedding & Linking To Infringing Video Doesn’t Violate Copyright Laws

A ruling is in on whether watching, linking to and embedding copyright infringing videos is lawful…at least in one case.  In a court decision in a case of Flava Works against myVidster, 7th Court judge Richard Posner ruled that “as long as the visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he is watching, he is not violating the copyright owner’s exclusive right.”

Janko Roettgers of GigaOM reported on the decision writing that, “A video site that lets users bookmark and share embedded videos from other websites doesn’t commit copyright infringement – and just watching a stream of a video that someone else has uploaded isn’t infringing either.”