from Hacker News

Eyeo wins German copyright decision, sets legal precedent for who ‘owns’ HTML

by rmoriz on 1/18/22, 3:51 PM with 262 comments

by blibble on 1/18/22, 4:23 PM
> developer of best-in-class ad-filtering technology found in millions of browsers and products around the world
I must admit, this is pretty funny... there is "ublock" which users are tricked into installing (instead of the real ublock origin), which uses their "acceptable ads"
and people have said that their business model is based on extorting ad companies to pay them to not block their ads
by wvenable on 1/18/22, 5:37 PM
I'm confused. The HTML on a page should be automatically copyrighted to the author already. It's absolutely an expression of creative work just like a book, or software, or music.
That being said, it doesn't follow that it would make it illegal for any technology or any consumer to alter a website page appearance. You are free to modify copyrighted works as long as you don't distribute that work.
by tgtweak on 1/18/22, 8:17 PM
Just taking a minute here to say that Eyeo went on a copyright offensive to all ad blockers with "ad block" in the name saying it infringed on their brand.
Very bad actors in this space, and their motivation here in this suit is to continue their AdBlock racket of allowing ads to their users for those advertisers that pay.
by elsjaako on 1/18/22, 4:29 PM
I'm nog allowed tot print a new copy of The Hobbit, due to copyright.
However, if I buy a legal copy of the Hobbit and edit it using whiteout and pen that would be perfectly legal (as far as I understand). I could even sell my modified copy.
Isn't this basically what an in-browser ad filter does? Or is my understanding wrong here?
by nness on 1/18/22, 5:20 PM
What an absurd case, so glad it would found in Eyeo's favour.
> More dangerous still, any developer who writes code for an offending browser feature could be liable to pay damages
If you take this one step further, any browser vendor would be liable for changes to their product if that change broke a person's site, i.e. deprecation of any features. The mind boggles at how horrific it could've been for the future of the web.
by vmception on 1/18/22, 4:06 PM
Does this have any equivalent to US laws or was it at all a departure from German law? I don't see what the precedent is, everything thinks the topic they care about is so important when its not.
The claims were 1) that HTML of a page is copyrighted 2) so therefore browser extensions that modify it are a problem
If I read this correctly, the court curbstomped 2) because thats silly while not needing to address 1) because thats true but has nothing to do with what a browser extension does.
Couldn't this had been dismissed since there is nothing new at all? was there really ever a risk of anything different occurring? what a waste of time
by ydlr on 1/18/22, 4:28 PM
Had Axel Springer won the case, it sounds like it would have become illegal to scribble marginalia, highlight, or otherwise alter the copyrighted content of books I own.
by cestith on 1/18/22, 8:48 PM
HTML as served from the server can be owned by the publisher. I'm fine with that. Just don't tell me how I can view it and use information from it once I have my copy you've allowed me to download onto my machine.
What Axel Springer was trying to do is equivalent to telling a magazine subscriber they can't cut a couch out of an interior design magazine and paste it on a poster board with the wallpaper from another magazine to plan their own room. That's not how copyright works. My copy is my copy.
by freemint on 1/18/22, 5:15 PM
Just so everyone aware there are two Springer media companies. One does scientific publishing and one does not. They are unrelated.
by choeger on 1/19/22, 6:44 AM
That argument was so weird. Imagine having a Bitcoin miner embedded into the page. According to this argument I would have been legally required to execute it.
by throwaway81523 on 1/18/22, 8:06 PM
It wasn't obvious from the title but this is about ad blocking being ruled a non-infringement. See also:
https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copy...
which made it near the top of Reddit r/news.
by friendlydog on 1/18/22, 4:26 PM
How is this different from VidAngel on premise? Remixing content, html or video seems the same to me.
by rpdillon on 1/18/22, 4:35 PM
I was wondering how Eyeo prevailed, given the "no derivative works" aspect of copyright law. They mention an interesting distinction I've never run across before in copyright:
> The final 2021 Hamburg court decision, as successfully defended by eyeo, establishes that there is a limit to copyright after which the website author can no longer assert any right of retention. This limit boundary exists between the code provision level and the code execution level.
The article doesn't go into much detail beyond this, sadly.
It's a bit odd to me that they focus so much on HTML. Presumably they would apply similar logic to JavaScript and CSS, but they didn't mention them.
by shdon on 1/18/22, 7:15 PM
Completely unrelated to the content of the article, but I find this website very annoying to read as it changes the scrolling behaviour adding some inertia. It takes a fraction of a second to stop scrolling after I've stopped moving the mousewheel. This makes me continually overshoot and having to compensate by scrolling back a few lines because the part I wanted to read is no longer in the viewport. When will web developers learn not to mess with the default browser behaviour?
As for the actual content of the article, I'm happy that the court recognised the technical reality of the case.
by userbinator on 1/18/22, 9:14 PM
This is a good decision because the alternative could lead to absurdities like "is it legal to change the channel, turn away, or even close your eyes if an advert appears on TV?"
by ThinkBeat on 1/19/22, 11:23 AM
What if there was a mechanism for signing a webpage?
The browser could be told not to render anything is the signature does not match the content.
This could easily be promoted as a safety feature, you only run the code the web server gives you, not something that has been exposed to a man in the middle attack several times over.
Presumably if they even added a layer of encryption modifying would run into problems with DMCA?
by anthk on 1/18/22, 5:00 PM
> effectively making it illegal for any technology or any consumer to alter a website page appearance.
How about using Edbrowse or Lynx?
by kkjjkgjjgg on 1/18/22, 7:52 PM
The explanation doesn't make sense. Of course the HTML code of a web site should be copyrighted.
The issue is whether this implies it should be consumed in a certain way (ie rendered by a certain browser), which obviously should be a no. And the other issue is whether a plugin or "browser" that modifies it (in the client) should be considered to be publishing a modified version. That should obviously also be a no.
From the article it is not clear if any of those concerns have even been addressed properly.
by RobertRoberts on 1/18/22, 4:14 PM
This doesn't have to win, it just needs to get discussed until enough corporations make a stink about this before extensions become "illegal".
Just like DRM, DCMA and many other total nonsense systems, they just need to "appear" like something is bad before Google/Firefox end all extensions entirely.
What is the defense for this?
by ngcc_hk on 1/19/22, 2:52 PM
Not so sure one should trust news of eyeo posted by eyeo.com.
Any other independent source?
by MailNerd on 1/19/22, 4:56 AM
The decision can still be challenged and could conceivably be overturned.
by dtx1 on 1/18/22, 4:25 PM
For non germans: The Hamburg Courts are known for their usually insane anti-free internet interpretations of law. The fact that this was won by "the good guys" in Hamburg of all cases is remarkable.
Springer Press, perhaps best described as the german equivalent of fox news, chose hamburg specifically for their lawsuit assuming the judges there would follow their usual retarded interpretation of the law. To have your arguments be bad and stupid enough to lose there is astounding.
by tut-urut-utut on 1/18/22, 4:47 PM
German law, the same as other continental law systems, doesn't know anything about precedents, which are specific to Anglo-Saxon law systems.