Hyperlinking Case in Stuttgart
On Thursday, a court in Stuttgart (Germany) will hear a hyperlinking case: Alvar Freude is an online activist who has been fighting against controversial web blocking attempts by the Düsseldorf district authority. The authority had attempted to block access to some hate speech content (Lauck, Stormfront) by ordering ISPs to modify DNS records on their name servers. In the context of an (excellent!) documentation of these activities, Freude had linked to the incriminated material.
He is now accused to have contributed to the further distribution of the incriminated material, despite the fact that the links in question were in the context of protected political speech.
In short, the court ought to throw this case out. More on Thursday.
