Yeah, I agree this isn’t great… But, it get’s blown way out proportion. Yes, there are valid reasons for linking to copyrighted material (as this article rightly claims and the EU courts also claimed in a 2014 case against a Swedish newsaggregator), but that is just not the case here. GeenStijl (which is essentially Buzzfeed with more nudity and a lot of Islamophobia) linked directly to a page with high resolution images of a Playboy shoot in an article that really only had those links (and not just one or two pictures, the entire shoot). In no way can that be considered fair use.
Yes, it sets a precedent, but GeenStijl is in no way an innocent little newssite. They tend to bet that the courts don’t want to set a precedent. They recently did this in a privacy-invasion case, for instance. They’ve also gotten away with several situation where racist articles where placed under “freedom of speech” rather than “hatemongering”.
This just means that any future court case will be confusing and weird with conflicting precedents floating around. These future court cases will need to clarify things.
