Law note · Canada
Crookes v. Newton
cite 2011 SCC 47, [2011] 3 SCR 269
stage IN FORCE in force since 2011-10-19
The Supreme Court of Canada held that a hyperlink to defamatory third-party content does not by itself constitute 'publication' of that content under Canadian defamation law; publication requires that the linked material be repeated or adopted in the linking text. This ruling broadly protects hyperlinkers (including news aggregators and search engines) from defamation liability for linking to third-party news content. The decision does not address copyright aspects of linking or framing.
Primary source: canlii.org