Embedding online video is not copyright infringement

In a unanimous decision, the 7th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that linking or embedding videos hosted on other sites is in no way copyright infringement, and neither is viewing such video.

CNET reports:

Judge Richard Posner ruled at the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that MyVidster, a social video bookmarking site, did not infringe the copyright of Flava Works, a porn production company, when it embedded copyright-infringing versions of Flava Works content from third-party Web sites.

The decision overturned a preliminary injunction from 2011, imposed by a lower court after Flava Works filed suit against MyVidster in 2010.

According to the Appeals Court ruling, MyVidster "doesn't touch the data stream" and therefore doesn't host the infringing video, but links to versions hosted elsewhere on the Web.