The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that you can't be sued for linking to defamatory content. Justice Abella wrote that a hyperlink, by itself, should never be seen as “publication” of the content to which it refers.

The way he sees it is that links are just digital references that should not be viewed as republication of the underlying content. He pointed out that hyperlinks may be inserted with or without the knowledge of the operator of the site containing the secondary article.

“Because the content of the secondary article is often produced by someone other than the person who inserted the hyperlink in the primary article, the content on the other end of the link can be changed at any time by whoever controls the secondary page,” he said.

Although the primary author controls whether there is a hyperlink and what article that word or phrase is linked to, inserting a hyperlink gives the primary author no control over the content in the secondary article to which he or she has linked. He added that linking plays a crucial role to the dissemination of information on the Internet and to freedom of expression.

While the decision is focused on defamation, it could spill into other areas such as copyright, where some have tried to argue that linking to allegedly infringing content should itself constitute an infringement.

More here.