Victory! Embedded Links to Photos on Instagram Don’t Infringe Photographers’ Copyrights, Court Rules

Every day, we visit websites or read news articles that contain photos embedded from somewhere else, usually other websites or servers where the images were first published or stored. What’s happening behind the scenes when you click on a website chock full of photos and text is a basic function of the internet—inline linking—that is frequently and improperly attacked as facilitating copyright infringement.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling published this week, made clear …