: Is it legal to link to a potentially copyrighted PDF file made available by the owner? I.e there is a large directory of PDF files and the publisher makes them available on his website. He

@Heady270

Your terminology of "potentially copyrighted" is problematic. Everything created since 1989 has a copyright unless the author specifically disclaims it and announces that the work is in the public domain. In almost every country, pretty much everything online has copyright protection.

Bitlaw has an article about the legality of linking. The most relevant part of it for you is the part about the "The Shetland Times Case". That is a U.K. decision in which an online newspaper was convicted of copyright infringement for linking to the articles on another news website in a way that bypassed the advertising.

It also lists other ways that linking could cause copyright violations:


Passing off the works of others as your own by linking to them but saying that you wrote them.
Creating a derivative work by embedding another work in your page with images or frames
Defamation in conjunction with the link

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