The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its Svensson decision on hyperlinks and BestWater order on embedding in 2014. Both decision sparked a fierce debate on the future of online activities. On the one hand, both judgments evidenced considerable flexibility as they allow the use of hyperlinks to and the embedding of publicly available contents. Indeed, under BestWater the embedding of illegally published materials might be also accepted. On the other hand, both decisions have to be read in conjunction with existing CJEU case law, and to a certain extent the Svensson and BestWater rulings do contradict some of earlier decisions. Not surprisingly, courts in Member States are still struggling with the correct treatment of online activities, and thus they continue to rely on the CJEU interpretation of relevant EU directives.

This article begins by describing the different types of linking. CJEU case law will then be discussed: starting from the Svensson and BestWater cases, the analysis will also include references to earlier case law (SGAE, TV Catch Up or ACI Adam), and discuss the post-Svensson cases as well as currently pending references. Overall this contribution aims to provide a balanced approach towards the treatment of linking, where external solutions-that is, other than the one of the CJEU-might be also adopted.