28 MAGYAR JETI ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT - SEPARATE OPINION adopts6. Accordingly, referencing via hyperlink “by itself, is content-neutral – it expresses no opinion ...”7. 4. The design of the Internet with the evolution of the World Wide Web was premised on the idea of the free linking of information. Indeed, as Tim Berners-Lee indicated early on: “The intention in the design of the web was that normal links should simply be references, with no implied meaning. A normal hypertext link does not necessarily imply that one document endorses the other; or that one document is created by the same person as the other, or that one document is to be considered part of another.”8 Two system design principles are fundamental to the Web’s structure and operational mode, which make freedom of expression possible: “The primary principle underlying the Web’s usefulness and growth is universality. When you make a link, you can link to anything. That means people must be able to put anything on the web, no matter what computer they have, software they use or human language they speak and regardless of whether they have a wired or wireless Internet connection ... Decentralisation is another important design feature. You do not have to get approval from any central authority to add a page or make a link. All you have to do is use three simple, standard protocols: write a page in the HTML format, name it with the URL naming convention, and serve it up on the Internet using HTT. Decentralisation has made widespread innovation possible and will continue to do so in the future.”9 Berners-Lee’s comments on the importance of the need for prolific, universal linking of information should guide the Court’s assessment: “The Web was designed to be a universal space of information, so when you make a bookmark or hypertext link, you should be able to make that link to absolutely any place of information that can be accessed using networks. The universality is essential to the Web: it loses its power if there are certain types of things to which you can’t link ...”10. Hyperlinks are the glue that holds the Web together in so far as they enable people to easily and quickly navigate to other web pages to retrieve, view, access and re-share information. Without hyperlinks, publishers would have to provide alternative instructions for readers to find more information. For most ordinary people, this would be difficult, if not impossible, to execute without a strong technological background. Paragraphs 30, 31 and 32 of the judgment. Crookes v. Newton, [2011] 3 R.C.S. 269, 286. Hence, a hyperlink is not akin to a publication because “though a link and reference may bring readers’ attention to the existence of an article, they do not republish the article”. In re Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC, 690 F.3d 161, 174-75 (3d Cir. 2012). 8 Tim Berners-Lee, Commentary on Web Architecture: Links and Law, April 1997. 9 Tim Berners-Lee, “Long Live the Web” (2010), Scientific American. 10 Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its Inventor, 1999, as quoted in Mark Sableman, “Link Law Revisited: Internet Linking Law at Five Years” (2001) 16 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1273, 1275. 6 7