Embedding may result in a copyright infringement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that copyright infringement can occur simply through the act of embedding (i.e., incorporating a tweet into a webpage other than the author’s own).

The lawsuit was filed by Justin Goldman, a photographer who accused several online publications (including Breitbart, Time, Yahoo, Vox Media, and the Boston Globe) of copyright infringement for publishing articles featuring a photo of NFL star Tom Brady that he had taken.

The photo taken by Goldman was then tweeted by a third party, and news outlets included a link to the tweet as they reported the story.  

U.S. case law consistently holds that liability for copyright infringement lies with the company that hosts the infringing content on its servers, and does not arise from the mere act of linking to the site.

This is generally known as the so-called "server test" (Perfect 10 v. Amazon) and is a clear and straightforward rule, as well as a legal foundation of the modern "Internet" era in the United States.

If the principle set forth in the ruling issued by the Federal Court of New York were to be followed by other courts as well, the decision would seriously jeopardize the practice of embedding.