Tv-links Shut Down, Owner Arrested!

[kenjin]

I don't know if this has been discussed before, if so my apologies.

Quote from the Gaurdian Blog site

According to a report in The Guardian: "A 26-year-old man from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet, Fact said."

The arrest and the closure of the site - www.tv-links.co.uk - came during an operation by officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards in conjunction with investigators from Fact and Gloucestershire Police.

Fact claims that tv-links.co.uk was providing links to illegal film content that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and then uploaded to the internet. The site also provided links to TV shows that were being illegally distributed.

It's a pity the Gloucestershire Police started with such small fry. There are a couple of multibillionaires called Larry Page and Sergey Brin -- the founders of Google -- who provide vast numbers of links to content that is being illegally distributed. Indeed, as everyone knows, they actually host plenty of illegal content on their own video site, YouTube, which has a UK operation.

Is the message that it's less criminal to host illegal content on YouTube than it is to to link to it from a site such as TV Links? Or is it just that FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) and the police won't tackle anybody with enough high-powered lawyers to fight back? Is The New Freedom blog correct in saying: "They just have so much money that they have become above the law."

Of course, there is a difference between building a site around links to content that could be presumed to lack copyright clearance and linking unintentionally from a site set up for a different purpose. However, I'm not a lawyer so I don't know how significant this is. (Is shoplifting OK if you have a proper job but criminal if you're unemployed and starving?)

It will be interesting to see who FACT picks on next. There are plenty of newspaper journalists who nowadays, as part of their proper jobs, link to YouTube videos and other internet content. It would be amazing if every single bit of material -- some of it "repurposed" -- had full and correct copyright clearance.

In future, do I risk being thrown in the slammer for linking directly to a YouTube video? What if I just say "go to Google and search for [YouTube xxx yyy]" or whatever? Oh dear, I forgot, Google's illegal so that will have to be closed down.

Perhaps I am already breaking the law by linking to Google, YouTube, TV Links, Pirate Bay and other sites that link to illegal content because this must also count as contributing to "the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet" -- and, by the way, I expect you are breaking the law if you link to or even read this story.

Indeed, if linking is illegal, we might as well shut down the Internet, because there is no practical way anybody can guarantee the legality of what's on the end of any link. Even if you could guarantee it at the time of linking, there's no guarantee it would still be legal less than a second later, or for the rest of time..

[londonthai]

possible that tv-links were charging surfers or advertisers for their service.

google is just a good search engine - so should be not mentioned.

[LivinLOS]

google is just a good search engine - so should be not mentioned.

Is it ??

Google earth ?? Google Docs ?? Gmail ??

I suspect the author was talking about the google video service..

[Totster]

possible that tv-links were charging surfers or advertisers for their service.

google is just a good search engine - so should be not mentioned.

Hmmm.. Google has it's own video hosting/sharing site, and also owns Youtube

totster

[kenjin]

Google was hosting a fair amount of the files probably 70% , so why didn't they go after Google. This site only indexed the links, that were owned by Google and the like, yet according to FACT this is illegal. The truth is Google is massive and FACT didn't want to get entangled with the huge legal proceedings, so it's out to attack and crush the little people. Which I think is utterly wrong.

It was actually a really great site and I personally used it a lot. It's a dam shame

[Phil Conners]

It's a bit like arresting Nokia for allowing terrorists to use their telephones.

[sumrit]

For anybody who enjoyed tv-links have a look at this site. The layout is slightly different but the content is almost, if not exactly the same. It provides links to various TV programs/movies (UK and American) that are on different video streaming web sites. The only problen for people in Thailand is that some of the programs are on 'Veoh' and Veoh is blocked here. Alternitavely there's loads of stuff on DivX here.

Edited November 29, 2007 by sumrit

[londonthai]

both links broken

[sumrit]

http://www.boxsweeper.com/ and http://stage6.divx.com/

edited because I posted as links again and they didn't work again. Don't know what I'm doing wrong. It's worked that way for me before.

Edited November 29, 2007 by sumrit

[sbk]

Please do not post blind links in your post. Post the URL if you must but do not link it blindly to a "here" and "here" as per forum rules.

Not everyone posts such links with benign intentions.