It’s a sad, sad day
October 22, 2007
The TV Links guy got arrested.
The guy that runs the TV links website has been arrested after FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) encouraged the Gloucestershire police to get involved.
“Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites,” said a spokesman for Fact.
A lot of people are saddened horrified outraged by this news. I know I am.
Mostly the anger stems from the question, What did he do wrong?, and more importantly, Why him?
It’s always like that, yes? The Big Fish gets away with everything. And those geniuses who were smart enough to stand up next to the Men always, always get their balls cut off. The Men just can’t accept being royally fucked.
And since the lot of us, those who were educated by such site who brought the Unavailable to the masses, can say it a lot better than me:
And if linking is illegal, how many of us are guilty?
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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.”
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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 ” or whatever?
(More discussion after the jump, plus the view from the other side, for a sense of Equality, which, most of the time, these bastard sharks are completely unknown for.)
MikePardon, who used to be a moderator at TV-Links:
i have used Tv-Links on many occassions and i was also a moderator which i am proud to say. I have been on the site for over a year i believe. Although they did embed the files are still hosted on yourtube and google the content does NOT go on tv-links. There was also talk about another forum member who was held for questioning for 5 hours in Ireland he/she has verified this and i won’t divulge his/her name but that person was released and was not prosecuted and neither has the owned for the simple reason as the site was NOT illegal it was merely a quick tool to do what you can do on google anyway you can quite easily go to google and type “family guy s01 ep3″ or something along those lines and get the main video. If linking to google is illegal then what is google? There are numerous other sites doing the exact same thing as Tv-Links nothing is going to change by F.A.C.T’s actions if anything more sites will be published to keep Tv-Links style websites alive.
”One thing not mentioned anywhere, did FACT ever contact the owner of Tv-Links and ask him to remove the offending links?”
Nothing like this was posted or discussed on the forums by the owner or the mods which leads me to believe they never contacted him over it.
The site as far as I remember carried very little or no advertising.
It had links for shows, documentaries, music videos and movies.
Most of the content was decidedly ancient, I remember watching a particularly ancient 1980s horizon on the future of computing, although it did list Life on Mars fairly quickly. Mostly it just had random episodes to things like Battstar Galatica 1980, and subversive or anti Bush videos such as Loose Change or Zeitgiest, and so was likely to lead to Amazon rather than a good nights viewing…
Forgeting the entire “links” versus hosting debate, let’s just look at who really benefits from TV-Links providing links to tv shows and films on websites such as Google Google, YouTube and Veoh, all of whom were regular listed sites on TV-Links.
TV-Links was in fact, driving traffic to the “illegal content” on these sites. The success of these sites are based upon generating enough unique visitors per month to attract advertising. So TV-Links was in fact, aiding in the marketing of these sites.
Now here’s where things get questionable. The “illegal content” on these sites are owned by the major studios and supposedly, FACT is working on their behalf to stop the distribution of said illegal content to the extent it would have a commercial impact on its members.
Well, did TV-Links actually result in a negative financial cash flow for its members? Actually no.
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If the companies are in fact directly profiting from illegal distribution of their own content in the form of stock gains, which they are, on sites such as Tv-links, Veoh and Google, how can it be piracy? What is seems is that these companies have just discovered a clever way to cut out having to pay their royalties to the programmes writers, directors and composers. And TV-Links, as Piratebay were before them, are all dupes.
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Regarding potential real motives behind FACT’s case to close down TV-Links. As a business insider, albeit on a peripheal level, there are currently a number of business actions occuring. Notably of course is the legal Internet TV movement. In the US especially, you have Veoh TV, which now has made deals with all of the major US networks to legally show content over it’s I-player, which they bill as a PVR for your computer. Plus both NBC and CBS also freely distributes its content over it’s own web software.
In Europe you have the BBC I-player and Joost. Joost specifically has made major deals with Viacom for content distribution. Coming back to TV-Links then. Perhaps the real motivation is not to shut down a potential copyright pirate, but rather a major advertising free competitor that has bypassed the front pages of these sites with deep-linking. We have all seen this cartel like behaviour before with Microsoft and Netscape. Major corporations are using legal actions and the issue of piracy as a business maneuveur to corner the market and scare off non-commercial upstarts. Yet another nail in Net Neutrality folks.
Listen up TV-Links. If you don’t have a lawyer get one. Because the ONLY infringements you can be legally accused of are the films, and then no only those films that are not from Time-Warner. If TV shows are being broadcast openly on the Net from VeohTV, you cannot legally be held liable for copyright infringement on linking to content that is freely given away. Best of luck.
I would like to point out something thus far not mentioned. Tv-Links was not only a good site, constantly updated, easy to use with div-x download option too… but it was more than that. ALL THOSE DOCUMENTARIES!
When i first saw that…adam curtis, history, philosophy, politically subversive docs…what an incredible foutnain of knowledge at ones fingertips! Oh how i looked forward to working my way through them. It was quite simply a gift to students and humanity in general. Why isnt something like that set up by the government themselves, or are they genuinely not interested in having a better educated population?
talk about misplaced priorities. rapists and murderers are getting out on bail while pot dealers are getting 20 to life and a web host who honestly wasn’t *really* hurting anyone, in fact, who was bringing much joy to many people, is in jail. this entire system is complete and utter shit. it’s appalling! none of it makes any ounce of sense.
Just think if the cops put half as much energy into catching people that are committing real crimes, not shit like this, how much better the world would be.
So tv-links is dead. The owner of the site was arrested and can be charged with “participating in organized crime” which I can kind of understand. What I don’t understand is why go after him? All he did was provide links to various sites (like youtube, google video, veoh, tudou, stage 6) where the videos were uploaded to those sites. Why not go after the sites that actually UPLOAD the stuff?
Yes, I know downloading is illegal but linking? CBS and Fox link to their shows which is perfectly legal but if I were going to that would be wrong? Tv-links tried its best to provide no way to download from these sites, but if you really want to I guess you will find a way right? But in the fashion of the internet, were tv-links disappears 2 more will pop up in its place.
This is the kind of Big Brother activity that pisses internet users off enough to make them actually do something - like linking to sites themselves…And the movie studios need to stop being so damn greedy. I’m all for supporting actors and crews - and by watching stuff online, I am more likely to go out and buy DVDs. By blocking my exposure to shows and movies, I am less likely to spend my money. (And if I see a show that’s crap, I like to know in advance so I don’t waste my time and cash - ooh, could the studios be worried about that?…)
But they don’t seem to realise any of this. Nor do they realise that by pissing off their enormous (and thus powerful) customer base, they will lose far more money than their grasping, pudgy, little hands could ever hope to retain by such guerilla tactics.
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On the other side of the fence…
I’m not a lawyer either (although I’ve had to study some copyright law, mostly for publishing), but…Just having a disclaimer isn’t good enough if you don’t come close to meeting the other tests…Google/YouTube has substantial non-infringing uses, will take down material if you the copyright holder ask and doesn’t actively induce copyright infringing material. The last one subject to Viacom’s court case, of course, but no top ten lists of entire TV show episodes on the front page of YouTube, that sort of thing. In fact it’s pretty rare for me to see potentially infringing material on the front page, although the automated related videos lists are obviously a different story.
Yes it is a fact that Google, You Tube and other sties like them have and do host pirated material. Yet, when notified of such material they do remove it with-in a specified time frame. I can’t say that they do it quickly each time, but they are not intentionally uploading pirated material or allowing it to be uploaded. Notice how I said not intentionally. It clearly states when you upload a video that you do not upload material you do not own. Even myspace does it and they allow more illegal content then either of those sites. They are not encouraging piracy in anyway and shouldn’t be penalized for members that break the law by doing so. Unless they protect these members from prosecution. Which I haven’t read they do.
TV links was intentionally and I will say it again intentionally providing links to pirated material that Google and You tube didn’t know was there. Even though they didn’t upload the videos, they were contributing to the act of piracy. There is no reason to steal music/television or film for any purpose.
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And for those who do not see the point of the “raid” at all:
What’s the point?
For every internet sharing site there is, there are at least 50000 more.
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After all this, if you are still so inclined, you can head on over and sign the petition.
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As for me, inevitably, I could only say one more thing, as most people have already said:
goodbye old friend. you were good to me (most of the time).
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photo taken from here
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