tv-links.co.uk forced offline and owner arrested
Posted on 23 October 2007 by Stuart
Back in July this year we reported HERE that tv-links.co.uk was one of the fastest growing websites on the internet blasting it’s way into the Alexa top 500 in a matter of months. This week unfortunately has seen the site being forced offline by officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards in conjunction with investigators from Fact and Gloucestershire Police the owner, a 26-year-old man from Cheltenham, UK, has been arrested along with others involved with the site.
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.
The legality of tv-links.co.uk had been questioned for months leading up to this raid but why go after a site merely linking to illegal content that is hosted on servers by the likes of Google, Youtube, Stage6divx? A Spanish court this week has already ruled that linking to content on P2P networks is not illegal.
The message we see being sent here is you cannot link a HTTP URL from your website to an illegal tv-show but it’s fine to host the video on your servers if you are a large corporation with unlimited cash resources for lawyers. If anything tv-links was actually providing a fantastic service to copyright holders of the material they linked too, if the copyright holders had stopped to think for a second they might have realized that tv-links actually provided them with a unrivaled way to track illegal uploads of their shows, and as the site was updated frequently is an easier option than trailing through video upload sites for their shows.
The copyright holders could easily have used tv-links to their advantage to track show uploads and send cease and desist letters to the video hosts who are sharing the content, no doubt this approach would save money and resources as always common sense and inventive thinking does not apply to the copyright holders, police or government.
It looks like this will be another one for the courts to decide whether linking to material on another website is illegal rather than being the content provider. If linking to another website can be seen as facilitating the internet will need to be closed down entirely to eradicate this issue.
Popularity: 3% [?]
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!
Tags | tv, tv links, tv-links.co.uk
October 24th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Facilitation of copyright infringment…?!? that’s their argument ? Come on men..!! i can’t believe it… there’s no way linking is illegal, not a chance. that would make us all pirates. why don`t they shut down you tube or google. If that’s the case, I’m sure Google is the biggest “facilitator” of the world… ha ha ha but i’m taking all this in a real cool way, cause i found in sidereel the fountain that calms my thirst for tv series and movies..! LOL so that you can be calm too, here goes the link http://www.sidereel.com Oh, no..!! i just linked and facilitated piracy..!! who’s gonna protect me now..?? ha ha ha and there’s also stage 6 or Dailymotion, ups… I did it again…!
October 26th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Oh……this is so unfair. I am sure that they can’t do anything to the owner.
Linking is and will always be legal. To link to something means to talk about something, they can’t limit freedom of speech.
Since tv links is gone…….do checkout http://www.flickpeek.com I’ve been using this one lately for my movies.
October 27th, 2007 at 1:28 am
WTF…you can’t close that site because of that oO well, there will be other sources to get my daily anime-kick…iam sure there is such a hp
December 5th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I discovered TV-links just a month before it was closed down it was a great source to find anime and a few movies. they only provided a way to get to the movie hosting sites so it shouldn’t have been shut down but the sites actually hosting the videos should have.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
TV-LINKS is back as TV-LINKS.EU!
The biggest movie database on the internet. Movies, tv shows, cartoons, anime, documentaries. No flashy ads, no money, no pop-ups, just clean entertainment. Give us a good rating, because we deserve it!
Regards,
Tv Links Owner