TV Links Raided, Operator Arrested 246
NetDanzr writes "TV Links, a Web site that provided links to hundreds of movies, documentaries, TV shows and cartoons hosted on streaming media sites such as Google Video and YouTube, has been raided by UK authorities. The site's operator was also arrested, The Guardian reports. Even though the site has not hosted any pirated content, it was a thorn in the side of movie and TV studios, thanks to having links to newest movies and TV shows. As the largest site of its kind, it showcased the power of user-driven Internet, with the site's visitors helping to keep links to content constantly updated."
I didn't know this existed (Score:5, Funny)
A little help?
Re:I didn't know this existed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I didn't know this existed (Score:4, Informative)
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I hate to see this happen, there were a lot of things I would watch on tv-links. Most of it is not available readily elsewhere (to my knowledge) except from a torrent site.
Re:I didn't know this existed (Score:4, Insightful)
To compensate, try cutting the fuel costs by siphoning off the neighbours' gasoline.
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Power Play (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Power Play (Score:4, Interesting)
It's sad that the effort put in by the police at personal property crime is so low that most cases are dismissed within a few months while they can pull in a huge number of people for an effort like this.
And then the police are complaining about that ordinary people takes the law into their own hands.
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Nut that's a good comment that deserves addressing...watch this...
"The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (from where I am posting) lives at number 10 Downing Street, London."
I just broke the Official Secrets Act. Seriously. That's a pretty heavy crime, and it's easy enough to trace me with evidence like that. Get a lawyer on to it, force Slashdot to hand over my registration details, google the email address, find out
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And since you're clearly a moron, I'm guessing you're not a Crown/Military official who's been asked to sign the OSA.
Re: Official Secrets Act (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I didn't know this existed (Score:5, Interesting)
They might have just killed something they could have used as a great tool.
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Re:I didn't know this existed (Score:5, Informative)
Dont you get it yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about 'protecting' copyright.
This is about CONTROL.
What better way to avoid spending all the courts time issuing takedown notices than to SCARE those using this site, and OTHER sites to stop doing what they are doing?
Be very wary of those who go after the organizers of people, for their motives might not be something you can even imagine
wtf? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wtf? (Score:5, Interesting)
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But of course you go after the masterminds, the leaders, and the competent enablers.
For example, we target drug kingpins over your average drug users, our snipers are trained to take out the top brass rather than the lowly conscripts, the FBI and ICE will (or used to) focus on violent gangs rather than the jaywalkers, &c.
Re:wtf? (Score:4, Interesting)
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caches (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Ftv-links.co.uk%2F&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]
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Legal Information (Score:5, Interesting)
TV Links is not responsible for any content linked to or referred to from these pages.
TV Links does not host any content on our Servers
All video links point to content hosted on third party webites. Users who upload to these websites agree not to upload illegal content when creating their user accounts. TV Links does not accept responsibility for content hosted on third party websites.
If you have any legal queries please email legal@tv-links.co.uk
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Another good one (Score:5, Interesting)
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Great site
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I'm so excited... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Probably because no one has a copyright on marijuana. :)
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So the only ways to tell if the store owner is selling drug paraphernalia or something that is used legally, is to ask them. well, guess what the answer is going to be.
Now, the difference between this and TVlinks is what other legal use is a link to a copyright protected work that is being displayed without the
The obvious question.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds to me like it simply amounts to harassment by legal authorities, after having pressure put on them to "do something" by the movie and/or TV studios.
I know here in the United States, "search and seizure" is a popular law-enforcement tool for the purpose of slowing/stopping activities they can't really find sufficient evidence to prosecute. (All you need is a judge's signature saying it's ok to proceed with a search and seizure, and they can waltz in with the warrant in hand, seizing the "offending" property. Then just lock it away in an evidence locker for a few years, sitting on it and depriving the owner of it. Eventually, sure, they'll probably just return it, claiming "insufficient evidence" to make a case against them - but they accomplished what they were really after.)
Power Play (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Power Play (Score:4, Informative)
Doesn't matter, this wouldn't fall under it. Likewise if this had happened in the US. SLAPP laws apply to civil actions, this was a police action (according to the FA, police plus "officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards"). You might be able to make a case against them for some kind of wrongful prosecution, but SLAPP limitations won't apply.
Re:The obvious question.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In Spain, a judge has found that a similar site which holds links to films or music is not illegal, saying that they did not host any material and .
http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/293205/0/enlaces/descargas/sharemule/ [20minutos.es]
(in Spanish, Babelfish may help if you don't speak it)Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Until recently we would have had to rely on the Register as the only UK-based organisation that would get it on this sort of thing; however we now have the Open Rights Group [openrightsgroup.org], who I hope will be saying something about this at least, which might merit an inch or two below the fold on p22 of one or two of the broadsheets in the next week or so.
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How is anything this site did remotely "illegal"?
The answers to all your questions can be found in the original article.
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.
Please note this statement will be subject to legal challenge when the case comes to court. In the meantime, feel free to rant and rave about the big hand of media conglomerates smashing content viewers who wish to avoid paying fees for their activities.
NOTE: This post does not argue any point of view and merely points out very obvious facts. When it gets modded down as redundant or flamebait or troll, that
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Or, maybe, by not arguing a point of view and only pointing out obvious facts you have added very little to the discussion...
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Only on Slashdot could that be a bad thing.
Scientific method? Pffft. Whatever.
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That is so funny. I used to pay for premium channels on cable TV UNTIL Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson had their squabble over Sky One and Sky News.
After that, a good many VirginMedia customers admitted that they were now visiting bootleg sights in order
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Please note this statement will be subject to legal challenge when the case comes to court. In the meantime, feel free to rant and rave about the big hand of media conglomerates smashing content viewers who wish to avoid paying fees for their activities.
NOTE: This post does not argue any point of view and merely points out very obvious facts. When it gets modded down as redundant or flamebait or troll, that will speak volumes for the crowd that moderates postings.
In fact, the form and tact of your wor
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It's hard to say; the article doesn't give enough detail. The relevant UK law is, I believe, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 [opsi.gov.uk].
I suppose if the site hosted torrents, that would fall under "an article specifically designed or adapted for making copies of that work, knowing or having reason to believe that it is to be used to make infringing copies.".
Alternatively, if the site merely hosted links, it might be classified as "permitting us
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It's not much of a reach to call a web page, website, or html link a "device".
The question then is whether the distribution of this particular link, site, or page is shown by clear
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And while I agree that they didn't do anything wrong, I think so for a very different reason - I don't accept the notion that a stream of ones and zeroes can be "pirated" or "sold", or for that matter "owned".
The whole argument about not hosting illegal content, but merely providing links to that content seems fallacious to me. Imagine if they were talking about child pornography or something terrorist related instead of pirated movies - you can bet yo
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Anyone involved in such activities should be ashamed. And then fired.
hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Any bets on how long until ThePirateBay snaps up the domain name and re-opens the site?
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HuH?! (Score:4, Insightful)
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True enough... but when it comes to copyright infringement, it is so widespread that the companies cannot ever hope to send Cease & Desist letters for each infringement. Nor are they really lacking for ways to find cases of infringement.
Trying to stop each case of infringement is impossible, since a large fraction of the population is willfully infringing. So the
Pointing to illegal content = conspiracy! (?!?) (Score:2)
It falls under the "way" big, and "way" vague heading of "conspiracy".
By providing you links to infringing material, they are conspiring with both those that provide the material illegally, AND those that conspire to obtain the material illegally.
"Conspiracy" is the most "bogus", anti-free-speech charge cooked up by
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Furthermore, HTML has mechanisms for emphasizing certain parts of expressions, such as bold, underline, or italic. There's also several commonly accepted non-HTML standards for doing so, such as *stars*, _lines_ or CAPITAL LETTERS.
As for the content, Conspiracy applies to two or more people entering an agreem
Re:HuH?! (Score:4, Interesting)
No doubt this site made money from ads, and to pretend the business model of the site was not designed around leeching money indirectly from copyrighted material is just naive.
People are always so keen to argue the finer points and wording of the law if it lets them carry on taking other peoples stuff for free, but when your house gets burgled, and the guy gets off with a technicality, are you equally anal about defining guilt?
It seems obvious to me that if you run a site that provides easy access to copyrighted content, you are breaking the law, especially if you do not remove that content when the copyright holder alerts you to it.
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>on my door and asked me where to buy some cocaine, and
>i told them which address and what time to go to, and
>they gave me $1 for my time, then I'd be in a cell right
>away, despite not physically having any cocaine or selling it.
No way, you'd be headhunted by the RIAA and MPAA and paid millions for you're irreplacable skills.
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oh right! Because if it's an individual you're responsible for your actions but if you're part of an organisation you were just following orders.
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Re:HuH?! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Take Radar detector manufactureres. They manufacture and sell a product designed to assist breaking the law.
Technically it's not criminal, but a minor infraction. Traffic tickets fall under municipal justice. The product is designed to detect traffic radar, it's not designed to help you speed. I've never owned one my self but I could see how it would be handy provided it gave you fair warning you were being watched and to double check your speed, or better yet looking for your self at your speed if you get tagged. Perfectly acceptable application IMHO, and legal in well, most states.
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Instead you would have a thriving business of informing to the police.
No, telling people where copyrighted content is not illegal, in part because it may not be illegal for them to access it.
There are such things as fair use laws. Some countries have strict ones, some have loose ones. I can put a 5 second clip of Mickey Mouse in my documentary about Disney and guess what, Disney can not sue me. (Well, they can always sue, but they won't win.)
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what has fair use got to do with linking to torrents of full tv series?
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Why do you reckon this? Just because you assume something is illegal does not make it so. If I knew the guy down the street was a coke dealer and someone asked me who the coke dealers in my neighborhood are, exactly why should it be illegal for me to tell them, and take $1 for my tim
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This is especially true of the /. crowd, from what I've seen. A lot of the people here don't seem to realize that if you actually take the time to read, say, SCOTUS opinions, they attempt to provide some solid reasoning, and to strike a just and equitable balance in general. Judges are not metaphysicians - they don't give a damn about the "true" nature of information and w
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I thnk you're confusing things. The site doesn't own the content; it just links to it. There's no law that states site operators have to remove links when requested. The laws only apply to the sites hosting the content itself.
I'm not particularly against this action, however foolish and pointless it might seem. But I am against using law enforcement resources for such a trivial thing when there are rape and murder cases
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No, when my house was burgled, the perp sold one of my stereo components at a flea market, and I'm proud to say I did just what you advocate - I nagged the cops until they prosecuted the college student who bought it and it cost him so much he had to drop
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Its frankly pathetic for anyone to try and pretend that this site is ok just because they aren't hosting the content. if the same site linked to torrents of child porn o
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well i reckon if i ran a business where people knocked on my door and asked me where to buy some cocaine, and i told them which address and what time to go to, and they gave me $1 for my time, then I'd be in a cell right away, despite not physically having any cocaine or selling it.
I had to think about this a minute. I agree with you for the most part. However, you wouldn't be arrested for selling information. You would be arrested for having it. I'd think that most jurisdictions would say that you were aiding and abetting [wikipedia.org]. As to how this might apply to the topic, if the web-site operator were actively encouraging people to post links to pirated material then a judge might call that operator an accomplice to the crime (even if the crime is civil). If the web-site operator could show
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And what content are you suggesting they should have removed? The URL's? Are those copyrighted now?
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In other words, come up with an a
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If what you advocate (taking content and not paying) does not scale up to everyone in the market doing what you do, then basically you are
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it was nice while it lasted (Score:3, Interesting)
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By their logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
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According to the law, we are all criminals just waiting to be caught breaking a law, or we are just waiting to have a law applied to us that allows them to catch us.
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IANAL, etc.
You're missing a key point. The DeCSS case decision in the U.S. held that knowingly linking to infringing material was a copyright violation in and of itself. The sheer vastness of Google's links is probably what protects it from prosecution. If Google is informed by a copyright holder of an infringing link, then Google may have to no longer link to a
In time... (Score:2)
Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a web site that provides links to CRIMINALS, and the police pull down the web site? Why not leave the site up and use it to help track down the people actually creating and hosting the pirated content? Heck, I'm surprised the police were not operating the site themselves as a sting operation.
Whether piracy is Right or Wrong, it is presently against The Law, so this site could have been a useful tool for investigations.
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I shouldn't think for a moment he's surprised though. I'm pretty certain he made money from the site too.
Coincidence (Score:3, Funny)
Coincidentally, I just tried to visit that site. It's of course down.
And then I went here to slashdot and saw this story.
But now I must be moving on again, in my travels across the intertubes.
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Fascinating stuff really, almost as exciting and relevant to anything as this post.
Braaaains (Score:2, Insightful)
Worse than the shut down of this excellent site, is the Grauniads zombie-like reproduction of the copyright-nazis statements. There is no suggestion that there might be two sides to this debate. There is nothing beyond 'this man is a criminal and the authorities have now arrested him. Lets hear from the authorities'
Despite this infuriating self censorship, I know this is a very popular site amongst non-technical types, so its closure might help raise awareness of this kind of injustice.
Power of the People...fails again (Score:2)
Obviously this is something the general public like and want.
Obviously big business > the public. As usual.
Big business fails to provide, public finds elsewhere. Big business thorws a hissy fit. Someone gets arrested. People lose what they want, big business goes one step further towards hell.
Status quo, nothing to see here. Moving along...
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The general public would probably quite like large amounts of free money, doesn't mean it makes sense for them to get it.
Big business fails to provide
Actually big business did provide - the actual content that is. Big business paid for all those TV shows to be made in the first place (obviously things are a little different when it comes to BBC content, but that's a whole other discussion).
public finds elsewhere
And if big business don't get compen
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My POINT was, this is something people want. Instead of providing it, the movie and record companies sue everyone to prevent it. I never said they shouldn't wrap a business model around it and make money. I'm *NOT* stupid. I understand it costs money to make TV shows.
You should take notice that your reality check bounced. The vast majority of revenue comes from commercials. Guess what the tv studios c
Aggressive tactics (Score:2)
One thing has just struck me on re-reading the article - the police raided the site and arrested the guy. That is the level of force they use when going after Islamic extremists. Apparantly, the corporate elite that controls, well, the entire fucking planet, thinks that people who provide links to copyrighted content (without hosting it themselves) need to be dealt with in the same way as those who commute with C4.
This is the world we live in. Profit is valued at least as much, if not more, than human li
You are british for god's sakes. dont stomach it (Score:2)
you can pull the same stunt too. dont let them suppress you.
Napster Upgrade (Score:2)
Want to Really Stick it to the Man? (Score:2)
1. Turn off the TV
2. Pick up a book (preferably in public domain, consider having a peek at Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] or your local public library
3......
4. Profit!
No, really -- it's a nice day outside.
another layer of indirection / distributed sites? (Score:2)
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Its another case where those making and enforcing the law don't have a clue about the technology in common use by modern society.
To be honest, I always thought the UK authorities were generally more in-touch on this than the US authorities, but it seems not.
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*I Am Not A British Person
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I'm willing to host it on some solid hosting until the meantime....