October 23, 2007

TV-Links.co.uk Raided The owner has been arrested, as well as some other people involved in the running of the site. They face organised-crime charges, and compensation of up to £100,000,000.

Google, which actually hosts the pirated content, gets off scott free, apparently. But then, Google can actually afford legal representation, so it might not be such a wise move actually going after the real law-breakers.

posted by Skrik 16 years ago
  • The The Open Rights Group is also involved in this.
  • There are a couple of interesting things here. First, it seems that he was arrested on a trademark charge rather than copyright infringement. That's odd. Second, it's more complicated than just linking to infringing content: tv-links.co.uk used some deep links into online video providers from a Flash video player embedded in its own pages. Technically, that's just linking; philosophically and legally, that may not necessarily turn out to be true. (Remember that lawyers and judges brought us the daft legal fiction that running a program involves 'copying', as the bits are transferred into RAM.) The involvement of Trading Standards smells a bit rotten to me. If it's not outside their remit, it really should be. This doesn't seem to help customers in any way, which is what I thought that Trading Standards were supposed to concern themselves with. It will be interesting to see what happens to the tv-links chap. For comparison, assaulting and blinding a 96-year-old gets no more than three years of supervision. Not even gaol.
  • Remember that lawyers and judges brought us the daft legal fiction that running a program involves 'copying', as the bits are transferred into RAM. Seriously? Dag.
  • Seriously. Notwithstanding the fact that it appears to have been superseded by newer laws, and that it only affected the US anyway, it does demonstrate the point.
  • The point being that legal folk aren't generally at the cutting edge of technology. Over here, they still dress in frock coats and horsehair wigs...
  • Yeah, but they take it off if they are invited out (or so I've heard).
  • THEY'LL NEVER STOP US
  • This is wrong.
  • Hey, don't worry- there are 38 sites to replace tv-links.