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TV piracy site shut down
Author: Phil CogarPublished: 22nd October 2007
TV-Links may be gone, but the Pirate Bay still stands strong.
"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 FACT spokesman.
FACT claims that the site provided access to major motion pictures that had been recorded in cinemas and then uploaded to the Internet.
While the piracy community has taken another loss, it won't be long before another suitable site is found by many. As many people say, that's only one site that is down and ten more will pop up to replace it. The battle against pirates will be a never-ending one until another P2P tool replaces torrenting.
That still won't stop FACT from taking action against other websites that promote the distribution of copyrighted material though. Kieron Sharp, director general of FACT, says that TV-Links is only the first of many to be targeted by the organisation.
"The theft and distribution of films harms the livelihoods of those working in the UK film industry and in ancillary industries, as well as damaging the economy," he said.
The problem though, is that many people view the prices of today's television shows, music, and movies to be far too high for what they offer. A cheaper digital distribution model could help alleviate some of the illegal downloads, but we all know that nothing will entirely stop it from happening. When Internet users were given the opportunity to pick their own price when it came to purchasing the latest Radiohead album, many preferred to not pay at all and just grabbed it from P2P networks.
Maybe one of these days, the motion picture and music industries will come to their senses and work along side their customers instead of treating them like cattle. But then again, I have better odds of becoming a multi-millionaire than that happening.
Were you a member of TV-Links before the closure? Were you disappointed upon hearing about it being shut down? Leave your condolences over in the forums.
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Comments (51)
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Oh man that sucks! I love tv-links... I use that more than a I watch actual TV! *Grumbles about authorities taking away all the best stuff*
apologies for the link i forgot myself
Also, tv-links wasn't a torrent site.
(well, I k of a few ways actually..)
Tis a shame its gone but what can you do I suppose.
anyway, its eztv for me anyway..... until the guys that make the media grow some common sense......
Thanks will., I didn't get involved with the editing of this story, but I have updated the story to reflect what TV Links actually was. :)
I always wondered why they didn't make it a user submitted site... They were always going to get caught eventually but with user submitted links they would at least had some level of immunity.
i thought TV were on pretty stable legal ground tbh ..... - the same kind that TPB, Demonoid and Isohunt were ... oh wait
Anyway, i wonder what the guy will get charged for .... and if it will stand trial
/me waits for the TV-links replacement site, also, the owner of TV-Links has never profited at all from it, they don't host ad's, and they have to pay for the server .....
Anyway, its hardly a blow to TV piracy, all the videos are still there, its just harder to get them ...
Once again, proving the system doesnt work, oh yeah!
Yea they did. There were adds all over that site.
Also, you talk about/link TPB, isohunt, etc etc all the time ... whats the difference, Hell you linked tv-links in this article ... (except the site is down, for now)
So is saying the name acceptable, or perhaps hinting what the url would be ;)
If you've read most if not all of our news on subjects such as this, we're talking about the trials and tribulations of these places, not about specifics - the news is kept deliberately vague because we're reporting the news... nothing more, nothing less.
Do not fool yourself, you promote them by posting about them.
Actually, you're quite wrong - that means that places like The Guardian (who reported this story) are promoting piracy as well? Heh, yeah... very unlikely.
We're reporting the news in much the same way, as piracy is apparently something quite relevant to bit-tech's tech-savvy readership... Regardless, it's not even worth the argument.
The UK legislation on the issue (CDPA 1988) deals with secondary infringement in s22-25.
s22: importing an infringing copy - not really relevant
s23: possessing or dealing with an infringing copy - he doesn't possess them, but he may be distributing them in the course of a business, IF giving a hyperlink to a central source is distribution
s24(2): "...transmits the work by means of a telecommunications system, knowing or having reason to believe that infringing copies of the work will be made by means of the reception of the transmission"
Is uploading to a website "transmission" within the meaning of this sentence? Maybe. Even if it is, can you construe the viewing of a stream as "making a copy", any more than a television makes a copy of a live transmission?
The case is definitely arguable and will actually be quite major for UK law and websites generally.
EDIT:
Furthermore, if this is illegal, consider the following:
A direct link to a video is held to be illegal.
Then, what about a direct link to youtube with detailed instructions about what to search for?
If that were to be illegal, then what about a mention that the video is available on youtube without further instructions?
Is any link to youtube.com illegal, once there is knowledge that it generally holds copyright infringing material?
These seem to be in many senses quite fine lines and constructively similar to a tech-savvy user.
Any publicity is good publicity
there bit-tech I have set FACT against you (who seem to be an orognisation held together by money and entertaining fiction rearly).
If I understood what you wrote properly... Oh noes!
Please oh no! We're doomed!
pfft, you don't care anymore you heathen
Someone's going to be putting up the torrents. If the content producers are the ones doing it, they could stick a 30-sec ad in the middle of a show, get some cash for it, and keep the would-be pirates happy. Other than the logistics of working out what they should charge for said ad (oh noes! we have to do our jobs!), it's win/win. No, of course people aren't going to keep tolerating this whole 30-minute block has 22 minutes of content thing (what's that, 1 ad:3 show or so?), and if they try that, it'll fail. If they use DRM, it'll fail. But if they make what people want work for them, it'll succeed greatly, probably lower their costs to some extent, and make everyone happy.
Edit: any i definitely agree that a new price model would help alleviate some of this piracy ..if TV shows were cheaper i'd definitely pick up a couple seasons on DVD.
still an little buggy, it uses p2p based system like the BBCi player or the C4 one But does not try and run an service in the background that still runs when BBCi and C4 is not running, when joost is closed its closed
Note id not bother trying this program if your running Vista as its not stable on it (Use XP)
- Sam
and veoh is kind of nice.... especially veoh tv. :D
C3 & C4 have 3 Min's of adverts for each 15 minute slot (so a 30 minute show would have 6 Min's of ads)
All the other channels (that have slightly different ofcom rules) have 5 Min's of adverts for every 15 minute slot
And with digital distribution, because you don't have to pay for the airwaves or anything, and its not like any middle men are needed (sky, ntl, etc) so the price should be significantly lower
If multicast gets going on the Internet, distributing TV will become very cheap, and very effective
Not one to nit pick, but
'Maybe one of these days, the motion picture and music industries will come to their senses and work along side their customers instead of treating them like cattle. But then again, I have better odds of becoming a multi-millionaire than that happening.'
No offense, but anyone with any intelligence knows people use these 'services' to escape having to pay, not because of inconvenience or cost. You can bang on about the price of cds or games, but if you make educated purchases, you can't go wrong.
I bought ET:QW (Collectors edition) a couple of weeks ago, simply on the premise that, the developer made W:ET (originally planned as a full game, but released as a free game). I've spent, approximately +- 3000 hours playing that game competitively and felt that even though I'm not fond of the new game, they deserved the money from their previous effort.
I'm not going to take a morale high ground and say I've never downloaded something, because I have. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I prefer buying proper DVD's and CD's simply because of the better quality. I bought Babel at the same time, and it cost eight quid. I mean, if you look in the right places, there really isn't an excuse for such large scale piracy issues. That's why I fully support initiatives like BBC iPlayer and Joost (except there is nothing worth watching on Joost)
Or i can buy food for the week, or a game
Film lasts 2 hours (max) food lasts a week, game 6-8 hours + MP time (although the game costs 3x as much)
So when are films good value, as to TV, if i already pay a TV licence, and have sky, what am i really pirating, whats the difference between watching it off the Internet and recording it off the air?
Films are what you make them. I used to go to the cinema every single week, regardless of what was on, because I knew there would be at least something watchable. It's something to do and talk about, it's sociable and it's entertainment. Again, the TV license I don't pay, but I use the BBC iPlayer and the BBC website a lot. So when the time comes, will I grumble about paying for it? Nope, because despite what you'll may believe, the BBC actually does have decent content. Most people aren't going to be pirating a movie which is on TV, it's likely to be a new release, as a solution of not going to the cinema.
To some it up! We're all becoming anti-social cheapskates.
Tv-links.co.uk was my most favored site for content ever! Best and now its gone, no more late night Movies for me (fires up The Wire)
The content was in flash and divx? Then it's not a loss imho. I get nightmares just thinking about watching tv-shows in that "quality"
there's nothing wrong with divx, most of the links are dvd quality from what i've seen (2 whole seasons of prison break)
If you look at netcraft the hosting was actually in the netherlands.
http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/display.var.1779471.0.police_swoop_to_close_down_illegal_website.php
:(
crap :/
Not only that, but a bit of patience and decent searching and you could find much better quality videos.
I also prefer to download onto my external HD and then plug into my TV at a later date, so having to watch a stream was not my favoured option.
The Guardian are saying that a prime example was people clicking on a link to cam copies of Ratatouille - anyone with half a technical mind could find a DVD rip online now!
Additionally, is it illegal to download/link BBC programming from these sites if you are a UK based TV Licence Payer????
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/23/tv_links_trademark_law/
Of course there's nothing wrong with divx. The site having flash-videos makes me think of the content being in SD only...