TV Links Founder Arrested for Illegal Linking
The founder and some staff of a directory site called TV Links was arrested this weekend and the site was shut down by British police. Tv-links.co.uk listed links to other sites where visitors could find television content, often posted without permission of copyright holders.
It's one of those cases in which it's hard not to think both "I can't believe this happened" and "I can't believe it took so long" in the same mental breath. Crazed, uncontrolled linking has long been one of the biggest points of contention between people who use the internet and people who have no idea how it works.
Critics of the legal move argue that if linking to illegal content is itself illegal, much of the internet, including Google and YouTube, would be much more reasonable targets than this little British site (correction, as commenters have pointed out - TV Link was not really a little site).
Kieron Sharp, the Director of FACT, the British legal department that carried out the raid (who could argue with them?) said the following about TV Links. "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." Sharp says this is only the beginning and many more sites will go down in the near future.
If Mr. Sharp will forgive me for linking to it, I will point out that the Internet Archive has preserved copies of the wretched TV Links site through the past 12 months. I want to emphasize that I'm only linking to a site that's cached a site that's linking to other sites that may include content that could have been uploaded without the copyright holder's consent. I hope that's ok; if it's not I'm going to take the rest of the day off of the internet.
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First off, you are a damnable criminal, sir. Secondly, living in the freaking boondocks, TVLinks was my avenue to bedrock cultural experiences, you know, like Hell's Kitchen. He was arrested because he was a case study in what you and I (vs. a gigantorrendous company) can do. Try to sue Google? Good luck. Some little British guy? Why it almost makes you feel like a man.
Posted by: Curt | October 22, 2007 10:38 AM
First off, you are a damnable criminal, sir. Secondly, living in the freaking boondocks, TVLinks was my avenue to bedrock cultural experiences, you know, like Hell's Kitchen. He was arrested because he was a case study in what you and I (vs. a gigantorrendous company) can do. Try to sue Google? Good luck. Some little British guy? Why it almost makes you feel like a man.
Posted by: Curt | October 22, 2007 10:39 AM
First off, you are a damnable criminal, sir. Secondly, living in the freaking boondocks, TVLinks was my avenue to bedrock cultural experiences, you know, like Hell's Kitchen. He was arrested because he was a case study in what you and I (vs. a gigantorrendous company) can do. Try to sue Google? Good luck. Some little British guy? Now, THAT'S drawing a line in the sand.
Posted by: Curt | October 22, 2007 10:40 AM
How disgraceful that this poor guy gets arrested. Oh no, we dont mess with google and youtube and what not. Let's screw the little boy who isnt even profiting from this.
Posted by: Adam | October 22, 2007 11:37 AM
I find this bizarre. As the article mentions there are far bigger offenders out there, yet they picked a single guy running a website.
Posted by: Dawid Michalczyk | October 22, 2007 12:29 PM
Is it bad that my feeling was, "Damn, I wish I knew about this site before it shut down!"?
Posted by: Justin Kistner | October 22, 2007 12:48 PM
I can not beleive this. If this is illegal, then all the web directories will be illegal too. Not even mention about youtube.
Posted by: Norman | October 22, 2007 1:12 PM
tv links got shutted down, 5 more similar sites pops up the nex day. Dont see the point in screwing this one guy over.
Posted by: Let it go | October 22, 2007 2:04 PM
Little site? Tv-Links.co.uk was the 234 most visited site according to alexa. Thats a pretty high ranking for such a small site. There are other sites out there, like TV Links DB which are smaller, but by far Tv-Links.co.uk was the largest TV Links site out there.
Posted by: TV Links DB | October 22, 2007 2:35 PM
@tvlinksdb - you're right, thanks
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | October 22, 2007 3:07 PM
Tv-links was very helpful. Sometimes I would be in the mood for a certain type of show or movie and I was able to find it easy on this site.
So what if this website closes down, people are just going to find another website with the same properties. The system isn't stopping the problem. Their just making other people's websites demand become more popular.
Posted by: Rachel | October 22, 2007 3:22 PM
There is a great site well actually a forum that Imho is better than tvlinks forumflicks.net i hope they dont shut them down.
Posted by: joe | October 22, 2007 6:20 PM
TV Links is just like Napster. Napster wasn't offering songs for download at first, ... at first it was a way to find some one else who had it, and then download it from them. Now how is THIS (tv links) any different from that? It is still a means to get the the pirate material. A great one at that, monitored by the people for the people. It was just another way for the community to come together to share information. Back in the late 80's or early 90's this would have never happened, because back then no one knew what was up. IRC style information sharing like in the old days, is now very much at the forefront of piracy and the industry knows and the industry is fighting back. Napster got theirs, he will get his.
The people bring up a good point, why not sue google? Or youtube? The sites that actually house the material! Remember, if youtube or todu doesn't host the video, the link is DEAD!
Who's next? The programer for stage6?
Posted by: Joey T | October 22, 2007 8:37 PM
I think that its really dumb that the site got shut down. I really liked it and it was a good way to catch up on stuff I missed on tv. I do not see why something like this would not be made legal in our day in age.. come on its 2007 EVERYTHING is on the freaking internet. Besides it shouldnt just be that one guy...what about all the other people who do the same thing? I just think its stupid and just realized the site got shut down and now im sad :(
Posted by: Amber W. | October 22, 2007 10:02 PM
I say there's no way to incriminate a person that only provides links to other websites that (host) illegal content. It's bogus what they're doing here. They only cut out the middle man so to speak. Which in this case is someone doing absolutely nothing wrong. The only way you could actually convict this person of any crime is if he actually broadcasts the content on his own website. Authorities should just stick to making sure the content is being removed from Major websites and i don't need to point out any, because I'm sure everyone knows at least one video website. And your guaranteed to find illegal content there.
Posted by: Jeff | October 22, 2007 10:21 PM
Does this mean that tv-links is gone for good? Because i agree with Jeff that the guy hasnt done anything wrong! I also really liked tv-links because it had some of my favourite shows that i could see anywhere else:(
Posted by: Max | October 23, 2007 6:57 AM
I think the reason that the authorities started out with this guy is so that it will be easier to catch the big fish later. From what I've read, the section of the trademark law(Section 92) that the tv links owner was arrested for "violating" does not really fit this case. Of course, Google would be able to afford the big time lawyers which would make the government's job a lot harder or near impossible. If they catch this little fish first, then it creates precedent to catch and prosecute the bigger fish later.
Posted by: adri | October 23, 2007 8:39 AM
It does suck, everyone loved the site including me. I even read something about google helping to trace the owner down. Which is stupid, they don't arrest the people who are hosting the the video files, but arrest the guy who is linking to them??? video.google.co.uk, youtube.com, veoh.com, stage6.divx.com are a few of the sites holding all of this illegal contents and they should be made to find and remove all of it. it there sites are too big for them to find everything, then well they should employ more people or just shut down if they cant even run and check them properly.
Posted by: Billy Potts (13th_star) | October 23, 2007 9:35 AM
To repeat what has aleady been said before, this man has only been arrested as taking google to court would cost a lot and take a lot of time. Much easier to show all the people that have linking on thier sites what might happen than to take on the multi million pound/dollar lawyers of the big companies whom are actually hosting the content being linked too. Which in my opinion is an absolute disgrace.
Posted by: cadiz | October 23, 2007 4:46 PM
LOL... First of all, Good Luck to You mr site owner.
so they actually arrested this guy?? are they dumb?? he was linking most of the pirated movie/tv show content out there, isn't better to use that to contact such sites as youtube about the content itself so it can remove it?? I mean, another
site will be running in no time and ppl will upload pirated movies/tv-shows authorities can't fully stop that,
they should just freeking use this guy's site to find the content and thank him afterwards...
and the guys from industry... cheaper product doesn't mean
less profit, look at ps3 after price cute it selling xbox 360 out 2:1, before that it was 1:3 if I'm not mistaken...
Posted by: Dave Fox | October 23, 2007 6:17 PM
celebrate....the British police accomplished one of the greatest online arrests....bullcrap....
If they have so much time to do this silly work, Y dont they worry more about the law and order.
All tv-links did was provide a place which showed "where was what".Almost all the sites url's it linked to belong to major companies..funny,the police doesnt want to meddle with them(?)..youtube,google,veoh,stage6...
here is a advice to the police..get a life and do the real job.
Posted by: buzz | October 24, 2007 12:21 AM
Kieron Sharp is an asshole, and he should get the stick out of his ass :]. Why would you waste your time on something so little?
Posted by: Kara | October 24, 2007 1:09 AM
damn shame.
Posted by: Kim | October 24, 2007 6:37 AM
Please check out this site I have made:
http://www.save-tv-links.co.uk
The idea behind the site is to create a publicly accessible resource of accurate information on the tv-links case and create a discussion forum around it. It also exists to offer what ever support is possible to give to the innocent.
Anyone who can contribute or has any ideas that would make this site more functional please get in touch; the aim is too get as much information in one place as possible.
Elton1
Posted by: Elton1 | October 25, 2007 10:58 PM
Its sad and unfair IMO
I've moved on to forumflicks.com which is a great forum and full of as many if not more links than tvlinks
All the best to sin of TVL
Posted by: Vinny | October 27, 2007 7:03 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…! ;)
Posted by: LaSan | October 29, 2007 10:13 AM
Pluck one grey hair and 10 more pop up? So he goes down, and we all move to places like http://joox.net and http://vidictive.com which are both great sites compared to most. Before they know it there will be over 10,000 movie sites and their man power will tire and deplete its self and they will have no choice to start focusing at the hosters or change the freedom and censoship laws to be more dictated?? Damn it!
Posted by: James Dean | October 29, 2007 3:32 PM
if linking to copyrighted materials is illegal, than MSN , Google, Yhaoo, etc, are all guilty.
they even link to child porn.
but tvlinks doesnt have the big budget these coorporations do, so they get fuked!!
Posted by: Smokey | October 30, 2007 6:59 AM
Isn't it better to let people use video links instead of letting them download the files?
And #28 [smokey] already made a good point there!
Posted by: someonewhitalotofstress | November 1, 2007 11:05 AM