Largest TV Piracy Site Shut Down

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Rich Tate

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The largest TV piracy site was raided and subsequently shut down by british authorities. The staff of the site was also arrested.

Marking the first closure of its kind against a UK-based piracy site, TV-Links.co.uk was raided and shut down by British authorities late last week. According to the United Kingdom (FACT), the raid also culminated with the arrests of the site’s 26-year-old webmaster and part of the site’s moderation staff. The raid was carried out through a coordinated effort involving investigators from FACT and the local police.
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I'm really sad about this, I loved tv-links and referred it to all my friends. I used this site to first watch Scrubs and Heroes when they were suggested to me and I fell in love with both series. How far can you go with stuff like this, as long as you have open forums for posting videos freely and whatnot this stuff is going to exist. Don't kill the messenger ya know. But its good stations are actually putting episodes on their websites now but really, where else can I go to watch old Chip and Dales Rescue Rangers?! They had some hidden gems in there that will never probably be released on DVD, bah.
 
hmm.. I hope this doesn't mean they are going to go after my favorite southpark site.
 
Rich Tate said:
The largest TV piracy site was raided and subsequently shut down by british authorities. The staff of the site was also arrested.
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Veoh was shut down? :rolleyes:

Seriously, piracy groups would have used the site as a reference for all 26900 videos on it for over 4100 different groups (movie name, show series name, or music artist), except the site owner was hell-bent on hiding the links.

Well I'm done with the nonsense. If Sin (the site owner) gets sued, then all hell will break loose in the legal system for providing links to content.
 
i'm with kidstechno on this. I was able to watch old tv shows I long forgot (and it would seem that the tv networks forgot to release on DVD) and it got me hooked on Heroes, Psych, and Burn Notice, among a couple of others which I know watch religiously on TV. When will these morons learn.
 
anthrex said:
i'm with kidstechno on this. I was able to watch old tv shows I long forgot (and it would seem that the tv networks forgot to release on DVD) and it got me hooked on Heroes, Psych, and Burn Notice, among a couple of others which I know watch religiously on TV. When will these morons learn.
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Exact same situation for me. If it wasn't for tv-links, I wouldn't watch LOST and Battlestar Galactica every week they are on like I do now.
 
remove the best, watch 10 other sites spring up that do it better, faster, and with more features.
 
You'd think the more popular a show is the better, right? If anything, they should just include torrrent data(ie. total downloads) in the Nielson ratings as far as I'm concerned. :rolleyes:
 
You're kidding me, right? How is it piracy? It's a non-sanctioned distribution of copyright contet, is how. Content aired on television is provided to you on a 'here is one free viewing' basis. The only legitimate use you can even put recording technology to use at is time-shifting of you viewing of it.

If a website is deriving traffic and income from providing links to content which has been uploaded and stored somewhere then that site is promoting and encouraging illegal activity.

It's rather clear-cut, irrespective of your moral/ethical stance on the copyright laws themselves.
 
Oh noes. They stealz yer broadcast television.


Or they provided links to it. This is dumb.
 
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Taking TV-Links down will breed other people to create bigger and better sites. Now where am I going to watch The Office at school... =(
 
I didn't really visit this site too much, but when I did, I was pretty impressed. I know my wife will be devastated. She can't watch Rainbow Brite anymore. Oh well, every cloud...
 
why why WHY for the love of god can't we get video of these raids as they happen? how priceless would it be to see these surprised noobs as they get cuffed and taken away.. maybe in the future :D as for the site itself, I couldn't care less, if they are breaking the law they deserve what they got :rolleyes:
 
Like others have said, this will not do anything to curb piracy. Actually, as long as they call it piracy, the business will thrive. Pirates are popular! It's also about the least-accurate term ever. If the RIAA/MPAA wanted to use some term to stop file-sharing, they should have called it something like "digital puppy-kicking"...
 
If a site were to redirect the traffic and got sued, shouldn't they do the same thing w/ ISP since they do the same thing as well?
 
Techx said:
why why WHY for the love of god can't we get video of these raids as they happen? how priceless would it be to see these surprised noobs as they get cuffed and taken away.. maybe in the future :D as for the site itself, I couldn't care less, if they are breaking the law they deserve what they got :rolleyes:
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lmfao - just picturing in my mind an image of COPS with Bad Boys theme tune with hax0rs being taken down in mid-McDonalds, shouting "WTF ?" :p
 
Well BitTorrent is still using 25% of the worlds' internet (and 99.9999999% of mine). I couldn't care less for their shitty quality links to videos.
 
“This effectively makes the entire internet illegal,” wrote ‘Rich’ of The New Freedom. “A man is now in prison because he runs a site where other people can link to low-resolution TV shows, hosted by Google. FACT did not raid Google, they raided a site which merely links to TV shows.”
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I hope that the people who ran that website aren't punished too severely, considering as how they didn't actually infringe on any copyrights.
 
capable heart said:
I hope that the people who ran that website aren't punished too severely, considering as how they didn't actually infringe on any copyrights.
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That is so lame!

A website which is basically nothing other than a collection of links to illegal content is an exercise in actively facilitating copyright avoidance. the suggestion that "they didn't really do anything wrong" is just plain laughable!
 
Catweazle said:
That is so lame!

A website which is basically nothing other than a collection of links to illegal content is an exercise in actively facilitating copyright avoidance. the suggestion that "they didn't really do anything wrong" is just plain laughable!
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According that position, though, the ability to link anything is potential for "facilitating avoidance"--people would have to be held legally responsible for content they do not host, do not distribute, and have no control over.

Oh, they were doing something "wrong" all right, no argument there. I was trying to wonder if what they did was actually *illegal* though. Perhaps British Copyright Law is different from and more specific than the US, and the type of situation he was in, was clearly covered by his country's laws--that I'm not sure of.
 
If you said "copyright-related" law it'd probably be more accurate. Many different laws have relevence. The 'Copyright Act' doesn't cover it all.


Here in Australia I'm sure that criminal prosecition could be successfully launched too. Australian law easily enough covers the situation of 'facilitating' illegal activities.
 
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