The Good Ship TV-Links Sinks
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007‘Pirate Movie Racket’, or Bedroom Hobbyist?
Much-loved TV linking site TV Links (tv-links.co.uk) has been torpedoed by the joint forces of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the Gloucestershire Constabulary.
Last week, police arrested David Rock, a 26 year-old computer engineer from Cheltenham, who had set the ball rolling from his home, but had not actually linked to or hosted any copyrighted material himself – it was for this reason that TV Links had been able to avoid a legal telling off for so long – and in his own words, says “I’m not some master criminal. It was just a hobby.”
According to thisisgloucestershire.co.uk, which describes TV Links as a “huge Pirate movie racket,” film studios in the US contacted FACT when they realised that people were downloading copies of releases, including, ironically, Pirates of the Caribbean 3. FACT then contacted local Trading Standards, which in turn called in the police to make the arrest.
Rather than removing the offending links, the entire website has been shut down. A statement FACT claims that Mr. Rock had been arrested for “offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet”.
Former users of the site have also been quick to point out that in theory websites such as Google and YouTube are also guilty of facilitation of copyright infringement, as they too provide links to unsolicited and illegal material – TV Links was just one guy in his bedroom, unsupported by an expensive law squad.
What David Rock was doing with TV Links might have been flirting with the borders of legality, but the fact of the matter is that his website was regularly used and loved by thousands of punters worldwide, and he wasn’t making any money off of it – not exactly the evil criminal ‘movie racket’ that thisisgloucestershire.co.uk would have you believe.
Many would have liked to have seen the film studios react in a more positive way; many users have said that they would happily pay a nominal monthly fee, say, £5 a month to use the site.
The rise of on-demand IPTV platforms like Sky Anytime, Virgin Media and BT Vision has proven that people want to watch and download programmes on and from their computers – TV Links was a well known and popular site with a clean, uncluttered layout which was easy and user friendly. It’s highly likely that TV Links may re-emerge as a legit entity a la Napster, with a pay per view system in place.
Copyright Offences carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and unlimited fines, although there is currently no law for facilitation of copyright infringement in the UK. There is in the States, which is from where the complaint originated. How this pans out stands to be just as interesting as the Sky/Virgin brawl.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
As stated above, Google and youtube do exactly the same thing yet all these so called law enforcers can do is pick on a young man. He doesnt live in the US where it may be a crime so come on… leave the guy alone and try concentrating on ACTUAL law breakers of this country.
November 19th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I semi-regularly used TV Links, and I have to say, much as I disagree with the legal ’standpoint’, it was pretty much inevitable that it wasn’t going to last.
There was some stuff on there that you couldn’t even purchase legitimatley, online or anywhere else.
I think this most defineltly is the film studios Napster - something great being killed by people who don’t understand or don’t want to understand the internet.