“Gloucestershire police have confirmed that a 26-year-old Cheltenham man at the centre of an investigation into the website TV-Links was arrested under section 92 of the Trade Mark Act in the UK, on suspicion of supplying property with a registered trademark, without permission.
The man was taken into custody on Thursday last week after an investigation by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the local trading standards office. Initial reports from FACT said he had been arrested for “offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet”.
TV-links was a place where users could post links to content from TV shows etc.. so that other web users could view them. The quality wasn’t always great, but the site provided a real alternative to terrestrial TV. The site didn’t host the material directly, but did, according to other reports, embed some video clips.
The man has not been charged with any offence, and has been released pending further investigation.
Very strange if you ask me, given that he only provides links and a web-based service. He never actually distributed copyrighted works.
Meanwhile, we found a review of the Great Irish Beer Festival at the Beer Nuts blog. Sounds like the event worked well and we’ll hopefully get a chance to go next year.
On beer, Billy & Dec will be speaking at the Science week in IT Sligo on the 7th of November. All welcome – we’ll post details next week. For those of you in Australia an article will be published in Beer and Brewer magazine shortly and we think there’s a piece in Wired Magazine as well some time soon. But our TV and radio days are over – we’re yesterdays news now.
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Hello.
If you want watch Internet TV in my WordPress Blog, I post some links to webs to watch it.
Enjoy it.
Links removed
Regards from Spain
Thanks Paco
The thing that makes TV Links interesting is that it is UK based. In the UK, it is illegal to merely “facilitate” copyright infringement. The situation would have been much different in the U.S. or almost anywhere else.
Didn’t realise that even ‘facilitating’ copyright theft was illegal in the UK. If that’s the case, the Irish legislation is probably broadly similar. Does that mean that even by facilitating Paco above, this blog is in breach of the law?
*Puts on Librarian hat*
Certainly for those of us who deal in copyright for our crust, there is a clause in Irish law which makes us liable if we just hand people the means of making illegal copies, which is basically what you’re talking about here.
*Swaps to Drinking hat*
Thanks for the link. What was really missing from the Festival was more Irish brewers, so it’d be great to see you at the next one.
Sorry Paco – I’ve had to remove your links.
Declan
Moongroup: Could it be? Tough question, UK law really isn’t my bag. It could be though, especially if you know that you’re linking to infirnging material.
However, the odds of actuall getting into trouble for that are slim to known. TV Links found trouble because it repeatedly and knowingly linked to infirnging works and did so in a high profile environment.
I doubt anyone would come after you for one link in a comment. Besides, since the link was posted by a user, you might have other protections under copyright law.
Still, is it worth the risk? Probably not. All in all, a good decision to take it down.
Google have a related post on their blog –
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/free-expression-and-controversial.html
interesting in the context of what other discussion groups have said regarding internet tv etc.
TV-LINKS is back as TV-LINKS.EU!
The biggest movie database on the internet is back. Movies, tv shows, cartoons, anime, documentaries. No flashy ads, no money, no pop-ups, just clean entertainment. Give us a good rating, because we deserve it!
Link removed
Regards,
Tv Links Team
Welcome back. I’ve removed the click through Adrian (but you’re probably a bot anyway), but if people want to visit they can go to ‘tv-links.eu’ .