Tv-links.co.uk

TV-Links.co.uk was a website which contained links to television programming from around the world and movies submitted by users. No actual content was hosted on TV-Links, all content was hosted on external websites. As such, it was thought safe from legal action until the arrest of the site owner, only known as 'Sin', on 18 October 2007.

Format

Most videos linked to on the site were in Flash Video format, the same format used by many other recent video sharing websites such as YouTube. In addition, many videos were in DivX format, at a much higher quality, comparable to videos provided by Freeview and other digital broadcasters.

Historical context and significance

Beginning with the original Napster program that allowed internet users to search for and download MP3 files, with the majority being copyrighted works, the internet has a long history of facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials. After Napster was shut down, other networks and protocols sprang up, one of the most successful being the BitTorrent protocol. With the advent of video streaming sites like YouTube and Google Video, users can now upload TV shows and movies. As copyrighted materials violate the terms of their hosting services, they are routinely deleted and so there was a desire to create a regularly updated index facilitating the location of available content. TV Links was one of the most popular of this breed of indexes. It was the 26th most popular internet site in the UK (beating Sky.com) and 43rd in the US (beating Netflix.com) before its shutdown, and 0.4% of global internet users were accessing the site.

Legality

General

The legality of this site could be compared to BitTorrent indexing sites like The Pirate Bay or the original Napster program, in that the site did not actually host the files, but only provided links to the files which are hosted on external sites.

The legal page of the site contained the following disclamier:

Shutdown by UK government

On 18 October 2007, the owner of TV-Links was arrested by the Gloucestershire Police in cooperation with FACT. The site was also shut down.

Implications

The forced closure of this site raises a difficult question as outlined in the following quote from an article in the Guardian Unlimited:

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See Also

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