The New Age of Entertainment, Part II
Ok, well, tv-links.co.uk has been raided by FACT. tv-links was a link aggregator that just deep-linked movie and TV shows from popular video sites, like Youtube, Veoh, Daily Motion, Stage6 and such.
When I look closely to what exactly is illegal in case of tv-links, it perplexes me a bit. Surely freedom-of-speech is legal, so is deep linking (had it been illegal, entire Internet would be too). IMO, only thing illegal in this context is facilitating the distribution of copyrighted content. But is pointing to copyrighted content with a proper disclaimer illegal? Are disclaimers enough for leechers like tv-links? Would it be illegal if I say, "go find some drugs in that bush, but wait..I'm not responsible for the consequences." Inappropriate? Yes. Illegal? May be.
But, video sites are untouched and arguably rightly so, the videos are user generated and the sites provide means to take the content down if the material is known to be copyright protected. But then how far are sites like piratebay, isohunt legal? They facilitate distribution of copyrighted content as well, and that too for downloading unlike tv-links. Oh, and don't forget sopcast and the whole list of p2p players (PPLive, CoolStreaming).
Agencies like FACT should've been smart. Certainly it takes lot more to upload something, find, link and index it than reporting or removing it. Sites such as tv-links tries hard to keep the links updated, so why not just exploit their knowledge and make it even harder for them by just reporting / removing stuff they update? Think feeds, this can even be automated!
Although, tv-links is gone for now, it only takes some right keywords and a decent search engine to get to everything you wanted. Perhaps "tv-links mirrors" ?
When I look closely to what exactly is illegal in case of tv-links, it perplexes me a bit. Surely freedom-of-speech is legal, so is deep linking (had it been illegal, entire Internet would be too). IMO, only thing illegal in this context is facilitating the distribution of copyrighted content. But is pointing to copyrighted content with a proper disclaimer illegal? Are disclaimers enough for leechers like tv-links? Would it be illegal if I say, "go find some drugs in that bush, but wait..I'm not responsible for the consequences." Inappropriate? Yes. Illegal? May be.
But, video sites are untouched and arguably rightly so, the videos are user generated and the sites provide means to take the content down if the material is known to be copyright protected. But then how far are sites like piratebay, isohunt legal? They facilitate distribution of copyrighted content as well, and that too for downloading unlike tv-links. Oh, and don't forget sopcast and the whole list of p2p players (PPLive, CoolStreaming).
Agencies like FACT should've been smart. Certainly it takes lot more to upload something, find, link and index it than reporting or removing it. Sites such as tv-links tries hard to keep the links updated, so why not just exploit their knowledge and make it even harder for them by just reporting / removing stuff they update? Think feeds, this can even be automated!
Although, tv-links is gone for now, it only takes some right keywords and a decent search engine to get to everything you wanted. Perhaps "tv-links mirrors" ?
