Thursday, October 25, 2007

Pangloss on TV links shutdown

Lilian has some sharp commentary on the TV Links shutdown.

"An interesting if rather sketchy report from The Guardian that UK-based TV Links site has been closed down after a raid by a combination of Trading Standards officials, Gloucester police and FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). The question is what were the grounds? ...

The case is interesting because TV Links site is an ordinary website giving links to content which constituted (in some cases) infringing copies of copyright works eg Dr Who, Buffy et al. The site is not a host nor is it obviously "inciting" or "inducing" users to infringe as say Kazaa/Grokster did. It could be argued in fact that it does little more than what Google routinely does - makes links available to infringing copies and leaves the user to decide what to do next."

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