UK TV site owner arrested

[faceless]

One of the world's most-used pirate film websites has been closed after providing links to illegal versions of major Hollywood hits and TV shows. The first closure of a major UK-based pirate site was also accompanied by raids and an arrest, the anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said today. A 26-year-old man from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet, Fact said.

The arrest and the closure of the site - www.tv-links.co.uk - came during an operation by officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards in conjunction with investigators from Fact and Gloucestershire Police. Fact claims that tv-links.co.uk was providing links to illegal film content that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and then uploaded to the internet. The site also provided links to TV shows that were being illegally distributed.

Visitors to the site could get access to major feature films, sometimes within days of their initial cinema release. Recent links took users to illegal versions of the Disney/Pixar animation sensation Ratatouille as well as to most of this summer's blockbusters.

"Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites," said a spokesman for Fact. The group's director general Kieron Sharp said TV Links was the first major target in a campaign to crackdown on web piracy. "The theft and distribution of films harms the livelihoods of those working in the UK film industry and in ancillary industries, as well as damaging the economy," he said.

Roger Marles, from Trading Standards said sites such as TV Links allowed people to break UK copyright law. "The 'users' are potentially evading licence fees, subscription fees to digital services or the cost of purchase or admittance to cinemas to view the films," he added.

The British Video Association estimates that at least £459m was lost to the video, film and TV industries due to piracy in 2006.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2195407,00.html

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The silly bugger would probably have got away with it if it wasn't for the new movies. At least, it would be unlikely that he'd have been arrested. Still, it's the first time I've heard of anyone in the UK being captured for something like this.

[nekokate]

This sort of thing pisses me right off. The film industry and the music industry are both ultra-rich already. And according to the report, this site wasn't even hosting copyrighted content, it was LINKING to it!!

Why don't they go after the sites that were actually hosting it, for fuck's sake?

The authorities always seem to go for the easy targets and the small-frys because it's a token gesture that the ignorant will lap up. The truth is that there is no possible way to stop people downloading movies and music - torrents are an internet revolution, and they've spoken, baby

My personal philosophy on torrenting and music/movies is very similar to Clyde Barrow's from Bonnie & Clyde: He'd stroll into a bank and rob it, but the individuals who were there depositing their own money would be left in peace, because a bank is a massively rich, impersonal entity. Another analogy would be a few weeks ago I was in Morrisons, I asked for £10 cash-back, and the girl gave me it twice by accident, and I just took with a smile and thought "Hehe, kiss my ass, Morrisons"... but if I'd seen someone drop a tenner in the street I would never take it, I'd always hand it back to them.

[faceless]

You're right on all of that, except for the checkout girl - she'd have been given a grilling over that missing tenner.

I get the feeling that the guy who owned this site was given a warning and flouted it. When we first started out as a torrent site we got a letter from ITV lawyers, demanding we stopped. That was sent to the guy who used to run the site with us though, so it was probably something he made up just for the sake of it!

[eefanincan]