Monday, October 22, 2007

Where did TV-links go?

Acording to http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2195407,00.html
http://www.tv-links.co.uk/was taken offline Oct 19.

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.
TV-links, until last week, was one of the largest internet movies, anime, TV show, and cartoon web video streaming portals. The 26 year old that set it up, used ads and paypal donations to gain income off of the illegal videos. The theory of the site was similar to that of Piratebay.org, which hosts none of the content, but simply provides links to it.

The difference between these two sites and their sustained uptime, lies in the location of their servers. thePirateBay.org hosts out of Switzerland, a neutral, piracy acceptant country. www.tv-links.co.uk, on the other hand, hosted in the UK where tolerance of piracy, though not as strict as the US, normally is frowned on.

Both sites have been shut down by the government at least once. Piratebay.org ended up reopening within days after their police raid. TV links also came back online after its first shutdown.

After this second shutdown a post on the TV-Links Forum reported:

Posted by: xxxx Oct 20 2007, 02:51 AM

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2195407,00.html that happened! Were working on a way to save the links.


It will only be a matter of time before TV links comes back online again, or at least a spin off site. Detailed cache information of TV links can still be found on Google by doing site search of TV-links http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:tv-links.co.uk+tv+links
also the content sites:

54.com
youku.com
todou.com

and
http://videos.google.com
http://youtube.com

still host the videos untouchable content, that TV-links.co.uk linked to. (note: even though Google and Youtube remove content, a large amount of illegal videos are hidden within the site using code names)

If the movie industry was smart, they would see that they could profit by allowing more open access to their content. Many music artists such as, Radiohead, Prince, and others have released their albums for free via the internet. As I heard in an interview the other day, these artists are making more from the ringtones, clothing, and advertising they incorporate into their music. One artist has made 4 million dollars off ringtones alone.

But for now, tv-links.co.uk will remain hidden, buried underground, and as the government's attempted example to movie sharing sites that they will not be able to exist in free countries like the US and UK.

EDIT: Radiohead doesn't release their album for free, instead they allow the listener to choose how much they want to spend.