Two More Pirate Sites Shut Down -- For Now
Another major BitTorrent site has been shuttered... for now. This time it's the U.K.based tv-links.co.uk. TV-Links was closed down for providing links to illegal copies of major motion pictures and TV shows. The closing of the site was accompanied by raids and the arrest of a 26-year-old man from Cheltenham, England for facilitating copy right infringement.
Officers from the Gloucestershire County Council Trading Standards Service, the Gloucestershire Police, and FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) worked together to bring the popular Torrent site down.
In addition, this week saw the closure of OiNK BitTorrent Tracker, an invite-only site that specializes in leaking albums before their official release.
TV-Links and OiNK BitTorrent Tracker are just latest target sin the fight against piracy. In 2003, popular site SuperNova.org closed up shop due to mounting legal pressure, as did the "world's largest" BitTorrent repository, The Pirate Bay. Both services returned, though, to their full illegal glory after only a fairly short closing, and it is likely that the same will happen with TV-Links and OiNK.
From the Guardian Unlimited and Ars Technica
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
john @ Oct 24th 2007 12:35PM
They should put those agencies on the Nigerian/Lotto Winnings/Sweepstakes Winnings letters, many of which are coming from England. They effected close-downs, raids, arrests in their areas of responsibility.
Gary @ Oct 24th 2007 2:42PM
The case in the UK is not clear at the moment, a fairly well respected legal firm (Pinsent Mason - www.out-law.com) has commented that the case is tenuous at best. At present the owner has been released, with no charge, pending further investigations.
http://humanopinion.org/support_for_tvlinks
This has the potential to be a landmark case and anyone interested in law and precedents regarding the application of law to the Internet sphere and free speech on the Internet should watch this one, if it progresses.
RabbitEars @ Oct 24th 2007 7:54PM
Please get your facts straight: TV-Links was NOT a BitTorrent site, it simply provided an interface of clickable links to other websites that contained various TV & Film videos (some legal, some pirated, some unknown).
For a tech site like switched.com to get this basic piece of information wrong is sloppy (at best).
http:www.save-tv-links.co.uk @ Oct 25th 2007 4:53AM
Please check out this site I have made:
http://www.save-tv-links.co.uk
The idea behind the site is to create a publicly accessible resource of accurate information on the tv-links case and create a discussion forum around it. It also exists to offer what ever support is possible to give to the innocent.
Anyone who can contribute or has any ideas that would make this site more functional please get in touch; the aim is too get as much information in one place as possible.
Elton1
LaSan @ Oct 25th 2007 8:55PM
I'm really pissed off men..!! :( Linking is not illegal, hosting is... this is completely unfair. But don't worry, there are plenty of other sites that can perfectly replace tv-links. For example, i found http://www.sidereel.com they have almost all the tv series, tons of movies and music vids. There's also Dailymotion or Stage 6, thanks god they can't stop us..!! he he LOL