ze1d Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Hi all,I was thinking about creating a website that directly links to tv shows online videos such as (prison break, lost, etc).. I'm not gonna host videos on my side ... I will just link to the episodes from my website.is it legal .. or is there any responsibility??Thanks,zeid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
real_illusions Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 There used to be a website called tv-links.com that did the same that your intended on doing. The owner (well..former owner now) is currently sitting in jail due to copyright violations.However..i dont get how he did something wrong as he wasn't hosting anything..only linking to stuff on youtube, google and other various sites. But in the eyes if the law, he did something wrong. So, if you intend on doing something the same..expect to be locked up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ze1d Posted February 21, 2008 Author Share Posted February 21, 2008 lol ok thanks for the adivce .. am not gonna start an illegal thing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jesh Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that simply linking to the websites that show these videos cannot be against any laws as long as the user is actually taken to those websites when the click on the link. On the other hand, if you plan on just finding the URLs to the videos and making it so that people can view the videos without seeing all the advertisements on the corporations' websites, then a lot of people are going to be out of a lot of money and that's when the law steps in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ze1d Posted February 21, 2008 Author Share Posted February 21, 2008 What I was thinking to do is to give direct links to pages where 1 episode can be found in.Also since its all not legal (by the other websites) how can they (dare) say anything about me giving my users direct links?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 There's nothing illegal about linking to something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ze1d Posted February 21, 2008 Author Share Posted February 21, 2008 what about tv-links.co.uk??Taken From http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/200...r_linking_.htmlTV Links shut down for linkingFact 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.Is the message that it's less criminal to host illegal content on YouTube than it is to to link to it from a site such as TV Links? Or is it just that FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) and the police won't tackle anybody with enough high-powered lawyers to fight back? Is The New Freedom blog correct in saying: "They just have so much money that they have become above the law." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Is The New Freedom blog correct in saying: "They just have so much money that they have become above the law."Yes. Look at the RIAA. It's not illegal to link to anything. There is no law saying you are not allowed to link to a resource available online. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zppblood Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 There used to be a website called tv-links.com that did the same that your intended on doing. The owner (well..former owner now) is currently sitting in jail due to copyright violations.However..i dont get how he did something wrong as he wasn't hosting anything..only linking to stuff on youtube, google and other various sites. But in the eyes if the law, he did something wrong. So, if you intend on doing something the same..expect to be locked up.I believe it was the idea of making it easier for people to get it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aspnetguy Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Guess these guys are screwed. http://watchinglostonline.com/Was it illegal for me to give you that link? It is sad that they are punishing people that do nothing wrong instead of the people that produce and provide the illegal content.Lately the RIAA are going after universities and ISP's trying to pass laws that will force them to police their networks or face fines hence Comcast filtering it's traffic and crippling bandwidth on encrypted traffic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
real_illusions Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 what about tv-links.co.uk??Taken From http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/200...r_linking_.html That was the one..it was .co.uk and not .com as i originally said:)As i said anyway..i dont see what that guy did wrong. The content wasn't hosted on his site..so why didn't they go after the people hosting it?True that google and youtube (albeit one company technically) are very powerful - like ze1d says..they have become above the law as they have so much money.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Youtube isn't above the law, there's nothing that Youtube is doing that is illegal. If a content owner notifies Youtube that their content is not authorized to be on the site, Youtube removes it. That's their legal obligation. But the industry organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA are really pushing the boundaries with regard to both what is legal and what is ethical. Several of the large media companies are as well. In one instance I heard of, there was someone who created a video online that got several hits. Some show on VH-1 (which is owned by Viacom) took his video (without permission) and showed it on their TV show. The guy who made the video recorded the spot on TV showing his video and posted the clip on his site. Viacom threatened him with the DMCA over that. Think about that, the guy recorded a video of someone else showing his video, which they did not have his permission to do, and he got in trouble for posting that video. It's all a little insane, the entire system needs to be reformed.In that case, however, the guy who was threatened filed a counter-complaint against Viacom and they eventually dropped their complaint against him. Not many people know they can initiate a counter-complaint to the DMCA though, they get a DMCA notice and think they just have to comply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shonumi Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Linking to something per se is not piracy in its essence, so if one were to charge you of it, they'd have no really good case against you. You're not distributing the content nor or you hosting it on any property you own. However, sad as it is, the RIAA and MPAA can get you by claiming that your influence is enough to incite others to go an download the items that you may be linking to. To them, it's akin to standing on a street telling people how awesome the things in a nearby store is, and that you know where there's a back door too. That's what they see in their eyes, and its been tried enough in courts here in the States and elsewhere to have enough heave-ho for persecution. However, most likely, the worst you should ever come into contact with them is a notice to cease and desist whatever internet activities you get. Most of the people charged negligently fail to reckon with this, or so I assume. In any sense, you'd get your fair share of warnings presumably before they outrighted attacked you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aspnetguy Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Linking to something per se is not piracy in its essence, so if one were to charge you of it, they'd have no really good case against you. You're not distributing the content nor or you hosting it on any property you own. However, sad as it is, the RIAA and MPAA can get you by claiming that your influence is enough to incite others to go an download the items that you may be linking to. To them, it's akin to standing on a street telling people how awesome the things in a nearby store is, and that you know where there's a back door too. That's what they see in their eyes, and its been tried enough in courts here in the States and elsewhere to have enough heave-ho for persecution. However, most likely, the worst you should ever come into contact with them is a notice to cease and desist whatever internet activities you get. Most of the people charged negligently fail to reckon with this, or so I assume. In any sense, you'd get your fair share of warnings presumably before they outrighted attacked you.Tell that to the people suing the pirate bay http://www.rlslog.net/tpb-facing-lawsuit-next-week/. Some how the US has found a way to impose it's laws on other people from other countries. In Sweden, where TPB has it's servers, it is not illegal to host torrents that point to copyrighted material because it is just a link to the content that someone else is hosting. These big companies don't seem to nderstand that. TPB doe not have any content on their servers just links so in a way it is the same thing. They are being sued for linking to someone else's content.It is kind of like the guy from Canada that was charged with selling pot seeds by the US. It is not illegal to sell marijuana seeds but because some people from the US bought seeds from his canadaian website they were able to charge him under US law which is complete crap....charge your own citizens that are buying it. I hate the US's mentality that it is there duty to police the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted February 25, 2008 Share Posted February 25, 2008 The Pirate Bay has been threatened for several years without success, there is even an anti-copyright political party in Sweden now. The RIAA and MPAA finally got the IFPI, Sweden's version of the RIAA, to press charges. The RIAA or MPAA is not suing, neither is the US government, the IFPI is. There are also individual artists suing, both Prince and the Village People (?) are also in on it, and they were trying to recruit ABBA, which is Swedish. This has been going on for a while though, I'm not sure what will come of it. I don't know if there's a US mentality to police the world though - if copyrights that are held by American companies are thought to be infringed upon, and the American companies can convince foreign prosecutors to press charges, I don't know how that is America policing the world. I also don't see a connection between this action and Canadian potheads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted February 25, 2008 Share Posted February 25, 2008 This federal judge has rejected the RIAA's "making available" theory, saying that it is not enough that the defendent made copies available to other people. In order for infringement of the exclusive right to distribute the content to have taken place, the judge says that the defendent needs to actually distribute copies, not simply make them available to other people.http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/02/25/1952222.shtmlFinally a little sanity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synook Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 We need a resident lawyer on this board Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 I disagree, the fewer lawyers the better. With very few exceptions, the vast majority of lawyers will sacrifice personal ethics for money any day of the week, and I don't trust them. Again, with few exceptions, if you wanted to know what that meant from a lawyer he would probably charge you for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synook Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Hrmm... I am signed up to another (game community) forum, they have a member who is a lawyer, and he is nice and helpful... but I suppose a larger sample size is needed before we can make conclusions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kovo Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that simply linking to the websites that show these videos cannot be against any laws as long as the user is actually taken to those websites when the click on the link. On the other hand, if you plan on just finding the URLs to the videos and making it so that people can view the videos without seeing all the advertisements on the corporations' websites, then a lot of people are going to be out of a lot of money and that's when the law steps in.Kinda like saying theres nothing wrong with showing a murderer where to get weapons for free but not giving them to him yourself Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 I don't think there's anything illegal about that. If I say "hey, I know a guy who has a gun he doesn't want, he's giving it away for free" and the guy goes to my friend, gets the gun, and goes and shoots someone, am I liable? I don't think so. The guy who pulled the trigger is liable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kovo Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 I don't think there's anything illegal about that. If I say "hey, I know a guy who has a gun he doesn't want, he's giving it away for free" and the guy goes to my friend, gets the gun, and goes and shoots someone, am I liable? I don't think so. The guy who pulled the trigger is liable.Unless you know that guy has the intent of using it for harming or stealing, then its a crime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synook Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Well, some of my friends are doing a mock court case. The plaintif, a child, is suing his school. The child is a bully, but one day one of the people he was bullying stabbed him. So, he is claiming that the school is responsible for his stabbing, as it breached its duty of care by allowing him to bully the kid, who stabbed him as a result. Sound ridiculous? Well the organisers of the mock case obviously thought that the plaintif's side had a chance! Or maybe they just wanted it to be really unfair... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boen_robot Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 To add my 2 cents on the subject, let me tell you what's the current Bulgarian law. Any user of an illegal intellectual property is never threatened eg. if I have a pirate copy of Windows (which I do BTW), the police can't come here to arrest me for it even if they knew all about it (and considering the fact that I've done a few policemen's own computers with pirated Windows copies, I suppose they pretty much know that already).All sorts of spreaders of pirated software are threatened however. Linkers, or hosters of pirated content, doesn't matter. If you provice means to it without consulting the author, the police can fall upon you.This essentially means there can't be Bulgarian torrent trackers... or should I say "no torrent trackers hosted in Bulgaria". I mean, there are Bulgarian trackers, but pretty much everyone is hosted on foreign countries that have other policies. By Bulgarian laws, the web hosting provider must remove the site if the site author declines, but this may not be the case at the other country where the site is hosted.One situation is not clear from all of this though. What about sites that offer free hosting, and means to search in people's spaces (a site in mind: http://data.bg)? Are the site admins responsible, or their users? Currently, it seems as the site admins are responsible, and as such, they must immediatly delete all illegal software they are notified about (regardless of whether it's the copyright holder or not). Despite that, the law doesn't enfore them to hire moderators to check up on everything added, and because of that, if they ignore a copyright violation report, they can safely say later in court "We never received a complaint, will delete it now".NOTE: "Software" also includes multimedia and games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Burn Eggroll Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 This can turn into a philosophy discussion. There are ethical/moral/legal considerations. Will your action deprive, or assist another to deprive, someone of a right? See: Wiki:civil conspiracy Good intentions is not always a legal defense. I like your idea. Limit it to providing links to only copywrite holder postings. We need a clean service that does this. TV networks have a websites where they post some videos. Some networks post on video sites: Fox is on Myspace. CBS (CBS) has many of its prime-time shows on Veoh, as do NBC (GE) and Fox (NWS). I could use a list Wow, a list of non-pirated TV postings!Tougher Question: Can you collect a fee (from advertising or membership) for providing this service without compensating someone (the actual host and/or copywrite holder)? another ethical/moral/legal dilemma. ---------- Going to prison in defense of freedom is an ultimate oxymoron. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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