It seems that www.tv-links.co.uk has been shut down, in what's apparently the "first closure of a major UK-based pirate site".
I thought tv-links was hosted in the Netherlands or somewhere, as it has been shut down before and they moved the hosting. No doubt it will rise again like such sites do, or something just as good will come along to take its place.
The Guardian Online states that "The Federation Against Copyright Theft (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."
As has been noted about a million times previously, surely it would be more producive to close down the sites that actual host these sites...oh wait, YouTube has already paid off the MPAA and FACT, haven't they?
Guess what people...those 2500 jobs that are to go at the BBC? It's all the fault of TV-links users:
"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," Kieron Sharp, head of FACT, 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.
Perhaps if the BBC featured something other than repeats, and ITV had programmes without fixed competitions, then we might not have to go online to view programmes. Or if they hosted repeats of recent programmes on their own websites, then people wouldn't have to look elsewhere or be forced to download their (Windows-only) software to watch a tiny number of selected repeats.
Anyway, full article from the Guardian Online is here: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2195407,00.html
