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TVLinks Owner Arrested in UK - Conspiracy to Abet Copyright infringement?

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 

[Don't know if the UK has "conspiracy" in its legal system. In the US,
"conspiracy to do something bad" is the catch-all used for all kinds of
arrests of people the Guvamint doesn't like. Since the site hosted no
copyrighted content, they are charging this guy with "facilitation of
copyright infringement"  because he had links to sites with video. 
Sounds a little like the equivalent of "incitement to" commit a crime
in the US sort of -- and a little like the USA's "conspiracy"
catch-all -- but "conspiracy" requires evidence of communication
between at least two people. Or at least it did, pre-Ashcroft. Who
knows now... maybe they have decided that "conspiracy of consciousness,"
to use Chomsky's phrase, is now a crime.

All this for television shows? Incredible. More seriously, it
means that the practice itself of using the Web to list links is now
potentially criminal in the UK. Bibliographers of the world, beware!-NYTr]

DSL Reports - Oct 20, 2007
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/TVLinks-Owner-Arrested-88623

TVLinks Owner Arrested

UK frowns on copyright infringement

Tipped by robertfl

Have you ever headed to TVLinks to find access to your favorite
television shows online? You wont be doing so any longer. After months
of topping the lists of blog posts dedicated to pointing you in the
right direction for streaming video of popular television shows, the
site has been shut down. The owner of the site, a 26-year-old man in
the UK, has been arrested for his role in the piracy. 

Whats interesting here is that the site itself hosted no content at
all. It simply provided links to where content could be found online.
So whats the charge? Facilitation of copyright infringement. Does that
mean that all of those people who posted on their blogs to lead people
to TVLinks are at risk as well? That would be legally stretching things
a bit but its a reminder to be careful about just what youre linking
to on a regular basis.


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