TV Links Shutdown: Implications

So, apparently the popular TV/Movie link site “TV Links” has been shutdown on friday, according to news sources on the internet. A great commentary on this situation can be found on this Guardian blog.

It brings up an interesting question: is linking illegal? How can I be sure that what I’m linking to is legal or not? For that matter, if linking is illegal, then is viewing the content illegal? What about the things that most people don’t realize is possibly illegal, like mixing in copyrighted music into video files. What about taking videos of computer games, how legal is that?

This is rather similar to the shutdown of the Pirate Bay, where all they were hosting were (essentially) links to download the alleged illegal content. Does that mean it’s illegal for me to post a link to the pirate bay, since they may host illegal content. And then theres all the sites that Google links, wonder how much illegal content they link to. *sighs*

Of course, the biggest problem here is that the people in the studios and recording industry making these decisions are morons.  Seriously. One of the reasons TV links was shutdown was because they were able to profit from their enterprise.. well, why haven’t the studios profited off of this concept? Same thing goes for mp3’s… one of the primary reasons I think people use these questionable or outright illegal resources is because its way easier and far cheaper to use those as opposed to legit resources.

Instead of spending money on prosecuting and finding these alleged pirates, why don’t they provide a equal or better service that they can monetize? Thats how the free market works, people use the best services.

Most of the TV networks now have streaming video on their sites of the current season, with commercials, and I think this is a definite step in the right direction. I’m not sure how much they’re making off of it, but certainly I would rather watch high quality video immediately on their site rather than using other ways to do it, and I think as these become more popular more consumers will agree.

Of course, I’m not really saying anything new here, people keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Maybe one day they will learn.

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