Last Friday a multinational task force with no fucking clue about how the internet works
arrested the owner and shut down the servers of tv-links.co.uk.

Here’s the thing, there was no content hosted on TV-L, all the content was hosted on
video streaming sites and then hotlinked into html pages served up – it was an index of where to find
these shows, a public service, centralizing and organizing the massive amount of content available elsewhere online.

And even more important, TV-L went out of its way to obscure the source of these files and prevent downloading.

Yes.

They had a model where you could watch streaming video but not download the files, even when the sites that
actually hosted the files allowed for downloading.

So where are all the users going to go that no longer can watch shows streaming online, bypassing the process of downloading?

Well, to Azureus which relies on embedded players and rests on top of a bittorrent client, if they don’t just continue using other sites based on the exact same model.

In other words, by raiding a website that did nothing more than find content HOSTED ELSEWHERE and embedding flash files into their own
html pages TO PREVENT DOWNLOADS, the police have effectively INCREASED piracy while redirecting traffic to sites that don’t have the exacting standards of PREVENTING DOWNLOADS that Tv-L has had since early this year when they came out of beta, to wit:

TV-Links.co.uk Raided, Owner Arrested: UPDATED

“In the guardian article, it says the we would our visitors download stuff.
That’s not really true. Sure, with the proper knowledge, you can
download everything that your browser displays.
BUT: We did everything we could to make it as hard as possible for the
users to actually download and save the file. No direct download links
or anything. No posts on the forums allowed to the pages on the hosts
where you CAN download them.
OK, the stage 6 player makes it fairly easy but even there we tried
maksed the actual ID from the video. (And even there where the player
has its own download folder and all… most people still couldn’t figure
that out)
So, I think we did a fairly good job to protect the files from
downloading. At least way better than the hosts themselves.”

I’ve already written extensively
about how what we’re seeing isn’t pirate culture but the cultural drive toward archival, that
we should be championing amatuer librarians rather than fining and incarcerating pirates, so I’ll try to keep my rants to a minimum here
and simply round up the coverage on TV-L and OiNK raids, both of which are being seriously mis-represented in the mainstream news coverage.

Thank the gods there’s a voice of reason on the Guardian website for the UK. Here’s Jack Schofield’s posts on these matters:

TV Links Shut Down for Linking

Another Raid, Another Arrest – OiNK Torrent Tracker Closed

This isn’t the only torrent scandal erupting online, as Comcast has finally been caught ‘shaping traffic’ and as a result defrauding its customers.
Even more damning, it’s not just torrent traffic they’ve been caught manipulating, but also Gnutella and Lotus Notes. Apparently
this technique is used by China ISP’s. (Glad to see that cheap plastic crap for Target isn’t the only thing we’re importing from the
Chinese Army.)

Comcast into the fires of hell

-Robert X. Cringely

How Embracing Piracy Jumpstarted Brazilian Music

Believe It Or Not, The Music Industry Is Growing

iTunes iTakes iT

In an effort to calculate the UK record industry’s “value gap” (the amount of recorded music revenue lost since 2004), private consulting group Capgemini has suggested legit download services such as iTunes have hurt musicians’ pockets worse than piracy.

You fucking idiots.

I’m talking to you, yeah you, the people building cases on behalf of corporate entities to
restrict the growth and development of music and culture.

You can smell your own death, you know it’s only a few years until the world you know collapses around you
and no I’m not talking environmental disaster - I’m talking middleman management.

The new model of advertising, of selling, of marketing, isn’t from the top down but from within the smart swarms,
the reputations, the believable repeaters, the providers and content generators.

To rely on the old media marketplace despite the proven growth patterns developing in the wake of new technology
is a unique insanity wherein which old money is manipulating institutionalized old media attitudes to prevent its extinction.

Let it die. There is no theft here, nothing was lost, nothing was stolen, and new models for media economy needs to be put into place immediately. The next generation has seen through the bullshit and how it’s all rigged, you realize.

Inside the Mind of a 9 Year Old File-Sharer