That's a really, really shoddy legal argument to be making, and I don't think that it'll hold up in court. Problem is though, you have to be willing to take them to court to see it through.

Do we have a Videosift Legal Fund?

Wow, that's messed up. I don't know about UK law, but "facilitation" is definitely a no-no in the U.S. Just ask the original napster folks. Or james and dag about why vids are immediately removed when a copyright holder makes a claim.

But damn, they're charging him criminally?? I'm assuming criminal since he was arrested.

IANL, but it seems that Sift Partners Incorporated would be on good standing in the US so long as they continue to comply with any take down notices. TV Links likely got busted because they are in the UK and from what I understand Europe does not have a similar safe harbor provision.

Another thought does occur to me however. Does having the partners of the corporation posting links as well to possibly infringing content create additional liability? These remain very difficult times for people wanting to enjoy content through the internets.

IANAL too, but I can assure with a reasonable chance of being right, that here in Italy it's completely random. Really.
They have no idea about what they are doing about anything computer-related, so they do something random when they feel they like to.
At the moment they are trying to declare blogs illegal unless they are registered, or pay special taxes, or something like that. Of course no one belive they will actually manage to do something like that, but that's how it works here: just random.

I think that tv links was also giving links to full episodes which we have taken a pretty firm stance against. Were that not the case I doubt they would have been targeted as quickly.

Oh totally James, TVLinks was full episodes of shows and cartoons, as well as full movies... sigh, it will be dearly missed

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Not that I'm advocating it - but nature abhors a vacuum.
http://www.surfthechannel.com/

Things got a lot easier once I finally learned torrents.

They got OiNK as well.

true, karaidl, torrents are nice, and usually much better quality... but I am generally pretty paranoid about somehow getting caught downloading stuff by 'the man' and having to pay some crazy fines... at least with tvlinks there was not that issue.

Jonny, TVlinks is not technologically comparable to Napster. Napster was providing the mechanism through which all the data was being transferred - without Napster in existence, nobody would have been able to share music or other files. TVlinks' case is more akin to a case where Slashdot and a number of other sites were sued for putting up links to a site that had information on a specific type of encryption and how to break it, and Slashdot and the other sites were sued for it in the U.S. as a result. Without those sites, people would still have been able to access the information - this somewhat comparable to TVlinks. But I don't know too much about British laws.

As for torrents, I only use private trackers. I don't trust Piratebay, Demonoid, or the rest anymore.

You don't trust them? I can't imagine why, could you explain please?

As a regular habit, Piratebay, Demonoid, and other major public trackers release information on their users to the MPAA etc., or don't change their operating protocols to prevent such information from becoming available. It's not their fault - they have to protect themselves legally. If you follow the spree of lawsuits that the RIAA and such go on, you'll see that about 95% of all such lawsuits for torrent downloading/uploading are on the top 5 to 10 major trackers.

It's not that I don't trust the site admins. It's that I don't trust that I'll be able to download something from their trackers without getting in trouble.

With the millions of torrent users, I'm just a drop in the ocean. I'm not that nervous about anybody coming knocking on my door. The MPAA and RIAA have taken very little action against individual users, and they're very afraid of actually losing a case, so any hint of a losing argument and they'll run away. In fact, some people have won on the basis that an IP address is not a person.

And since when is TPB releasing info to the MPAA?? I need some sources on that, stat! It's almost every other week at this point where TPB comes up on Digg or TorrentFreak for their defiance against those that have tried suing them, and have you ever read their legal issues section on their website? Hilarious!