Fox says that linking to sites that host illegal tv shows is illegal

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 8, 2006
Updated • May 22, 2013
Internet
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Fox, the big media company, is apparently forcing a website owner to shutdown a website for linking to TV shows that have been uploaded to sites such as YouTube or Dailymotion. The company claims that linking to those shows is illegal.

This question never made it to court before it seems - here we have it again. A big company with money enough to pay a dozen lawyers is suing a website owner who probably can't afford to even hire one lawyer.

Now. What would you do? Would you fight for the chance to win this uphill battle risking everything you got in the course of it? Or would you give in although you may have every right to link to those websites and shows? It is indeed a difficult question and I'm really not sure how I would react if I would face such a situation.

Would you personally say that linking to a movie on YouTube for instance is illegal if the movie itself has been illegally uploaded to the site? Would not it make more sense to sue YouTube instead - they are hosting the content, or the uploader who uploaded it to the site?

So, why didn't they sue Google or the uploader instead? Could it be that Google has enough money to hire even more lawyers who would defend their site? Could it be that Fox is not interested in a ruling at all?

Other organizations, the RIAA for instance, uses the same strategy to sue people. If you are facing fines in the millions and a company that has access to vast resources and an army of lawyers, you may be hard pressed to go against it in court.

The main question however is the following: If it is indeed illegal to link to illegal content why aren't they suing the search engines? What if a website changes content and has now something illegal on their site? Do webmasters have to check all the sites that they link to every day to make sure there is nothing hosted on them that could get them in trouble?

Where will this end? Can they sue me if I talk to someone in person and tell him that he should search for Simpsons on YouTube to find and watch the latest episodes? What if someone does not link directly to the shows but to a search results page? Still illegal? What if he writes down the name that his visitors should search for and links only to the main address of the video hosting site? Still illegal? Where does it end?

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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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