TV piracy site shut down

British authorities have managed to shut down one of the largest television piracy sites in the world. FACT and the Gloucestershire Police, working in cooperation with each other, have shut down TV-Links.co.uk and arrested the site's owner and operator. This means that there are only a few thousand sites left for you can nab your favourites from.

"Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites," said a FACT spokesman.

FACT claims that the site provided access to major motion pictures that had been recorded in cinemas and then uploaded to the Internet.

While the piracy community has taken another loss, it won't be long before another suitable site is found by many. As many people say, that's only one site that is down and ten more will pop up to replace it. The battle against pirates will be a never-ending one until another P2P tool replaces torrenting.

That still won't stop FACT from taking action against other websites that promote the distribution of copyrighted material though. Kieron Sharp, director general of FACT, says that TV-Links is only the first of many to be targeted by the organisation.

"The theft and distribution of films harms the livelihoods of those working in the UK film industry and in ancillary industries, as well as damaging the economy," he said.

The problem though, is that many people view the prices of today's television shows, music, and movies to be far too high for what they offer. A cheaper digital distribution model could help alleviate some of the illegal downloads, but we all know that nothing will entirely stop it from happening. When Internet users were given the opportunity to pick their own price when it came to purchasing the latest Radiohead album, many preferred to not pay at all and just grabbed it from P2P networks.

Maybe one of these days, the motion picture and music industries will come to their senses and work along side their customers instead of treating them like cattle. But then again, I have better odds of becoming a multi-millionaire than that happening.

Were you a member of TV-Links before the closure? Were you disappointed upon hearing about it being shut down? Leave your condolences over in the forums.