Is this the death of 101GreatGoals.com? If so, we’re taking others down with us!
Yesterday saw the sad arrest of a 26-year old British guy who put together the popular, updated television and movie directory, tv.links.co.uk.
The arrest was conducted under the auspices of FACT - the Federation Against Copyright Theft - or better known as those people who put up that “do not steal” advert before every movie. The allegations brought against the accused were for the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet.
For those of you who are unaware of the website in question, the premise of the site was to simply pool together a series of catagorised links of TV, movies and anime shows to provide an orderly one-stop-shop for users’ entertainment fix. Critically however, as is the case for 101GreatGoals.com, the website never uploaded, hosted or created any of the links on the site. tv-links.co.uk just pointed users in the direction of already existing content. (This video shows the site in action.)
Alongside tv-links.co.uk stands many other websites of the same genre, who must all be wiping the sweat from their brow worrying that THEY may be the next on the hit-list. I wonder how Sidereel, GreatStuffTV, OVGuide and AllofTV (to name but a few) will be sleeping at night.
So are we sweating? I cannot lie that I just had to reapply a thick layer of deodorant.
Yet I find myself comforted by the company we keep. Many of the major mainstream online newspapers copy exactly what we do, linking to football videos which are hosted on websites such as Google’s YouTube. For a long time now the Guardian’s online edition have run a YouTube-dedicated weekly round up article, and linked to updated YouTube clips in editorials covering the weekend’s action in the world of football (recent examples here and here).
Yet the Guardian is not alone in this practice. YouTube links are also found in articles written on The Times’ online website. Right now, if you go to the football page at The Times you can see many clips to YouTube material adopted as video evidence supporting the words on the screen.
Our objective at 101GreatGoals.com is to make football clips available to those who truly own the game, yet are denied access to their sport - namely the fans. No doubt, the arrest of tv-links.co.uk makes me concerned. I do not want to get arrested. Yet, the truth remains that if there were no clips on YouTube and the other video hosting sites, then unfortunately the online football community would be left starving. As you, the reader, know only too well (judging by the emails we receive), videos that we link to often get taken down from the host website to illustrate this point in action.
Whilst the steady stream of football clips is still largely available, the scare tactics involved in this latest online episode will likely scare some into submission, and force them to heed to the calls of the fat cats. The authorities know how to turn off the tap, yet they avoid the big players and bully the little guys. For my part, I will now endeavor to sleep with one-eye open at night.
