Website Owner Could Get Five Years In Jail For Linking To Pirated Site!
 

Brian McCarthy, who found out the hard way that the simple act of linking can land you in prison (because they need another reason to cram people in our more than overcrowded prisons).

His now lifeless website, Channelsurfing.net, which did not host any copyrighted material, just linked to it, led to his arrest for ?criminal copyright infringement for the ?reproduction and distribution? of copyrighted material.? He could spend up to 5 years in jail.

Bryan McCarthy did not possesses, did not broadcast, nor did he copy copyright material. If linking is distribution, then anyone with a blog or website is guilty of breaking the law.

The criminal complaint lodged against McCarthy calls the site "an online portal," which indexed links to live TV streams of sporting events available on other websites.

"Brian McCarthy allegedly sought to profit by intercepting and then streaming live sporting events, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet to make a quick buck through what is little more than high-tech thievery," said Preet Bhara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The complaint alleges McCarthy profited $90,000 from ads on ChannelSurfing.net over the past five years.

If convicted, McCarthy faces up to five years in prison.

Fuck him. Next time base a business on content you have permission to "use" for profit.


.

Sounds good to me.

this is scary :)

So i am guessing they will be going after google next?

Forget google, what YouTube?

google owns youtube fool. did you forget your brain?

What I meant was what about all of these blog sites that link to YouTube videos? There have to be hundreds of sites linking back to their vids.

no that's not what you meant.

And they also police the shit out of it, when they find stolen content its gone, they dont go scour the web for replacement episodes like this guy did.

Youtube, cannot be compared in anyway to this site, not at all, period.

Let us hope this crap gets tossed out of court FAST. It will start a damn witch hunt if this guy gets found guilty.

He should be found guilty. The site is a joke and a slap to any type of legally ran site.

Pay close attention, these are the clowns we NEED them to get, this guy wasn't running a legit operation.

so if google has the site on its seach system, or cnn links to the site, will they be arrested?

their trying scare tactics like they did with the war on drugs. they can't charge all of them. not enough man power period.

Sounds good to me too. Lets see where we go from here.

Let's hope it starts a witch hunt and more of these cunts get closed down.

Calling what he did a "simple act of linking" is being disingenuous and reeks of fake naivety. A blog that links one story to a copyrighted video is one thing, but running an entire site linking to pirated content streams is something totally different. Whether or not it's legal is for the courts to decide, but to call this "simple linking" is not being fair at all to the reader.

Either way, $90K in 5 years is a pretty crappy income considering the risk. He would have been better off just getting a job.

i suspect that people will object and will get millions twittering links to piratebay.

in other words this could back fire big time.

The $90K he made was from the advertising he sold on his site.

i used that site and ATDHE every day - but glad the feds took them down. legal victories and precedents set in piracy cases make it easier for us in porn to sue successfully.

and Google one day could be sued - let them explain to a judge why their top search results for every copyrighted work ever created are links to torrents and file sharing sites.

As someone who is opposed to piracy of copyrighted material, this actually sounds kind of scary to me.

blow me.

It took him 5 years to make 90k? I'd hardly call that a for-profit site, or at least he wasn't very good at it.
WG

Quoted for truth

No.

Please understand "intent".

Google grabs links from everywhere and has no intent to grab specific links
for specific purposes.

Google has no "intent" to direct people to illegal downloads.

This webmaster's "intent" was to provide access to illegal downloads.

Comparison :

If you lead the undercover cop to the actual drug seller then you get arrested too,
because even though you don't have any drugs, you facilitated the crime.

"Duh, officer, I don't host any drugs, I just show you where they are". :1orglaugh

This is what I was thinking too. He didn't just have a single link up to one illegal video, but instead built an entire site around around such illegal content. Having a single link up to a video that may be questionable is one thing, but building a site that allows surfers to download pirated videos illegally is an entirely different thing.

you have to read more closely. he was imbedding copyright violating streams into his site pages. his entire site was built around illegal access, which he was well aware of. the whole deal about just linking is bullshit, because he showed clear intent to aid and abet copyright violation and to profit from it commercially.

he can rot in hell.

Not upset about this at all.

Be interesting to hear the full story on this and exactly what he has been charged with.

I watched some UFC main events on that site and it never felt like I was going to another site. Had a feeling it was only a matter of time before it was taken down.

keep hope alive!

Criminal copyright infringement would be my guess.


:helpme

Yeah that's exactly what the charge sheet has it listed as. :thumbsup

so could this be construed to include any deep linking to specific targets?

so..you couldn't link to say episode 5 season 12 of the simpsons, as it would imply direct knowledge of what is being stolen.

the most you could do was post to the outside main site.

thoughts?

OK, but what I don't understand is why you needed to read that somewhere.
I haven't seen the charge sheet, but that doesn't matter, I know that copyright
is a law.

Why don't you know this and you are in this business?

Stop trying to intellectualize your way around the simple concept :

If you are trying to give away something that someone else is selling
then you are fucking with them and they will find a way to fuck with you.

END!

How about you not "link" to ANY episodes....why in the fuck would you want to?...I don't link to episodes of the simpsons and it would be FUCKING STUPID to do so.

i think blackmonsters and BVF are reading into what i posted the wrong way

i in no way am supporting the copyright theft.
i was thinking more along the lines that the precedence could be used to enforce all sites to stop deep linking to stolen content. Thus hurting their rankings.

Yeah, that would be the point : To stop people from linking to stolen content.

:1orglaugh

Don't link to illegal content.

i was thinking about the offending sites losing their rankings
who cares about all the small joes...if the biggies lose their rankings...then that is a substantial change

anyway..thanks for the back and forth

blogger is full of tv stream pages, so GOOGLE should be arrested?!?!?

Well, then they should put Google behind bars. They are the worst offenders.

:1orglaugh aha, dumbass, google owns youtube....

So anyone with Google Adwords is responsible for the scams that they allow in?

This is insanity and will be kicked out of court.

he was just timeshifting

this is bad... I'm sorry to hear that...