How legal is this site? Just had a discussion about this. Doesn't it mean that, when a show is aired, it's in the public domain? Or is this different for all the countries around?
No it's not legal. The show's are not in the public domain after airing, that's why Sky/Cable/ITV etc charge a subscription and or rely on advertising and the BBC has a License fee, they have to buy the right to show them and you pay them to watch. Edit, they get around the fact by only supplying links to the material rather than hosting it directly.
Ok, to take it a little deeper than: how come youtube, divx and the likes get away with it then? Can you explain some? I do understand i'm trodding a grey area here. This is mainly why i posted this. I wouldn't mind getting my mind around this obvious flaw in the law.
It's not so much that they get away with it, there is millions of user uploaded content on those sites, so it becomes very difficult to fully monitor. However, if the shows producers etc request that the content be removed then these sites are legally required to do so.
I guessed something like that. Still makes me wonder about different laws in different countries. I can't seem to notice that they (producers etc.) use a, in their book, convenient country to pull their law from. I mean, shows get aired all over the place don't they? Why can't these be copies from mongolia? And consequently have (hopefully more relaxed) mongolian laws apply? (God i hope they are more relaxed, pictures of polo with human heads come to mind.) Or, isn't it time we recognized Internet as a standalone country?
Your right that some countries have different laws, and if the file is hosted in a country with no copyright laws then there is little that can be done. This doesn't prevent you from breaking the law by downloading the content, if you live in a country with appropriate copyright laws.
@ vetlel some is the ones that are not copyright protected and can be shown by law or the host site has permission. Some of the content has been removed from the hast site by request of the oner, so one way to think of it is if it hasn't been removed you are alloude to watch it.
Anything on there from the BBC which isn't out on DVD is legal provided you have a TV licence. Anything else is pretty much illegal, I'm expecting this thread to be closed soon, on the off-chance that this turns into a pro-piracy thread, which is always bad.
