we could probably go back and forth on this for years and as others have said, its grey.
Some say its not illegal since you aren't hosting the illegal content yourself. But that is exactly what torrent trackers were doing (just "linking" to it, not actually hosting it) and we have seen those things get shut down one after another.
If you want to try it out on a small scale, you could theoretically try it out. With a prepaid credit card, proxies, etc it would not be easily traceable to you. It would probably not attract much attention, or if anything you and your hosting company would get requested to remove it.
This is a very grey area and thats what pisses me off about this type of things, the lack of laws which cover these things are so far behind its not even funny, lets look at some examples shall we, but be warned this is based upon my experince in this industry.
First the MPAA can be assholes, yes its true they try to twist whats really there I've seen it done by them more times then anything else, they want people to believe that torrents are illegal but they are actually 100% legal.
They are 100% legal because the technology was created for file sharing but it has been twisted and used now mainly for illegal file sharing, now downloading an illegal file like a movie is NOT and i repeat NOT illegal. This is where they scew things for most people.
You are NOT involved in any illegal downloading of a file like a movie until you download a certain amount of that file then it becomes illegal, torrent files are split up into a few thousand very little bits that you download from various people, now these bits can be a 1x1 pixel so basically nothing, this is not copyrighted and it cannot be copyrighted if it were every letter I'm typing now would be considered copyright infringment, now once you download ohh say 10 seconds of a film which shows actuall information then and only then does it become an illegal activity.
Now with that said lets me get back on topic with TV shows online, First the MPAA nor does the television networks care if you are displaying a fraction of a show, this is still illegal and copyright infringing but they don't care because it makes there shows more popular much more quickly, in return they get more viewers when the full show goes mainstream the return for them outweighs attacking people for it but when there entire show is displayed somewhere then they loose capital and then they get pissed.
You see I'm actually drawing a lot of attention to myself in the TV industry right now and this is what makes me a little worried to jump the gun on some of my websites, now I see so many sites out there that are starting to display the full length shows on there sites, this really only started to happen more and more since sites like NBC.com started to allow you to watch there shows on there sites for free even if you don't have cable, in return I think more people think that because they are doing it thats its ok for them to do it, which isn't right because they are the copyright owners. They no longer care if you have a cable connection because they still earn there cash holding you on there site, its a win win situation for them they can reach much more of an audience for there shows.
Now there are websites out there (Legal Ones) which show these shows on there sites for free just like NBC.com and Fox does. What I'm trying to do is break into that legal factor some more but it seems not to many people like to share how they are getting away with it and for good reason, it saves the market from being flooded.
How I'm drawing attention to myself on this is because I'm actually been trying to gain a business relationship with NBC, FOX, and the CW, my goals are to simply legally display full version shows on my websites, but and here is the real trick, I don't want to display them after they aired, I want to display them the second they air on TV and that is a real challenge because me being a smaller guy trying to influence the bigger guys to give you a deal just doesn't work out as well as you'd like sometimes but I think with perseverance I can pull it off, well hopefully.
Anyway another little example and some information I found out about how Google feels about illegal items, mainly torrents, you see the Adsense team tells me that its illegal to have adsense on your site if you link to a page in which hosts a torrent to download and in return that torrent points to an illegal file like a copyrighted movie.
Even though your not hosting the file on your site your linking to a page which in turn links to a download which in turn is linking to a very very little bit of a file which may be copyrighted material when its all combined together. The line here is so fucking small its unreal, because nothing is illegal until a certain point, that point in technology is extremely small.
Anyway I'll stop typing now since I doubt anyone will actually read this far.
