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If you check out
the CRACKED forums, you’ll notice
a lot of heated debate about "Sin," the proprietor of the defunct tv-links domain,
having his site shut down and being sued for copyright infringement. In case you hadn’t guessed or are pretending not to be an accomplice, tv-links used to post links to thousands of hours of up-to-date TV shows and movies, all for your viewing pleasure (and a tidy advertising profit).
First of all, if you don’t want to look suspicious, don’t name yourself Sin. It can only refer to a base act of human corruption or the world-devouring monster from
Final Fantasy X, and neither association is going to help your public image much.
Secondly, as that forums thread proves, there is a lot of controversy among Internet citizens about the ethics of the case, all of it centered around complex metaphors that don’t hold much water. The debate goes something like this:
Sin is aiding and abetting the crime of copyright infringement, and is therefore suable. He’s like a drug dealer. He may not make the drugs, but he sells them.
No, Sin only linked videos posted by others. He’s like a guy who tells you where you can go to get drugs, but you don’t get them from him.
But he made money off the service. He’s like a guy who you pay to tell you where the best place in the city to get drugs is.