PVR Wire

WebTVwire has an in-depth look at the plight of QuicksilverScreen, a website that provides links to full-length television shows and movies available on sites like YouTube and DailyMotion.

Lawyers for Fox have sent letters to the site's operators, telling them to shut down the site, or transfer ownership. When site's owner tried to sell it, his auction was shut down by SitePoint. He's now trying to give the site away to someone in a country where linking to the videos would not be deemed illegal.

Anyway, YouTube, DailyMotion, and other services that allow users to upload videos are protected under safe harbor laws as long as they remove any copyrighted videos as soon as they are brought to the company's attention. That's because the company took no active steps to violate a copyright, but simply provides a service, where users sometimes violate the law.

Now, in one way, QuicksilverScreen would seem to bear more responsibility than sites like YouTube. The sole purpose of the website is to connect readers with illegal content. There's pretty much nothing the site links to that isn't a copyright violation.

On the other hand, QuicksilverScreen is not actually hosting any illegal material, and it does seem a bit unfair that the site can be bullied out of existence by lawyers when thousands of illegal videos still pepper the landscape of sites like DailyMotion. It's possible that QuicksilverScreen could fight if its owner could afford the lawyers. But he says the site only generates about $400 a month, and while that's not nothing, it's hardly enough to do battle with Fox.

The links on QuicksilverScreen are all still good as of 6:00 on Thursday evening. If anything, I think Google Video, DailyMotion, YouTube and all the rest should consider QuicksilverScreen a service. He's pointing out videos that those companies should probably be removing.