you all most of heard sites like peekvid and many others where you can watch tv shows and even movies. and all of them claim in there disclaimers that they are 100% legal because they only link to content. are these sites really legal?
Well because there are no videos on the site and it just links you to them. It would make the sites actually having them and the person downloading/viewing at fault. So Peekvid would be legal.
Can't agree with ChubbyInc. Disclaimers are like paper armor. They don't save you if you're actually breaking the law. This has come up before. A site which streams videos that are hosted at another site may well be breaking the law in the USA and maybe in a lot of other countries as well, especially if they re doing it to help viewers to get around restrictions placed by the copyright owner. There are no clear rules, but in court, a lot would turn on the good faith, or lack of it, of an allegedly infinging site.
Indochine - That would only apply to american websites and american users. If the website was located overseas and the user didn't live in the US, then it wouldn't apply. All countries have their own rules. Example ThePirateBay which was taken down, but was up less than a week later, because nothing was found on their servers, just links.
I'm glad to be Canadian. We have rules here, but no where near as invasive as our southern counterpart. But all our laws contradict one another.
When I was staying at a hotel in Perpignan (France), I met two charming Canadian ladies from Winnipeg. We were talking about crossing the Atlantic, and I said in a roundabout way that if I ever did cross that ocean, it would either be to visit Canada or Latin America. I didn't want to approach the subject too directly in case I offended them. I need not have worried! They grinned broadly and one said to me, "Do you know, every day I thank the good Lord he made me Canadian".