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Can you go to jail for link aggregation?

10.03.2011
"This domain name has been seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Special Agent in Charge New York Office in accordance with a seizure warrant obtained by the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. / It is unlawful to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material, such as movies, music, software or games, without authorization."

If you saw the text above on a Web site, replete with the seals of the Department of Justice, the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, and Homeland Investigations, you'd most likely think the domain belonged to some really bad people.

JUSTIFIED?

What could the owner have done to get their site shuttered like that? Maybe serve as an archive for the illegal distribution of box office movies? An illegal repository for commercial music? Distributing "cracked" commercial software?

In the case of and Brian McCarthy, the owner of the site, the problem was none of those things. His site was shut down and Mr. McCarthy was arrested last week and charged with criminal copyright infringement, a crime that carries a punishment of five years in prison.

It turns out McCarthy was running a link aggregation service that pointed to other Web sites where streaming TV shows and sportscasts, many of them illegal, could be found. Moreover, when you clicked on a link on Channelsurfing, the target URL was opened in a new window and the illegal material was displayed with a surrounding banner that showed advertisements.