The Czech Pirate Party launched a web site www.piratskefilmy.cz, where people can find 20,000 links to more than 5,800 movies. The movies themselves are not located on the web site. By publishing the links, the Pirates are bringing attention to the absurd case of a high school student in Liberec who has been harassed by the Czech Anti-Pirate Union and the police. Publication of links on the Internet is not a crime. The number of links on the web site of the Pirate Party exceeds roughly ten times the number of links on the Liberec student’s web site.

The sixteen-year-old boy from Liberec has been accused of placing Internet links on his web site. The Czech Anti-Pirate Union "calculated" the alleged damages at EUR 5,700,000 (CZK 138,000,000). By bullying young people, the Czech Anti-Pirate Union, with the help of the  state, is attempting in vain to salvage the old business model which has ceased to function in the age of the Internet.

The accused has been charged after a six-month period. In the meantime, the virtual damages have mysteriously dropped to EUR 5,000,000 (CZK 122,000,000). So, what did the supposed criminal do? The same thing as the most frequented Czech website seznam.cz: he placed links to other web sites accessible to the public on his web page. Websites such as Facebook and Google engage in practically the same activity when they link to or embed addresses.

The Slovak Collecting Society (SOZA) tried to abuse the copying monopoly when it attempted to collect fees for embedded YouTube videos. However, Internet protests forced its director Vladimír Repčík to acknowledge that "the use of hypertext links and the so-called embedding codes does not amount to access by the public to author’s work, according to the copyright law."

Even  though a court decision has not yet been announced, many Czech  "experts" hold the opposing view. It is no wonder since they are  employed by companies such as IFPI, OSA (Czech Collecting Society), ČPÚ  (Czech Anti-Pirate Union), or BSA. For instance, Petra Žikovská is the  secretary of the Copyright Institute at the Charles University while at  the same time, she files criminal charges against high school students  on behalf of the IFPI. These interpretations come from people with a  conflict of interest.

A link is not a crime! Linking to a web address and embedding in a web page are not sharing of an artistic work in the sense of the copying law as much as a statement that the Lidice movie is going to be featured in the Aero movie theater at 8:30 p.m., or a TV program commonly purchased at a newsstand are not.

Paulo Coelho, the author of worldwide best-selling books, commented on the copying of links with the following words: "When I was active on Myspace, Fly me to the moon (Frank Sinatra) was deleted from my profile. So, who deleted the song? The answer is simple: greed and ignorance. Greed that does not understand that this world has changed. Ignorance that thinks that if the music is available for free, people are not going to buy the CD."

The chairman of the Czech Pirates Ivan Bartoš states: "We denounce that the police should be run by the propaganda of the Anti-Pirate Union and that it should harass anybody who puts a video on his/her web page or Facebook page. We challenge the Anti-Pirate Union to stop bullying the under aged and to aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party."

The Pirate Party runs its linking web site in cooperation with the kinotip.cz
portal.