There was no law forbidding what they did at the time they ran the site, even if there have been law changes since. It's the PirateBay nonsense all over. In that case it was later discovered that one of the police officers investigating the site had previously worked for Warner Brothers before returning to the Swedish police.
Revolving doors [0], IMHO should not be permitted.
The key is usually the part where it's done with the explicit goal of making money exclusively off copyrighted material ("gewerbsmäßig begangene unerlaubte Verwertung von urheberrechtlich geschützten Werken"), that's also why the court case of TPB was so focused on how much money their ad business made.
Google, YouTube and other similar players are very well integrated in the whole DMCA takedown process and you can't really compare them.
Since authorities started cracking down on these streaming link sites, they now have to frequently change their URLs, so ironically general search engines like Google are the fastest way of finding the latest working links. Google has the exact same business model of making money with ads on their site, which people visit to get those links.
It's easy to look up rulings and see that European courts interpret the law the way you say - 100% correct. It's rule of corporations, not rule of law. Google will never be touched, even though they have served a larger number of supposedly illegal links to users. Of course Hollywood doesn't go after them because it's a fight they could not win.
I don't find it very hard to see a difference between "illegal" streaming site with no contact information, imprint or company behind it vs. large companies that have a working legal framework to take down content and do so all the time.
Law (usually) considers the full context of the situation, like the intent, malice, or negligence of the person involved.
1. The primary use case of Google is not to find pirated streams.
2. Google responds to lawful take-down requests.
> Google has the exact same business model of making money with ads on their site, which people visit to get those links.
This is a disingenuous claim for the reasons mentioned above.
> Google will never be touched, even though they have served a larger number of supposedly illegal links to users.
False equivalence for the reasons above. Piracy links are a small fraction of Google's use case, not the primary advertised function. They're also responsive to following lawful requests.
In fact, what if I link to something and it is changed to a copyrighted work silently?
If you make a site that legitimately serves a different purpose, then you accidentally post a single link to pirated content in a truly good-faith accidental manner, then you response to any requests to take it down with a good-faith action in a timely manner, you are in a completely different category than dedicated piracy websites.
There is no equivalence.
Furthermore, the law generally takes intent into account. You can start reading on the general concept on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
Because the real world is vague too. The law is dynamic, not static, any specifics are taken into account by judges and prosecutors, non specifics are speculated, intent and malice is considered, and so on.
>In fact, what if I link to something and it is changed to a copyrighted work silently?
Then you'll 99.99999% just get away with it, as nobody cares for some lowly link.
If (and it's a big if) it attracts attention for some reason (perhaps it gains tons of traffic and suddenly some music/movie label is calling for your prosecution), then you might be prosecuted.
In which case your prosecutor will assume your guilt, your lawyer will argue that you are innocent and somebody switched your original link, and the court will try to find what really went on, after hearing all of them, and checking any evidence, looking into whether there was intent and malice involved, and so on.
Same as if you stayed in a hotel with a friend, and the other day you were found sleeping, and the friend murdered. The law doesn't have a special provision for "but what if somebody else came in the room with a spare key and murdered my friend" either.
Because that was the business model of their predecessor.