Putlocker describes various online file hosting index sites utilized for streaming entertainment media, especially movies and television series, for totally free. The preliminary site came from in the United Kingdom as early as 2011, and grew to receive millions of everyday visitors after the shutdown of Megaupload. In Might 2016, the website was obstructed in the UK by a High Court order, [2] and at its peak prior to a temporary closure in late 2016, Alexa Web noted Putlocker as ranking amongst the top 250 most-visited websites worldwide. Putlocker has actually been reported by the Movement Photo Association of America (MPAA) as a major piracy threat.
Putlocker's domain address has altered numerous times throughout its history, with a number of URLs bearing the Putlocker name being suspended or seized. It is not publicly recognized whether a main Putlocker website kept by the original team remains offered online, however at least fifty mirror or proxy websites, much of which use the Putlocker name, have been determined.
Putlocker came from the United Kingdom under the URL putlocker.com. In early January 2012, the website received about 800,000 visitors a day, however after the popular site Megaupload was shut down due to copyright infringement, Putlocker started getting around 1.6 million visitors a day The site's operations officer, Adrian Petroff, found Megaupload's closure stressing, stating "who needs SOPA when a studio exec can make a wish/hit list and websites 'willingly' closed down?"
In March 2012, Putlocker was identified by Alfred Perry, vice president for worldwide material protection at Paramount Pictures, as one of the "top 5 rogue cyberlocker services". [8] The site's URL was altered to putlocker.bz, an address which was taken by the Cops Copyright Criminal Offense Unit of the UK in June 2014, and was subsequently changed to putlocker.is, a domain located in Iceland.
2016-- present.
From around early October 2016, the putlocker.is address showed a mistake mentioning that the site's host service was inaccessible. [10] Around this time, the Movie Association of America (MPAA) reported Putlocker to the Workplace of the United States Trade Representative as a piracy threat. The MPAA exposed that Putlocker ran from Vietnam, which its servers were hosted by the Swiss business Personal Layer.
Prior to its closure, putlocker.is was listed among the 250 leading sites internationally and the leading 150 in the United States, according to Alexa information. A mirror website under the address putlocker.today appeared quickly after the assumed termination of putlocker.is, and on October 17, 2016, an address under the name putlocker9.com was reported to be available.
On 2 November 2016, the putlocker.is address ended up being active once again, redirecting its users to the updated URL putlockers.ch.On 27 February 2017, the putlockers.ch address was suspended after a judgment by a Tribunal d'arrondissement of Luxembourg in favour of the Belgian Entertainment Association, and the URL moved ownership to EuroDNS. The chief legal officer of EuroDNS, Luc Seufer, stated that EuroDNS is needed to "prevent any 'reactivation' of this domain name [putlockers.ch] till its expiration date". Following the seizure of the putlockers.ch address, the previously used putlocker.is domain was made practical again.
In March 2017, it was reported that Ted Osius, then United States Ambassador to Vietnam, held a conference with Truong Minh Tuan, Vietnam's Minister of Info and Communications, during which Osius prompted for the prosecution of Putlocker, in addition to the sites 123Movies and KissCartoon, for copyright violation.
Not long after, putlocker.is, which changed to putlockertv.is and subsequently putlockers.cc, was reported to redirect visitors to a scamming site. [16] In May 2017, a minimum of 3 working websites bearing the Putlocker name were understood to be offered: putlocker.rs, with a Serbian high-level domain (TLD), putlockertv.ist, with an Istanbulite TLD, and putlockerhd.is, with an Icelandic one.
In July 2017, the International Service Times reported that "15% of web users in the UK are either infringing copyright through streaming or illegal downloads, with pirated TV material primarily accessed through Kodi (16%) or Putlocker (17%)". [18] In August 2017, Justice John Nicholas of the Federal Court of Australia ordered Australian internet service providers to block access to 42 piracy websites in a case brought by Town Roadshow, with Putlocker, KissCartoon, and GoMovies being amongst those bought to be blocked.
In June 2018, Trevon Maurice Franklin of Fresno, California pleaded guilty to violating federal copyright law back in February 2016, when he downloaded the superhero movie Deadpool from Putlocker and then submitted it to Facebook eight days after the film was released theatrically in the United States. read more [20] As a result, the film was viewed over 6 million times for free, with the total retail value of the copies being approximated at around $2,500. [21] U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt set 27 September as the sentencing date for the federal class-A misdemeanor, which brings a possible charge of approximately one year in jail, together with a $100,000 fine. [20] After missing the September 27 sentencing hearing, Franklin was sentenced in October to 24 days in federal detention followed by a year of supervised release, including 20 hours of neighborhood service per week.