Putlocker is one of various online

file hosting A file-hosting service, cloud-storage service, online file-storage provider, or cyberlocker is an internet hosting service specifically designed to host user files. It allows users to upload files that could be accessed over the internet afte ...

index websites used for

streaming Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...

entertainment media, particularly films and television series, for free. The initial website originated in the United Kingdom as early as 2011, and grew to receive millions of daily visitors after the shutdown of Megaupload. In May 2016, the website was blocked in the UK by a High Court

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of ...

, and at its peak prior to a temporary closure in late 2016,

Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. was an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stoc ...

listed Putlocker as ranking among the top 250 most-visited websites worldwide. Putlocker has been reported by the

Motion Picture Association The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu ...

(MPA) as a major

piracy Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

threat. Putlocker's domain address has changed multiple times throughout its history, with a number of URLs bearing the Putlocker name being suspended or seized. It is not publicly known whether an official Putlocker website maintained by the original team remains available online, but at least fifty

mirror A mirror or looking glass is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of the im ...

or proxy websites, many of which use the Putlocker name, have been identified.

History

Launch and popularity

Putlocker originated in the United Kingdom under the URL putlocker.com. In early January 2012, the website received about 800,000 visitors a day, but after the popular website Megaupload was shut down due to

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...

, Putlocker began receiving approximately 1.6 million visitors a day. The website's operations officer, Adrian Petroff, found Megaupload's closure worrying, stating "who needs

SOPA Sopa or SOPA may refer to: * Sopa (tribe), an Albanian tribe of the Sharr Mountains * Lake Sopa, Albania * School of Performing Arts Seoul, an arts high school in Seoul, South Korea * Senior Officer Present Afloat, a term used in the U.S. Navy ...

when a studio exec can make a wish/hit list and sites 'voluntarily' shut down?" In March 2012, Putlocker was identified by Alfred Perry, vice president for worldwide content protection at

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

, as one of the "top 5 rogue cyberlocker services". The website's URL was changed to putlocker.bz, an address which was seized by the

Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a unit of the City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud. It was established in 2013 with the responsibility to investigate and deter serious and organised intellectual property c ...

of the UK in June 2014, and was subsequently changed to putlocker.is, a domain located in Iceland. In India, Putlocker and its clones have been blocked since the website first gained prominence in 2011, this followed from a court injunction in a case filed by

Reliance BIG Pictures Reliance Entertainment Pvt Ltd is an Indian media and entertainment company. It is a division of Reliance Group, handling its media and entertainment business, across content and distribution platforms. The company was founded on 15 February 20 ...

, ordering the blocking of file sharing websites which hosted copyrighted content. In 2014, "Putlocker" was reported as being one of the top trending search queries on

Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the List of most visited websites, most-visi ...

in Canada for that year.

2016–present

From around early October 2016, the putlocker.is address displayed an error stating that the website's host service was inaccessible. Around this time, the

(MPA) reported Putlocker to the

Office of the United States Trade Representative The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is an agency of the United States federal government responsible for developing and promoting American trade policy. Part of the Executive Office of the President, it is headed by the ...

as a piracy threat. The MPAA revealed that Putlocker operated from Vietnam, and that its servers were hosted by the Swiss company Private Layer. Prior to its closure, putlocker.is was listed among the 250 top websites globally and the top 150 in the United States, according to

Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture camera People * Alexa (name), a given name a ...

data. A

mirror site Mirror sites or mirrors are replicas of other websites or any network node. The concept of mirroring applies to network services accessible through any protocol, such as HTTP or FTP. Such sites have different URLs than the original site, but hos ...

under the address putlocker.today appeared shortly 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 became active again, redirecting its users to the updated URL putlockers.ch. On 27 February 2017, the putlockers.ch address was suspended after a ruling by a ''Tribunal d'arrondissement'' of Luxembourg in favour of the

Belgian Entertainment Association The Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA) is the organization that represents the interests of the music, video and video game industries in Belgium. It was founded in February 2008, when three organizations merged, namely IFPI Belgium, the loc ...

, and the URL transferred ownership to EuroDNS. The

chief legal officer A general counsel, also known as chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO), is the chief in-house lawyer for a company or a governmental department. In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their ...

of EuroDNS, Luc Seufer, stated that EuroDNS is required to "prevent any 'reactivation' of this domain name utlockers.chuntil its expiration date". Following the seizure of the putlockers.ch address, the previously used putlocker.is domain was made functional again. In March 2017, it was reported that

Ted Osius Theodore George Osius III (born 1961) is an American diplomat and the former United States Ambassador to Vietnam. Early life and education Osius grew up in Annapolis, Maryland. He attended The Putney School in Vermont, graduating in 1979. Osiu ...

, then

United States Ambassador to Vietnam The United States ambassador to Vietnam ( Vietnamese: ''Đại sứ Hoa Kỳ tại Việt Nam'') is the chief American diplomat to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. After the First Indochina War and the defeat of the French domination over Vietna ...

, held a meeting with Truong Minh Tuan, Vietnam's Minister of Information and Communications, during which Osius urged for the criminal prosecution of Putlocker, along with the websites 123Movies and KissCartoon, for copyright infringement. Not long after, putlocker.is, which changed to putlockertv.is and subsequently putlockers.cc, was reported to redirect visitors to a scamming site. In May 2017, at least three working sites bearing the Putlocker name were known to be available: putlocker.rs, with a Serbian

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

(TLD), putlockertv.ist, with an Istanbulite TLD, and putlockerhd.is, with an Icelandic one. In July 2017, the ''

International Business Times The ''International Business Times'' is an American online news publication that publishes five national editions in four languages. The publication, sometimes called ''IBTimes'' or ''IBT'', offers news, opinion and editorial commentary on busi ...

'' reported that "15% of internet 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%)". In August 2017, Justice John Nicholas of the

Federal Court of Australia The Federal Court of Australia is an Australian superior court of record which has jurisdiction to deal with most civil disputes governed by federal law (with the exception of family law matters), along with some summary (less serious) and indic ...

ordered Australian internet service providers to block access to 42 piracy sites in a case brought by

Village Roadshow Village Roadshow Limited is an Australian company which operates cinemas and theme parks, and produces and distributes films. Before being acquired by private equity company BGH Capital, the company was listed on the Australian Securities Ex ...

, with Putlocker, KissCartoon, and GoMovies being among those ordered to be blocked. In June 2018, Trevon Maurice Franklin of

Fresno, California Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

pleaded guilty to violating federal copyright law back in February 2016, when he downloaded the superhero film ''

Deadpool Deadpool is an antihero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist/writer Rob Liefeld, the character first appeared in ''New Mutants'' #98 (cover-dated Feb. 1991). Initially, Deadpo ...

'' from Putlocker and then uploaded it to

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

eight days after the film was released theatrically in the United States. As a result, the film was viewed over 6 million times for free, with the total retail value of the copies being estimated at around $2,500. U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt set 27 September as the sentencing date for the federal class-A misdemeanor, which carries a possible penalty of up to one year in prison, along with a $100,000 fine. 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 community service per week.

References

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External links