Putlocker refers to different online file hosting index websites used for streaming entertainment media, especially movies and tv series, free of charge. The initial website stemmed in the UK as early as 2011, and grew to get millions of daily visitors after the shutdown of Megaupload. In May 2016, the site was obstructed in the UK by a High Court order, [2] and at its peak prior to a momentary closure in late 2016, Alexa Internet listed Putlocker as ranking among the leading 250 most-visited sites worldwide. Putlocker has been reported by the Movie Association of America (MPAA) as a significant piracy danger.
Putlocker's domain address has changed multiple times throughout its history, with a variety of URLs bearing the Putlocker name being suspended or taken. It is not publicly known whether a main Putlocker site preserved by the original team stays offered online, but at least fifty mirror or proxy sites, a lot of which use the Putlocker name, have been identified.
Putlocker came from the UK 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 roughly 1.6 million visitors a day The website's operations officer, Adrian Petroff, discovered Megaupload's closure stressing, specifying "who needs SOPA when a studio officer can make a wish/hit list and websites 'voluntarily' shut down?"
In March 2012, Putlocker was recognized by Alfred Perry, vice president for around the world content protection at Paramount Pictures, as one of the "leading 5 rogue cyberlocker services". [8] The site's URL was changed to putlocker.bz, an address which was taken by the Cops Copyright Crime Unit of the UK in June 2014, and was consequently changed to putlocker.is, a domain located in Iceland.
2016-- present.
From around early October 2016, the putlocker.is address showed a mistake stating that the site's host service was unattainable. [10] Around this time, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) reported Putlocker to the Workplace of the United States Trade Agent as a piracy threat. The MPAA exposed that Putlocker ran from Vietnam, and that its servers were hosted by the Swiss company Personal Layer.
Prior to its closure, putlocker.is was listed among the 250 leading websites globally and the leading 150 in the United States, according to Alexa information. A mirror site under the address putlocker.today appeared quickly after the presumed 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 upgraded 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 primary legal officer of EuroDNS, Luc Seufer, specified that EuroDNS is needed to "avoid any 'reactivation' of this domain name [putlockers.ch] till its expiration date". Following the seizure of the putlockers.ch address, the formerly used putlocker.is domain was made practical once again.
In March 2017, it was reported that Ted Osius, then United States Ambassador to Vietnam, held a meeting with Truong Minh Tuan, read more Vietnam's Minister of Details and Communications, throughout which Osius urged for the prosecution of Putlocker, together with the websites 123Movies and KissCartoon, for copyright violation.
Not long after, putlocker.is, which changed to putlockertv.is and subsequently putlockers.cc, was reported to reroute visitors to a scamming site. [16] In May 2017, a minimum of 3 working sites bearing the Putlocker name were understood to be offered: putlocker.rs, with a Serbian top-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 internet users in the UK are either infringing copyright through streaming or prohibited downloads, with pirated TELEVISION material mostly accessed through Kodi (16%) or Putlocker (17%)". [18] In August 2017, Justice John Nicholas of the Federal Court of Australia purchased Australian internet service companies to block access to 42 piracy websites in a case brought by Village Roadshow, with Putlocker, KissCartoon, and GoMovies being among those purchased to be blocked.
In June 2018, Trevon Maurice Franklin of Fresno, California pleaded guilty to breaching federal copyright law back in February 2016, when he downloaded the superhero film Deadpool from Putlocker and then submitted it to Facebook eight days after the movie was released theatrically in the United States. [20] As an outcome, the movie was viewed over 6 million times for complimentary, with the total retail worth of the copies being estimated 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 carries a possible charge of up to one year in jail, together with a $100,000 fine. [20] After missing out on the September 27 sentencing hearing, Franklin was sentenced in October to 24 days in federal detention followed by a year of monitored release, including 20 hours of social work per week.