Putlocker refers to different online file hosting index websites used for streaming home entertainment media, especially movies and tv series, free of charge. The initial website came from the UK as early as 2011, and grew to get countless everyday 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 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as a significant piracy danger.
Putlocker's domain address has changed numerous times throughout its history, with a variety of URLs bearing the Putlocker name being suspended or taken. It is not publicly known whether an official Putlocker site preserved by the original team stays offered online, but at least fifty mirror or proxy sites, a lot of which utilize the Putlocker name, have been identified.
Putlocker stemmed in 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, found Megaupload's closure stressing, specifying "who needs SOPA when a studio exec can make a wish/hit list and websites 'willingly' shut down?"
In March 2012, Putlocker was identified by Alfred Perry, vice president for around the world content protection at Paramount Pictures, as one of the "top 5 rogue cyberlocker services". [8] The site's URL was changed to putlocker.bz, an address which was seized by the Cops Copyright Criminal Offense Unit of the UK in June 2014, and was consequently altered to putlocker.is, a domain located in Iceland.
2016-- present.
From around early October 2016, the putlocker.is address displayed a mistake specifying that the website's host service was unattainable. [10] Around this time, the Movie Association of America (MPAA) reported Putlocker to the Office of the United States Trade Representative as a piracy hazard. The MPAA revealed that Putlocker operated from Vietnam, which its servers were hosted by the Swiss business Private Layer.
Prior to its closure, putlocker.is was noted amongst the 250 top websites internationally and the top 150 in the United States, according to Alexa data. A mirror website under the address putlocker.today appeared soon after the assumed termination of putlocker.is, and on October 17, 2016, an address under the name putlocker9.com was reported to be readily available.
On 2 November 2016, the putlocker.is address ended up being active again, rerouting its users to the upgraded 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 Home Entertainment Association, and the URL moved ownership to EuroDNS. The chief legal officer of EuroDNS, Luc Seufer, mentioned that EuroDNS is needed to "avoid any 'reactivation' of this domain name check here [putlockers.ch] until its expiration date". Following the seizure of the putlockers.ch address, the formerly used putlocker.is domain was made functional once again.
In March 2017, it was reported that Ted Osius, then United States Ambassador to Vietnam, held a meeting with Truong Minh Tuan, Vietnam's Minister of Information and Communications, throughout which Osius urged for the criminal prosecution of Putlocker, in addition to the websites 123Movies and KissCartoon, for copyright violation.
Not long after, putlocker.is, which altered to putlockertv.is and subsequently putlockers.cc, was reported to reroute visitors to a scamming website. [16] In May 2017, at least three working sites bearing the Putlocker name were known 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 unlawful downloads, with pirated TV product mainly accessed through Kodi (16%) or Putlocker (17%)". [18] In August 2017, Justice John Nicholas of the Federal Court of Australia bought Australian web service providers to obstruct access to 42 piracy sites in a case brought by Village 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 after that uploaded it to Facebook 8 days after the film was released theatrically in the United States. [20] As an outcome, the movie was seen over 6 million times free of charge, 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 brings a possible penalty of approximately one year in jail, along 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 supervised release, consisting of 20 hours of social work weekly.