Peekvid.com is a website that catalogs links to TV shows and different kinds of movies to make them more easily accessible. Peekvid does not host any video clip content itself. Users provide the links, categorize them, and upload them to the site. Video hosting sites that are linked to Peekvid include YouTube and Dailymotion, among others.
Peekvid was set up in March 2006 and the website is registered in Canada. KeepVid, an affiliated site[1][2] is registered with an address in the Cayman Islands and the same Australian email address.[3]
Public awareness of the site was apparently spread by word of mouth, and in December 2006 the site's activity skyrocketed taking the site from obscurity into the Alexa Top 500 Sites in less than two months.
Late in the evening (GMT) on February 6, 2007, PeekVid closed public access to its website, and announced that it had entered a (presumably private) beta testing stage. All that remained was a form to submit an email address to be informed of updates. It was speculated that there may have been some form of legal action against the site, and that this "beta testing" screen was a way of bowing out temporarily without admitting defeat. According to sources including The Jerusalem Post and The Australian, PeekVid was closed down due to copyright violations.[4][5] It has also been the target of local enforcement in Australia and other countries.[5]
The website was re-launched with an updated interface (named PeekVid Beta) on February 12, 2007 after a nearly week-long hiatus.
Around 50% of the movies have now been removed from PeekVid as part of an updating process which involves removing non-working links and attempting to replace them as well as ensuring that the site works more efficiently on different browsers and with new links to videos.
MPAA Lawsuit
The MPAA filed a lawsuit against Peekvid on June 27th 2007. John Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA, said that: "The sole purpose of these sites is to disseminate content that has been illegally reproduced and distributed. They are a one-stop shop for copyright infringement." [6]
Peekvid showed no public reaction to the lawsuit and actually launched new improvements and features.
References
- ^ Louisa Hearn (June 26, 2006). "Video piracy's new battleground". Retrieved on 2007-03-01.
- ^ Daniel Terdiman (June 14, 2006). "Service lets people rip videos from YouTube, other sites", CNET News.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-01.
- ^ "Related info for: peekvid.com". Alexa. Retrieved on 2007-03-01.
- ^ The finger in the dike, David Shamah, Jerusalem Post, Feb 13 2007
- ^ a b Movie studios target video site, Simon Hayes, The Australian, Nov 21 2006
- ^ Tew, Chris (2007-06-29). "PeekVid to Get Sued to Oblivion? MPAA files lawsuit.", Web TV Wire.
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