Still no word on what's going down with Watch-Movies.net. A lot of you commented on this post, noting that in some cases people outside the U.S. were able to access the site. Well since the site went dark three days ago, it seems it's now completely unavailable anywhere.
The debate about ISP blocking by internet providers is surely at the heart of WM's disappearance. A quick search around the Web found that in the days leading up to the plug (seemingly) being pulled, there was some chatter about WM in particular. Here's a blurb from UK based "The Independent":
"'Streaming is increasing exponentially because you don't need to download and you can watch it straight away,' said Eddy Leviten of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, an alliance of British and American film studios. 'We are conducting a major investigation and are planning court actions. There are a number of sites were looking at. Streaming has become increasingly popular over the last year to 18 months.'
'The problem is that the website server may be in one territory, the person who uploads the film in another, and the site on which the film is hosted in a third, so it requires a lot of international co-operation.'
Piracy experts say that the Watch-Movies website has around 15 million viewers a month, making it the 240th most popular website in the world. While it is still some way short of the 30 million viewers that top download sites such as Pirate Bay can gather, it is testament to the growing popularity of streaming, rather than downloading, which has 'blossomed', according to David Price, a piracy expert with the internet consultancy Envisional."
Interestingly, there's no quotes in this story from anyone on the other side of the issue — seems this is wholly being viewed as theft, even though Watch-Movies only lead people to proper links. Is that really a crime? Recently, a man who posted instructions for hacking a simple modem so it could get extra bandwidth and free Web service was jailed — just for showing people how to do it.
The Independent piece goes on to say that since this trend began back in 2005, millions of pounds in profits have been lost. Naturally, folks at the MPAA and other movie orgs are pissed off about how much money they're losing.
Bottom line, you can bet that if FACT is tracking down sites like Watch-Movies and somehow convincing ISPs to block them, they're looking elsewhere, and much more voraciously than they let on in the report. Each day, there are potentially millions of dollars at stake.
Admittedly, movies are being stolen, but does that mean it's OK for these groups to take actions that may themselves be illegal? The debate continues.
The last part of the article we found interesting is the possibiliy that movie distributors will eventually have to provide services like WM. With an estimated 15 million viewers heading to WM per month (pre shut-down, of course) there was plenty of potential for advertising - which in the end could create a situation where movies are essentially given away for free.
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More: Watch-Movies.net Shutdown? Other sites like it?"
8 comments:
good piece. Piracy is like the drug scene in real life. One goes away, another comes in. MPAA/RIAA is full of idiots, they are all old farts who don't know anything about technology, i cant wait another 5-10 years for newer, smarter, technologically advanced brains to come in and take control...for one we got Obama...lets hope people (old geezers at these studios and companies) learn there way is wrong and not the future. Dumb capitalists is what they are, look at where our economy is. Wow before i go on a rant, check out ovguide, look at all those sites, LOL, technically OVGUIDE.com should be shut down too there linking to sites that link to other sitse, oh wait, GUYS! we need to ban Google too!!! Yes, google links to ovguide, which links to movie sites, which links to www.moviesumo.com
Give me a break! the world is full of these old dumb farts that are trying to milk everything they worked hard for before and then just sat around for years doing nothing new and expecting money to continue building, what do they even need it for?
I say we need smarter governments (swedish, slightly Canadian etc) to set examples and not wait around for AMERICANS to make the laws and simply mimic them...America makes mistakes too....(ya! you shoulda looked at the last 8 years)
IM OUT.
I can confirm that their domain registrar pulled the domain name. Until they get another domain or possibly transfer it, no website.
Censorship from the left. From assaults on the First Amendment in the form of speech codes, to punitive rulings against students accused of "insensitivity," to the burning and confiscation of politically incorrect pamphlets and newspapers, to the barring of conservative speakers from college colloquial, to the Fairness Doctrine subsequently banning conservative talk radio, and now to an all out war against Internet Service Providers.
Such tales are singularly disturbing....
Hollywood is a rotting corpse that deserves nothing. I am at a complete loss of words right now. I don't really know else to say.....
Not to fear watch-movies.net is up and running. they have changed the URL you bcan find them at.
http://watch-movies-links.net/
WATCH-MOVIES-NET is now
WATCH-MOVIES-LINKS.NET enjoy peeps
I was sure extremely Happy when I found just by searching google news :D
http://watch-movies-links.net
Great site but i prefer
http://www.ra10.com/movies.html
http://1900movies.com is the sister site of watch-movies.net so check them out too
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