Putlocker.com was founded back in 2011 and initially launched as a file hosting and sharing website. While the intentions of the developers never were clear, the website being free to use and access started moving more and more towards pirated and copyrighted content. The website too, started getting really popular amongst regular users.

It started coming in with 800,000 visits a day in 2012, a year after its release and the website only got more popular after MegaUpload shut down in the same year and that further saw the visits on the page shoot up to over 1.6 million hits a day.

Now of course a website so big hosting copyrighted content on it and sharing it all for free was sure to piss off all the big corporations who used all their power to get the website into as much negative light as possible. And sure enough, come 2014 the initial domain that Putlocker was on for the two previous years i.e. putlocker.com was seized by UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit.

But as the case is with most websites that get their domain taken, they switched to another domain and carried on. This carried on for another two years before the website was reported as a serious piracy threat to the Office of the United States Trade Representative which saw it be permanently banned and shut down for a while.

The website is back online currently, but only serving as a video streaming website and not a file hosting/sharing space. Users can still get on and stream one of the thousands of titles available on Putlocker atm.

We’ve gone on and on about the history of Putlocker without actually considering the fact that there might be some users who actually have no idea what Putlocker is all about. So to those readers, we apologize and request you to read on to find out more about the web phenomenon that is Putlocker.

What is Putlocker?

Well if you’ve tried streaming some content online in the last few weeks, chances are you’ve used Putlocker. Or at least visit the website without actually knowing which website you’re actually visiting. Because the new “Putlocker” is out honestly just a website that redirects users to thevideos.tv and allows users to stream content that is hosted on the website. Unlike in the past, the website doesn’t host or allow sharing of files anymore because of the legal proceedings against them in the past.

Why was it banned?

Basically, the website was banned and the domain was seized for one simple reason. Distribution of copyrighted content. That was all the original Putlocker did, because all it literally was, was a file hosting website that allowed users to host and share any files they wished to. This led to users uploading and sharing pirated content website which led to the website getting a lot of negative attention for eventually getting the website blocked. Many governments, including the USA, also instructed ISPs to ban users from visiting the website at all.

To combat all these measures, Putlocker had to constantly keep switching up their domain so that they could allow users to access all the content that was on the website. But this was only till 2016 when the website was shut down for good. Only recently did the word start spreading that Putlocker is back, but in reality, as we mentioned earlier the website is back indeed, but it’s nothing like the Putlocker of the past, but is reduced down to a URL redirecting host for thevideos.tv.

It’s honestly the website that once reached the peak of hitting 1.6 million hits a day is in such a bad condition today. But if you wish to check out some alternatives for Putlocker, check out the link.