RedTube is a

pornographic Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolved from cave paintings ...

video-sharing site, which in September 2009 held an

Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Alexa Fluor, a family of fluorescent dyes * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture ca ...

ranking within the world's top 100 sites. It is one of several pornographic websites owned by

Aylo Aylo is a Canadian multinational pornographic conglomerate owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. It is primarily involved in internet pornography, operating a number of video sharing websites (including platforms su ...

. In June 2010 it had fallen out of the top 100, but it made a return in mid-2012. As of mid September 2020 its Alexa ranking was 520. Its popularity has been ascribed to its non-sexual name, which is a reference to the non-pornographic video sharing website

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

. The website is based in

Houston, Texas Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, and has servers in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

and

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

History

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

'' reported that RedTube was one of the 5 fastest-growing websites in December 2007. The site's database was accessed and temporarily shut down by Turkish hackers in October 2008. In 2009, it was one of twelve pornographic sites blocked by the Sri Lankan court because access to the site, which housed images of Sri Lankan women and children, "corrupted society". In September 2013, one of the videos was blocked in

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

due to the ''Federal Law On Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development''. In 2018, the Government of India banned RedTube, among other porn websites, after a

Uttarakhand High Court The Uttarakhand High Court is the High courts of India, High Court of the States and union territories of India, state of Uttarakhand in India. The Uttarakhand High Court was established on 9 November 2000 after the separation of the state of ...

court order demanding the same in a rape case where the perpetrators stated they were motivated to do so after watching online pornography.

Viewers

As of 2009, three of the largest porn sites — "RedTube, YouPorn and

Pornhub Pornhub is a Canadian-owned Internet pornography video-sharing website, one of several owned by adult entertainment conglomerate Aylo. , Pornhub is the 16th- most-visited website in the world and the most-visited adult website. The site al ...

— collectively only make up 100 million unique visitors".

MindGeek Aylo is a Canadian multinational Pornography, pornographic Media conglomerate, conglomerate owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. It is primarily involved in internet pornography, operating a number of video sharing web ...

has since acquired all three sites.

Cease and desist case in Germany

In December 2013, the German law firm "Urmann und Collegen (U+C)" sent up to 30,000 cease and desist letters ("

Abmahnung An ''Abmahnung'' (German term for a written warning) is a formal request by one person to another person to forthwith stop a certain behaviour. If this formal request is made by an attorney, then it is similar to a cease-and-desist letter (but ...

en" in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

) giving legal warnings to German Internet users who allegedly viewed streams from RedTube containing certain copyrighted videos, demanding them to pay a fine of 250 EUR to the law firm of which 15.50 EUR would be distributed as compensation to the company claiming ownership of copyright for the videos, the Switzerland-based "The Archive AG". By December 13 more than 20,000 people had already received such letters. It is not clear how exactly the law firm was able to collect the IP addresses of RedTube's users. In documents filed in court in order to obtain the personal data of the individuals involved, the plaintiff claims that he had charged a company called ITGuards, Inc. (allegedly of San Jose, California) who used a proprietary software by the name of "GLADII 1.1.3", allowing them not only to collect the IP addresses of users accessing certain URL's on redtube.com, but also to determine the exact time at which the user started playing or paused the videos embedded on each of those pages. The

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

reports that the IP addresses were provided to the law firm by the court in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

, which began a retrospective review of its decision after receiving complaints. While sending out cease-and-desist letters to Internet users for copyright offenses related to

filesharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or E-book, electronic books. Common methods of Computer data storage, storage, Data tran ...

had been common practice in Germany before, this marks the first time that legal measures are taken against people for merely watching streamed content from a website.

Acquisition

Manwin filed merger notification to acquire RedTube.com from Bright Imperial Ltd on July 31, 2013.

References

{{Portal bar, Erotica and pornography, Internet Aylo Pornhub Network Gratis pornography Video hosting Internet properties established in 2006 English-language websites Companies based in Houston Internet censorship in India 2013 mergers and acquisitions

History

Viewers

Cease and desist case in Germany

Acquisition

See also

References