RedTube is a pornographic video sharing site, which in November 2009 held an Alexa ranking within the World's top 100 sites.[2] By June 2010 it had fallen out of the top 100, but it made a return in mid-2012. Its popularity has been ascribed to its non-sexual name, which is a reference to the non-pornographic video sharing website YouTube.[3] The website is based in Houston, Texas and has servers in San Francisco and New Orleans.
History
Wired reported that Redtube.com was one of the 5 fastest growing websites in December 2007.[4]
The site's database was accessed and temporarily shut down by Turkish hackers in October 2008.[5][6]
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".[7]
In September 2013, one of the videos was blocked in Russia due to the Federal Law On Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development [8]
Manwin (rebranded into MindGeek in 2013) filed merger notification to acquire RedTube.com from Bright Imperial Ltd in July 31, 2013.[9]
Viewers
As of 2009, three of the largest porn sites "RedTube, YouPorn and PornHub -- collectively only make up 100 million unique visitors".[10] Manwin (now MindGeek) has since acquired all three sites.
Cease and desist case in Germany
In December 2013, the German law firm "Urmann und Collegen (U+C)" started to send out masses of Cease and desist letters ("Abmahnungen" in German) to German internet users who allegedly viewed streams from RedTube containing certain copyrighted videos, demanding them to pay a total 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.[11] 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.[12] While sending out cease-and-desist letters to internet users for copyright offenses related to filesharing 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.[13]
Controversy
During a press conference for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Samuel L Jackson jokingly endorsed RedTube and was later critizised
by porn stars Catalina Cruz and Tanya Tate who demanded an apology.[14]
