Alluc

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AllUC.org

URL	http://www.alluc.org
Type of site	Online Video Cataloguing
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	English, German and Spanish
Owner	Sebastian Fink
Created by	Sebastian Fink
Revenue	Unknown
Current status	Online (Live)

Alluc.org (pronounced: "all-you-see") is a link-sharing-website that catalogues links to TV shows, movies, music videos, sport, anime and cartoons to make them more easily accessible. Alluc does not host any content itself. Alluc.org also does not contain any download links, all are links to streaming video sharing websites. Users provide the links in the right category and they are released to the site after having been checked by the administrators. Video hosting sites that are linked to Alluc include YouTube, Dailymotion, and Veoh, amongst others.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]

Founder Sebastian Fink says: "I've experienced that the visitors use the site to test certain TV shows to check whether they want to download them or buy them on DVD. By using Alluc.org the people are getting to know shows that don't even exist in their countries." ^[9]

Moreover, Alluc (and similar sites) has aided in the introduction (or plans towards this) of free streaming online video by major television networks such as HBO, FOX, BBC, Channel 4, ITV and others.^[10] If Alluc continues to grow more popular, it could be used as a tool for networks wanting to promote their shows. These companies are increasingly making shows available for viewing on their Web sites, or for downloading to portable media-players like iPods, in an attempt to capture advertising revenue linked to younger segments of the market.^[11]

1 History
- 1.1 Problems
- 1.2 Statistics
2 Legality
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Alluc.org started out as a quest to collect all Family Guy episodes hosted on popular video hosting websites and to categorise them in one place, thus Allfg.org (standing for: All Family Guy) was founded. Set up in September 2006 by its three German owners , Allfg.org's popularity grew.^[12]^[13] On this first site the content was not yet automatically submittable. Public awareness of the site was apparently spread by word of mouth. (cfr. related articles)

On October 23, 2006, a forum was set up, where the system of submitting links by the users was improved. In Mid-October, the official Alluc.org website launched.^[12]^[13] This site was a big improvement because the links were directly submittable and dead links could be reported when logged in.^[14] A logo competition was started December 29, 2006 and spawned massive response from the site visitors. The logo was chosen through a democratic voting system by all visitors.

Several automated scripts were developed to aid in the detection of 'false links' and redundant copies of links. These scripts are activated periodically to effectively clean the database.

The popularity of the site has spawned other similar sites, such as TV Links (which was shut down by a legal challenge in August 2007 and is still offline until further notice).

[edit] Problems

In January 2007, Fox and Paramount threatened the site owners with legal action and the company that hosted their server as well if they didn't take down links to their specific content. In fear of lawsuits and having their site taken down, the site owners removed the requested series and adhered to proposal not to host the mentioned items.

In March 2008, the MPAA increased the pressure on the staff of Alluc forcing them to take down several popular tv-series and movies from the Alluc main site. The MPAA also insisted these changes were enforced in the Alluc forum as well, leading to names of several popular tv programs and movies (e.g. Lost and 300) to be banned and filtered.

[edit] Statistics

Alluc is currently ranked (concerning traffic) 1,092^nd according to alexa.com and is ranked in the top 1000 of sites in Ireland (ranked 44^th), United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Belgium, United States, Austria, Finland, Israel, Netherlands, Australia and Germany.^[12]

[edit] Legality

The legality of this site can be compared to BitTorrent indexing sites like The Pirate Bay or the original Napster program, in that the site did not actually host the files, but only provided links to the files which are hosted on external sites^[14]. When opening a link to a video on the site, the site generates the following message: