And the award for worst and most evil video site on the net goes to...

I enjoy online video. I think we all do. It combines technology + awesomeness + no commercials + on demand. Pretty much no complaints there.

Well, unless you are a content producer and your content is being systematically stolen. That kinda sucks for you. So let's briefly go over what is going on here.

Companies like surfthechannel, alluc and watch-movies all operate illegally. Utterly illegally. Yes yes, they may have disclaimers saying that "what we do is not illegal, all we do is link to other sites that themselves post content." That works as well as going into a bank holding a sign saying "just kidding" as you rob the place. It is a load of horseshit. Specifically, there is a copyright doctrine called "secondary liability." If I am providing a service that allows people to infringe copyrights, my customers actually infringing copyrights, I am aware of this infringement or should have known (i.e. willfully blind or godawfully stupid), and I profit from providing this service, I am guilty of secondary infringement. All of these sites qualify. However, there are two important things to note about these sites.

The first is that they are free. Yes, they are illegal, but they are free, so they only piss me off so much. Second, they all operate (I believe) in countries which do not, in fact, consider their actions illegal, and are genuinely beyond the reach of American law. Thus is the dilemma of modern copyright. So, all in all, these sites present a conundrum, and though I think it is a serious problem that artists are not getting money for the content they produce, I think the creators of these sites are motivated by a genuine belief that this sort of service should not be qualified as infringement, and that all 'ideas' should be free. Fair enough. I think that is disastrously short-sighted, but then again, that is just me. At least I cannot say that they are honest to god dicks just trying to make a quick buck and screw the other guy. Maybe some level of dickedness applies, but it is not a consummate level.

Then there is hulu and joost. I dig these guys. Yes, there are ads, but I am willing to watch these very brief ads knowing that this otherwise free service is providing entirely legal content. Good work. Keep it up. Expand your catalogs. I'll keep watching. In fact, I really admonish anyone to use hulu or joost over any of the illegal services, if they can in fact find the content they are looking for on those services. They are our best hope. iTunes store ain't bad either, but it is pay to play.

Then there is the king dick. A true 'fuck you' to the internet. That's right. Megavideo. Now, at this point you should understand that I am willing to sit through some bullshit if it guarantees I am not committing a crime, and I do not bear a particular (-ly high level) of ill-will to the makers of watch-movies, because I do not believe their motivations are truly criminal. Megavideo, a Hong Kong based website, whose business model is predicated on paying people to upload links to illegally posted videos, intentional delays in response to takedown notices, and strong ties with internet advertising, on the other hand, can go fuck itself. Megavideo operates, to the best of my knowledge, totally illegally, and, not only do they cram their site full of ads, they actually want to charge me for their illegal service. Further, they way they get to you is to lure you in by letting their high quality stream start, then, about 20 minutes in, cutting you off, demanding that you pay them if you want to watch more, or wait "72 minutes" to continue viewing, because you have already viewed 60 minutes of Megavideo in the past 24 hours. False. I don't know if the Megavideo programmers are just incompetents, or if they designed their counter this way intentionally, but I have never seen anyone get more than 18-25 minutes of stream from these bastards before their so-called "60 minutes" were up.

Congratulations, Megavideo. You win the ultradick award, for offering the most deceptive, blatantly illegal and dishonestly motivated video site on the net.