The article notes that YouTVpc.com hosts 7 episodes of NBC's Heroes, 49 installments of Desperate Housewives, more than 70 feature films and hundreds of other videos. Because they are so small and numerous, these sites potentially create as big a collective problem for media companies as YouTube.

The sites act as gateways to pirated material offered on other sites and say they don't break copyright laws because they don't have the material on their own computers. Content owners say the sites are abetting copyright infringement, which is illegal.

Whatever the legality, it's tough to clamp down on sites that just about anyone can set up with links to video stored on computers around the world. "If one host gets shut down, there are three others that are going to pop up," says Mr. Martinez, who covers the site's expenses by carrying some advertising.

"It's obviously a very, very large problem," says John Malcolm, director of world-wide antipiracy for the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood's lobbying group. "Some of these sites are really becoming quite popular, so they are of great concern."

While the article notes that these sites have problems with image quality, it notes that they are proliferating internationally, largely because just about anyone can set up a video portal and post such content. And when one site is identified and shut down by the media companies, the same content can be easily transferred to an entirely new site.