The Return of PeekVid; Offering Free Pirated Films, TV Shows and Cartoons

Chalk another one up to the video pirates: Complete versions of movies (from "Children of Men" to "Sin City,"), T.V. shows ("Entourage," "Chapelle's Show") and cartoons ("South Park," "Futurama") are currently available for free viewing, thanks in part to Peekvid.com

Showing up in a big way on blogs in the last couple months, PeekVid.com is a clearinghouse for poor-to-average quality pirated content, with full versions of recent film releases such as Apocalypto, A Scanner Darkly, and Little Miss Sunshine, among many others, including obscure anime and Asian cinema.

This can't be good news for legitimate movie-download sites like CinemaNow and MovieLink. But then again, PeekVid's days must be numbered. Then again, maybe not.

A CNET article published way back in June 2006 uncovered the site -- founded by two Australian citizens -- and while many have prophesied the site's demise, it persists, probably because Peekvid doesn't actually host the content (it apparently comes funnelled in from other sites like YouTube, Google Video and DailyMotion.) I can't be sure, but I'd bet PeekVid's recent resurgence has to do with DailyMotion's own rising popularity as a place to watch illegal content. (Check out this Alexa.com chart, which shows a similar rise in traffic.)

With widespread crackdowns on YouTube's pirated content after its purchase by Google, there must have been a lull. But it was only a matter of time before new upload sites would pick up the slack, and feed more work to PeekVid: The copyright-free universe is unstoppable.