Veoh

The video site that beat Universal in court, went bankrupt two months later, and then took fourteen more years to actually die

Shut down
19902026

Veoh was a San Diego video service founded in September 2005 by Dmitry Shapiro and Ted Dunning, backed among others by former Disney chief Michael Eisner. It relaunched as a video sharing site in March 2006 and for a while sat just behind YouTube, favouring longer, full-screen shows. It won a precedent-setting DMCA case against Universal Music in 2009, filed for bankruptcy in February 2010, and passed through Qlipso and FC2 before finally closing on 11 November 2024.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2005
  2. September 2005 Launch
    Veoh launches

    A peer-assisted virtual television network.

  3. 2006
  4. March 2006 pivot
    veoh.com becomes a video sharing site
  5. 2007
  6. September 2007 Legal
    Universal Music sues
  7. 2009
  8. 11 September 2009 Legal
    Veoh wins the DMCA case

    The safe harbour ruling that protected user-content sites.

  9. 2010
  10. 11 February 2010 Incident
    Chapter 7 bankruptcy

    Two months after the court victory.

  11. April 2010 Acquisition
    Qlipso buys the assets
  12. 2013
  13. June 2013 Acquisition
    Sold to FC2
  14. 2024
  15. 17 October 2024 Shutdown announced
    FC2 announces the end
  16. 11 November 2024 Shutdown
    Veoh closes after nineteen years

    The library moves to FC2 Video.

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: veoh.com, 24 May 2008 →

Browse veoh.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2005 2008 2011 2014 2017 2020 2023 2024 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Veoh Networks 2005–2010 Founded Dmitry Shapiro and Ted Dunning, San Diego; backed by Eisner, Time Warner and Intel
Qlipso 2010–2013 Acquisition Bought the assets out of bankruptcy
FC2, Inc. 2013–2024 Acquisition Ran the site quietly, then folded it into FC2 Video

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Veoh lost the video war to YouTube years before it closed. It filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February 2010, was picked up by Qlipso, then sold to the Japanese blogging company FC2 in 2013, which ran it quietly until announcing on 17 October 2024 that the site would close on 11 November 2024. The library was moved to FC2 Video.

Our analysis: Veoh had backers Hollywood respected, Michael Eisner among them, and a strategy built on longer, television-shaped video at higher quality than early YouTube. What it also had was the industry lawsuit YouTube escaped by being bought by Google: Universal Music sued in 2007, and although Veoh won a landmark ruling in 2009 that a site following the DMCA takedown rules is not liable for what users upload, the defence consumed the company. Its founder said the legal bill, tens of millions of dollars, is what actually killed it. The bankruptcy came two months after the victory. Everything after 2010 was an afterlife under owners who wanted the traffic, not the product.

History [edit]

Television, but on the internet

Dmitry Shapiro started Veoh in 2004 with the idea of a virtual television network: a peer-assisted desktop application, VeohTV, that could deliver long, high-quality video rather than three-minute clips. The company launched in September 2005, relaunched veoh.com as a browser video sharing site in March 2006, and raised money from Time Warner, Intel and Michael Eisner, the former Disney chief executive whose backing made Veoh briefly the credible grown-up among video startups. Through 2007 and 2008 it was one of the largest video sites on the internet, with tens of millions of monthly viewers and a catalogue that leaned towards episodes and shows.

Winning the case, losing the company

In September 2007 Universal Music Group sued Veoh for copyright infringement over music videos users had uploaded. Veoh had followed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act carefully, taking down what rights holders flagged, and in September 2009 a federal court agreed: a service that honours the DMCA safe harbour is not liable for its users\' uploads. The ruling protected every user-generated-content site that came after. It did not protect Veoh. Shapiro later said the defence cost tens of millions of dollars that should have gone into the product, and while Veoh was in court YouTube, safely inside Google, took the audience. On 11 February 2010 Veoh filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The long afterlife

Qlipso, a small content-sharing company, bought the assets in April 2010. In June 2013 Veoh was sold again, to FC2, the Japanese blogging and video host, which kept the site running with minimal changes for over a decade, an increasingly strange museum piece of 2008-era web video. On 17 October 2024 a notice appeared on the homepage: Veoh would shut down on 11 November 2024. FC2 moved the library to FC2 Video and let old Veoh accounts sign in there.

The domain today

veoh.com redirects to FC2 Video.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Veoh Wikipedia 1 December 2024 [archived]
  2. UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Shelter Capital Partners LLC Wikipedia 1 January 2024 [archived]
  3. veoh.com in the Wayback Machine Internet Archive 1 June 2008

Last verified: 31 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).