Dailymotion is a video hosting service website, based in Paris, France. Its domain name was registered one month after YouTube (but the site opened one month earlier) with gandi.net, a French internet domain name provider, and at least one name server is based in France with the .fr name extension.

Since February 18, the site supports video content that can play at 720p on an HD set, but the bit rate is significantly less than the 5-9 megabits for expected HD quality.

As of January 2008, the site was getting about 16,000 new videos posted daily, and page views in excess of 26 million per day As of January 2008, Dailymotion had a global Alexa Internet ranking of 38.

Background

Dailymotion allows users to browse videos by searching tags, channels or user-created groups; the search system also introduces results based on things other users have searched for. The maximum size of a video per file is 150 MB. Video limit is 20 minutes, with the exception of MotionMaker use, but with an unlimited file size and no time limit.

Videos uploaded by users to Dailymotion are converted to the VP6 codec at a resolution of 320x240. MotionMaker users can upload at a resolution of 640x480 or 1280x720. Audio on Dailymotion videos are encoded as MP3 at 96 kbit/s in stereo.

Tunisia

According to the article Tunisia: Video-sharing website Dailymotion Blocked! written by Reporters sans Frontières (Paris) April 11, 2007, Omar Mestiri, an editor of the opposition online newspaper "Kalima", is a victim of judicial harassment. Reporters Without Borders has said that a libel suit could result in a three-year prison sentence. RWB organization also called on the authorities to stop blocking Dailymotion, which has been inaccessible in Tunisia since April 1, 2007.

Reporters Without Borders said: cquote: The lawsuit against Mestiri is absurd because it is based on an online article that cannot even be accessed from within Tunisia ... But we take this case very seriously. The three and a half year sentence imposed on lawyer Mohammed Abbou in April 2005 for an article posted online showed how the Tunisian courts are controlled by the government and how a libel suit can lead to a heavy sentence.

The press freedom organisation added: cquote: The censorship of Dailymotion's website shows that the government, which is as paranoid about the Internet as it is about the traditional press, is ready to ban tens of thousands of inoffensive videos in order to block a handful it does not like.

The suit against Mestiri was brought by Tunisian lawyer Mohammed Baccar over an article posted on September 5, 2006 accusing him of fraud and forgery. Mestiri was summoned by the deputy state prosecutor to respond to a charge of libel on March 29. Mestiri's lawyers have challenged the suit's legal basis on the grounds that Kalima's site is blocked in Tunisia and the article couldn't have been accessed there.