Power to The People’s Court Online

Kitschy 80s TV icon The People’s Court is being resurrected for the digital age. People’s Court Raw is throwing its robes into the UGC competition/argument space by letting people post video versions of their disputes online and letting the audience vote for who is right.

As Portfolio wrote, though TMZ’s Harvey Levin is pimping the site in a video introduction, a spokesperson for People’s Court Raw said Levin is “not the creator or the voice and the image” of the new site. The URL is registered to Warner Bros. (which also puts out TMZ).

People’s Court Raw is in beta and a lot of the arguments feel like they were created by people who work there and were testing out the system. Sample conflicts include a co-worker who eats curry too often, a belching officemate, and whether or not a boyfriend should pay for birth control. A lot of the arguments have posting dates from the fall of 2007, further indicating they were tests (unless the site’s been live forever and no one noticed).

The head-to-head video space is heating up with sites like IBeatYou, DanceJam and Strutta (which was inspired by Judge Judy), all giving people the chance to humiliate prove they are better, smarter and/or more correct than someone — anyone — else. And while the People’s Court may think the brand-name recognition will give it a leg up on the competition, the web version is missing one key ingredient: Doug Llewelyn.

(Image courtesy of Ranger Ian’s courtroom page.)