Dozens of times each year, global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment files DMCA subpoena applications at a court in California.

Once obtained, these are served on service providers, mostly Cloudflare, requesting personal information on pirate site operators. While the quality of supplied information varies, the number of applications suggests that the world’s largest entertainment companies do indeed obtain valuable intelligence from the process.

Under the banner of Hollywood’s MPA, ACE returned to court again this week, seeking information on a number of platforms, mostly dealing in movies and TV shows. The presence of yet more anime piracy platforms is probably a sign of things to come, with ACE members Disney and Paramount gaining a firmer foothold in the anime market.

Anime Sites in the Crosshairs

New Target: Animedao.to
Recent Traffic: Apr 19.1m / May 18.1m / June 16.9m

When sites like Zoro.to (which rebranded to Animewatch.to this week due to copyright issues) receive more than 200 million visits per month, it’s tempting to describe sites with tens of millions as ‘small’. We’ll refrain from doing that, especially when yearly visits to Animedao.to exceed the quarter-billion mark.

While the site’s traffic is in a slight decline, Animedao remains popular, especially in the United States. More than a third of the platform’s overall traffic hails from the U.S., the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

Animedao.to is just one of many hundreds of sites that exist through the use of a site template. These sites are easy to identify using a number of methods but one of the most straightforward is a Google search for the term “anime” and the text of the standard disclaimer that appears at the bottom of most homepages.

In case anyone still believes that pirate site disclaimers are kryptonite to entertainment industry attorneys, they aren’t. The remaining pair of sites on the ACE list, along with summary details, are as follows:

New Target: animekaizoku.com
Recent Traffic: Apr 837k / May 637k / June 599k
Most Popular: India, Philippines, Japan

New Target: Animet.site
Recent Traffic: Apr 2.3k / May 2.2k / June 3.3k
Feature: Members Only, must sign in with Google/Discord account
Fun fact: Domain records state: “DNS points to prohibited IP stream server”

Latin American Targets

Working with local anti-piracy groups, ACE continues to take a keen interest in sites popular in Brazil and neighboring countries. Legal action to obtain site operators’ identities may take place in the United States, but any information obtained has the potential to be useful anywhere.

New Target: baixarseriesmp4.eu (baixar is ‘download’ in Portuguese)
Content: Movies, TV Shows, Anime
Recent Traffic: Apr 0k / May 1.4m / June 4m

Around 80% of Baixarseriesmp4’s traffic comes from Brazil, with Portugal following in a distant second place. The SimilarWeb figures listed above show the site’s traffic on a rapid upwards trend, which is probably one of the reasons ACE wants to take action before things get out of hand.

With that in mind, how does a site grow from nothing to four million visits in three months? The answer is simple: they don’t start from nothing.

Baixarseriesmp4.eu is a domain-hopping site that already had traction. Its current .eu domain is just the latest in use after having burned through baixarseriesmp4.xyz, .club, and .top. A message on those domains warns that they will be “decommissioned soon.”

It’s possible that ISPs may have blocked Baixarseries at some point. The main page provides instructions on how to unblock the platform by changing DNS settings in popular browsers.

New Target: 2now.tv
Content: Movies, TV Shows
Recent Traffic: Apr 13k / May 35k / June 233k

The request for information relating to 2now.tv is interesting. This is a new platform that did indeed launch from a standing start; information received by TorrentFreak suggests that 2now.tv is intended to be the English language version of Latin American streaming giant, Cuevana.

We haven’t been able to confirm that claim but attempts to boost the site’s traffic are very evident on social media. Around 75% of the site’s traffic (up 550% in the United States compared to the previous month) comes from social media referrals, 92% of that from links on Reddit.

There’s even a 2now.tv promotional video floating around, but since it uses clips from Hollywood movies – to promote piracy of Hollywood movies – we won’t link to it here.

The DMCA subpoena application can be found here ( pdf )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In recent years, pirate streaming platforms have surpassed torrent sites and direct download portals in terms of popularity.

These portals offer the ‘on-demand’ convenience many people have grown accustomed to. For site operators, the streaming business also has its advantages.

Piracy as a Service

The streaming boom has created a new branch of pirate entrepreneurs that offer “piracy as a service”. This includes platforms that provide access to a library of pirated content, which streaming sites can subsequently use to embed movies and TV shows.

This means that site owners no longer have to source and store content. They simply connect an API to the backend of their public-facing streaming portal. Front-ends can also be bought in the form of pre-packaged scripts and templates, if needed.

2Embed is one of the pirate libraries that has taken the pirate streaming world by storm. The site offered access to a catalog of pirate streaming links for 300,000 movies and TV shows, which could easily be embedded in any website using an IMDb ID for reference.

The service has long been a thorn in the side of the movie industry. The Motion Picture Association ( MPA ) has repeatedly reported 2Embed to the U.S. Trade Representative. In its most recent filing , the MPA wrote that hundreds of streaming sites relied on 2Embed, a service that it had linked to Vietnam,

“Pirate site operators can either use 2embed’s service for free, in which case 2embed remunerates itself by inserting ads, or use its paid service that allows them to insert their own ads. MPA has evidence of the site’s connection to Vietnam.”

Hollywood’s concerns didn’t go unheard. Both the U.S. Trade Representative and the European Commission highlighted 2Embed as a notorious piracy source. Vietnamese authorities started to take an interest in the problem as well.

2Embed Shuts Down

Last week, representatives from the MPA and the affiliated anti-piracy group ACE visited Vietnam, speaking with local government officials. Around the same time, ACE booked a major success by shutting down 2Embed following negotiations with its Hanoi-based operator.

“[T]he service was shut down through direct operator outreach,” ACE chief Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak, noting that the action directly impacted hundreds of streaming sites.

“Of the 457 streaming sites identified by ACE as using 2Embed as their exclusive source of content, 302 are now unavailable, offline or devoid of content since ACE took the service down. These 302 sites received a combined 2.756 billion visits in the past two years.”

Domino Effect

According to ACE, Fmoviesto.site was the largest site hit by the shutdown. The streaming portal had nearly 15 million visits in May. At the time of writing, Fmoviesto.site appears to be streaming pirated content again, but others still display an error message, as seen below.

The 2Embed takedown is a significant blow to the pirate streaming ecosystem. Many of the affected streaming portals may eventually recover using alternative video libraries, such as the copycat service 2embed.cc, but other sites are threatened more directly.

Van Voorn explains that the 2Embed operator is also behind other popular sites. This includes Zoro.to, which has over 200 million monthly visits and is currently the 180th most visited website in the world. ACE is in discussions with the Vietnamese operator to shut this site down as well.

These negotiations ran into complications earlier today when Zoro.to announced that the site had been “acquired” by a new dev team. The domain now redirects to Aniwatch.to, which is probably not the resolution ACE was aiming for.

Vietnamese Connections

MPA and ACE are not likely to let this issue go easily, though, especially at a time when they’re strengthening their relationships with Vietnamese authorities. A few days ago, the anti-piracy group met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), to discuss future cooperation.

Through this meeting, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Public Security, Le Quoc Hung, asked MPA and ACE to share intelligence going forward so that both sides can cooperate in their efforts to curb online piracy and copyright infringement.

According to Van Voorn, who was present in Vietnam, the job is not done yet.

“There is much to do in Vietnam, which has become a major global source and exporter of pirated content. But engagement with the government, particularly the Ministry of Public Security, is progressing,” Van Voorn tells us.

It’s unclear which ‘Vietnamese’ sites and services are next on the list to be targeted. However, the MPA previously linked Fmovies.to, Myflixer.to, BestBuyIPTV.store, Abyss.to and Fembed.com to the Asian country.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In the face of legislation designed to thwart its growth, seizures, prosecutions, dozens of arrests and countless prison sentences have done little to prevent piracy.

Anti-piracy enforcement actions, including dozens by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, have taken hundreds of sites out of the game. That’s a solid base for arguing that piracy volumes could’ve been much worse without so much enforcement.

The reality is that sites continue to emerge with some notable examples generating extraordinary levels of traffic, at a scale never seen before. History tells us that won’t continue indefinitely; pirate sites may come and go but Hollywood is in for the long haul – and then some.

9anime: Huge, Successful, and a Prime Target

One of the current batch of piracy behemoths is 9anime, a free streaming platform dedicated to Japanese cartoons. It currently receives in excess of 214 million visits per month, an incredible 2.5+ billion per year.

A DMCA subpoena application filed at a California court on Thursday shows that ACE has not given up on its plan to reduce 9anime’s traffic to zero. Like many times before, ACE – via the MPA – wants Cloudflare to give up information on its customers, 9anime included.

This information typically includes names, physical addresses, IP addresses,
telephone numbers, email addresses, and payment information. However, ACE also seeks additional information relating to account updates and histories, which could help to fill in some crucial blanks when combined with intelligence obtained elsewhere.

There’s no doubt that 9anime will remain a priority enforcement target. At the time of writing the 9animetv.to domain is ranked #164 globally and with over 30% of that traffic coming from inside the United States, it represents one of the squeakiest wheels in the entire online piracy market.

Sites Under The Spotlight

Also mentioned in Thursday’s applications is allanime.to, a site offering anime, manga (Japanese comics) and associated music. The domain became popular in February and since then traffic has increased considerably, to a current level of around 4.7 million visits per month. In common with 9anime, over a third of allanime’s traffic comes from the United States, assisted by social media referrals, the majority on YouTube.

Two other anime-focused domains – animefreak.site and animet.site – also get a mention. The former receives under half a million visits per month according to SimilarWeb, with the latter apparently receiving just a couple of thousand.

With no obvious public web presence and a domain that won’t resolve, Anifastcdn.info receives no traffic at all by most accounts, but that’s certainly not the case. While the platform uses Cloudflare in the United States, its servers appear to be on the other side of the Atlantic and not that difficult to find either, certainly for an operation like ACE.

Cloud Storage

Two other platforms attracting ACE interest have more visible levels of traffic. Ninjashare.to heads the list as a growing platform; after pulling in 11.8m monthly visits in February, the cloud storage platform received 15.8 million in April.

Also mentioned in the DMCA subpoena application is rapid-cloud.co, a storage platform sporting Vidcloud branding and around 4.5 million monthly visits. According to ACE, specific content accessed via rapid-cloud actually came from betterstream.cc, which also has no obvious public web presence but does have significant traffic.

When Cloudflare hands over information to ACE, it may prove informative but there’s a reasonable chance the data won’t amount to some big reveal. But it might eventually, so as long as these and similar sites are in business, ACE can return to court again and again to obtain subpoenas just like this one, for less than $50 a pop.

It will probably continue to do that, for as long as it takes.

Image Credit: Pixabay/ geralt

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Just three short months ago, Spanish pirate site users were still coming to terms with bad news.

Private torrent sites Pixelados/HD-Spain were fan favorites in Spain, with localized HD movies and TV shows in plentiful supply. Then suddenly, they were gone .

It was later revealed that pressure applied by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, which included a credible threat of legal action, persuaded the sites’ operator to throw in the towel. It’s a story that’s played out many times in recent years and led to the closure of hundreds of sites.

ACE revealed another blow for Spanish pirates earlier today.

AtomoHD Splits Under ACE Pressure

AtomoHD (Atom HD in English) appeared as a newcomer in 2020 but in less than three years, ACE says the platform received 235 million visits, averaging 9.7 million visits per month. Less than 10% of the site’s visitors were located outside Spain so its recent disappearance will be felt most acutely in the local market. The site’s operators reportedly live elsewhere.

“AtomoHD was launched in 2020 by a group of individuals, some of whom had prior convictions in Spain for intellectual property infringement and to evade justice, fled to Andorra,” ACE reports.

“AtomoHD enabled users to illegally stream and download content from a VOD library of more than 13,000 movies and 4,500 TV series in Spanish and other languages. The pirated content impacts all ACE members.”

Precise Terms of Shutdown Unclear

For the governing board members of ACE, currently Amazon, Apple TV+, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Sony, Paramount, Disney, and Warner Bros, the shutdown of AtomoHD represents another success, one shared with the 50+ companies that make up the coalition’s general membership.

“This takedown represents yet another major victory by ACE over illegal content distributors,” says Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Global Content Protection Chief of the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE. “It is increasingly clear that major criminal operators like AtomoHD are not immune from ACE’s enforcement actions.”

The precise terms of the AtomoHD shutdown are unknown but domain transfers are definitely involved. ACE says the platform has around 60 domains and as far as we can tell, the following domains are already under new ownership:

atomohd.nl, atomohd.care, atomixhq.xyz, atomixhq.club, atomohd.vip, atomohd.win, atomohd.vet, atomohd.yt, atomohd.ninja, atomohd.surf, atomohd.fans, atomohd.live, atomtt.com, atomohd.tw

Visitors to AtomoHD’s Telegram channel are greeted by a long list of alternative or replacement AtomoHD domains, with new ones posted on an irregular weekly/biweekly basis. The final announcement was made on April 28, with no new domains announced since then – on Telegram at least.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

With pirate IPTV services first seeping and then exploding into the mainstream around 2016/17, the launch of streaming service DAZN provided hope of a viable alternative.

Initially made available in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Japan, DAZN’s mission to provide affordable access to live and on-demand sports content was exactly what fans had been crying out for. Having grown tired of waiting, millions had already switched to pirate IPTV services but with a new approach, fresh-faced DAZN might even begin to win some back.

We are basically saying pay-per-view sucks

In December 2018, with Mexico’s Canelo Álvarez set to take on Britain’s Rocky Fielding the very next day, the Evening Standard interviewed DAZN’s then-CEO, Simon Denyer. After securing an eight-year boxing rights deal worth $1 billion, the plan was to ditch expensive one-off payments for big events in favor of steady, $10-per-month subscription packages.

“We are basically saying pay-per-view sucks,” Denyer said .

DAZN’s marketing drilled that message home – and then some.

Even those with a fundamental understanding of the boxing business could’ve predicted how this was likely to pan out.

The world’s best fighters live for big paydays, specifically the multi-multi-multi million dollar kind that are typically sustained by a solid PPV model. So, after onboarding subscribers on a PPV-sucks basis, DAZN told its customers that big fights would be available on the DAZN platform, on a PPV basis.

With other market forces already biting hard, DAZN followed up with a recent announcement heralding huge price increases for its regular subscription packages.

In the wake of almost doubling standard subscription rates in the United States and other key markets, DAZN will have to work hard to win new subscribers. Retaining the 20 million customers it already has will be a challenge too, but one that can be made easier by eliminating cheaper competitors operating in the same market.

DAZN Joins Rivals to Fight Piracy

Having lost more than $6 billion since launch in 2016, with an operational loss of $1.3 billion in 2021 alone, DAZN’s affordable content strategy appears to have issues. In 2021 it acquired soccer match rights in Italy and Germany, but since they are incredibly expensive, that meant doubling the price of subscriptions in those countries.

In a move to ensure that customers have no cheaper options, this week global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment announced that DAZN had become its latest member. Along with dozens of other corporations facing similar issues, DAZN will help to disrupt pirate streaming services all over the world.

“Intellectual property theft of live sports content is an industry issue, negatively impacting all sports and sports fans, and it needs a global concerted effort to meaningfully tackle it. ACE is the natural home for the Sports Piracy Task Force, given their track record, reputation, and experience in delivering effective programs of action,” says Shay Segev, DAZN Group CEO.

ACE Sports Piracy Task Force

Launched this week, the ACE Sports Piracy Task Force currently consists of beIN Media Group and DAZN, but the plan longer term is to bring other sports rightsholders on board to tackle what is increasingly viewed as a global threat.

“With every new member, our global network becomes more powerful and more effective at targeting and shutting down the piracy operators that threaten the media, entertainment and live sports economy and consumers,” says Jan van Voorn, Head of ACE and Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection at the MPA.

DAZN Chief Operations Officer Ed McCarthy describes the move as good for broadcasters and fans alike.

“Working with ACE, beIN, and other broadcasters and rights holders, the task force will pursue the criminal operators who are damaging sport at all levels, often using fans’ credit cards and data [for] illegal purposes. DAZN stands with ACE in the fight to eradicate the global theft of content,” McCarthy says.

Sports Rights Cost Billions

For perspective on what helps to drive up subscription prices and provide oxygen to illegal IPTV providers, the cost of broadcasting licenses is informative.

In 2021, DAZN won the rights to screen live Serie A soccer matches in Italy for three seasons. That deal will cost the company $2.7 billion. In the same year, DAZN and Movistar won the rights to broadcast Spanish soccer matches for five seasons. According to LaLiga, that deal is worth 4.9 billion euros ($5.37 billion).

A deal in the UK to screen Premier League matches is split unevenly between Sky, BT and Amazon. It covers just two seasons (2023/24 and 2024/25) and is believed to be worth in the region of £5.1 billion ($6.4 billion).

DAZN chief executive Shay Segev recently told The Times that obtaining Premier League rights is a priority for the company. Counterintuitively, a successful bid could also fuel piracy.

UK football fans currently need to subscribe to three streaming services to watch all available matches. DAZN getting in on the action raises the prospect of UK fans having to subscribe to four platforms to watch all televised matches. Or maybe even five, if Apple decides to get involved .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

While some anti-piracy groups focus on taking content down, others prefer to take entire sites down.

The benefits of the latter approach are obvious; when a site no longer exists, the need to send future takedown notices is eliminated. It’s also much more easily said than done but certainly not impossible.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has taken down hundreds of sites, and it’s often possible to predict which sites are about to feel the heat. DMCA subpoenas obtained at courts in the United States compel intermediaries to hand over details of pirate site operators, and since the applications are public, the names of sites are public too.

A series of recent applications revealed ACE attempting to gain information on The Pirate Bay’s operators but other sites were mentioned too. Despite having millions of monthly visitors, two of them have just disappeared into thin air.

Bulgarian Exodus

Over the past several days, at least four pirate sites with a focus on Bulgaria disappeared without warning. According to SimilarWeb data, Filmisub.com was the largest with around 7.8 million visits per month.

Filmisub specialized in streaming movies and TV shows. From its apparently large selection, ACE/MPA complained about just one (Shaft) but that was enough to get Cloudflare to hand over the operators’ details. Of the four sites confirmed to have gone offline, Filmisub is the only one to have left any kind of message.

“The site is permanently closed. It will never work again in any form whatsoever,” it announced before disappearing offline.

“All sites, pages and groups on social networks that impersonate us offering applications and promises of return and continued activity have nothing to do with us and are created to mislead and abuse you in some way by using our name.”

Filmi7 Down, Most Likely Permanently Out

Before it went offline, Filmi7.com was another popular site with a focus on Bulgaria. SimilarWeb data indicates the site received around 2.7 million visits per month, with video content the main attraction.

Filmi7 left no goodbye message, at least as far as we can determine. However, there are signs that it will likely follow the same terminal path as Filmisub.

As the image below shows, in court documents Filmi7 was also accused of making available the movie Shaft without permission. The URL pattern is identical to that deployed by Filmisub, so when combined with other telltale signs relating to site infrastructure, it’s highly likely that the two platforms were connected.

The remaining pair of sites were not mentioned in the ACE/MPA subpoenas and neither left a shutdown message. Various rumors on Bulgarian forums are promoting theories on their demise but there may be a simple explanation based on available information.

Muvibg.com and Kinofen.net

When compared to Filmisub and Filmi7, Kinofen.net and Muvibg.com were much smaller sites, 880K and 230K visits per month respectively.

In common with Filmi7, Kinofen makes an appearance on the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s Infringing Website List, a fate avoided by Filmisub despite it having considerably more traffic. Kinofen was first flagged by police in September 2021 and Filmi7 was added to the list in December 2020.

It’s possible that Muvibg’s lower traffic levels rendered it less interesting to the authorities, but the circumstances of its disappearance along with the other three sites suggests that it won’t appear on the list in future; all four sites were apparently connected so they may all share the same fate.

Image credit: Pixabay/qimono

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

It’s not unusual for piracy groups to have dozens of domains in storage for when things go wrong, but none has a bigger collection than Hollywood itself.

The MPA still owns isoHunt’s domain following its legal defeat a decade ago, alongside other spoils of war following battles with Popcorn Time, YTS/YIFY (the real ones), Hotfile and Openload . These examples represent just a handful of domains from a collection that has exploded since the 2017 launch of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

Over the past few days, another dozen or so domains boosted the existing haul of several hundred domains that no longer play a part in the piracy landscape.

IPTV Targets Shutdown, Domains Stripped

As reported last November , DMCA subpoena applications filed in the United States revealed that ACE had developed an interest in pirate IPTV service MagisTV.

Early December 2022, ACE/MPA quickly took control of two domains – Magisglobal.net and Magistvapk.com – presumably as part of its ongoing investigation. During the last week or so, several additional domains were taken over, including magistvcostarica.com, magistvglobal.com, magistvparaguay.com, magistvbolivia.com, magistvbrasil.com,, magistvchile.com, magistvcolombia.com and magistv.global .

Late last week, signs pointed to yet another IPTV takedown. A service that had been variously known as Opt TV, Optimum IPTV, Opt Hosting and Opt Hosting IPTV, was suddenly identifiable as another ACE casualty. Offering a reported 1,300 channels, including PPV events, international and 24/7 channels, Opt IPTV had been available across multiple devices for as little as $8 per month.

With key domains opt.tv and opthosting.com now redirecting to the ACE anti-piracy portal, that rodeo is probably over. Whether the same is true for another domain redirecting to ACE is less clear, but this one is markedly different from those usually associated with ACE work.

Seizures and Redirects

One of the clearest signs that ACE has shut down a pirate site or service is the appearance of a seizure banner on the platform’s homepage. The text is unmistakable and largely self-explanatory.

In the majority of cases, a WHOIS lookup reveals that domains are now operated by the Motion Picture Association. This removes all doubt over a domain’s status but in some cases, domains are never transferred. In January 2021, ACE announced the closure of Megadede; the site’s domains were never transferred yet still redirect to ACE .

There are also cases where piracy domains redirect to ACE for no apparent reason, the MPA previously informed us. That raises the question of what alliance4creativity .xyz is all about and why it currently redirects to the official portal at alliance4creativity .com after being registered last month.

Domain Shows No Sign of MPA/ACE Ownership

Domains under full MPA/ACE control usually have a particular signature. With MarkMonitor listed as the registrar, the Motion Picture Association, Inc. is openly displayed as the registrant along with one of two specific email addresses. The domains also use the MPA’s name servers at ns3 and ns4.films.org and ultimately are directed to Amazon-owned IP addresses.

Alliance4creativity .xyz has different characteristics. It was registered with Namesilo on March 27 with PrivacyGuardian.org hiding the registrant’s details. The domain uses Cloudflare for hosting and DNS, and uses ProtonMail as its email provider. It transitions seamlessly to the real ACE portal like the official domains do, despite having none of their technical characteristics.

The MPA informs TF that they’re investigating the domain, so we hope to get a comment in due course. However, if this turns out to be an imposter domain, the potential for abuse can’t be understated. ACE has a pretty fearsome reputation woven into its branding so if people believe that they’re being contacted by the real ACE, that could lead them to do extraordinary things.

How Bad Could it Get?

Only MPA/ACE can clear up the true status of this unusual domain, but given the current climate of phishing, extortion, blackmail and similar online exploitation, considering the potential implications is useful since the same tactics are widely deployed elsewhere.

If a victim can be convinced they’re speaking to a specific person or entity, the potential for abuse is almost limitless. Considering that pirates represent obvious targets, a smart opening move in a hypothetical scenario would be to ensure no one else gets involved by insisting on confidentiality. From there, a malicious actor could attempt to ‘seize’ domains, extract a settlement, or resort to basic blackmail.

None of that would help ACE and could even make enforcement efforts more difficult in the future. There may also be a more benign explanation but only ACE/MPA and the domain owner are in a position to confirm that. We’ll update this article as soon as we know more.

Update: TF received an email from the domain owner who claims to buy ‘important domains’ to resell. We asked what use the domain could be put to and we’re waiting for a response.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Smash hit movies and TV shows such as Parasite and Squid Game, coupled with the unprecedented success of boy band BTS, have helped to cement South Korea as a major player on the global entertainment map.

Success for Korean entertainment companies carries the same pros and cons as it does for those in the West. More exposure, more sales, greater opportunities and, somewhat inevitably, more piracy.

That led to an announcement last month that broadcasters, including KBS, MBC and JTBC, the Korea Film and Video Copyright Association (film producers and distributors), plus streaming platforms TVING and Wavve, were forming a coalition to fight piracy. These companies took on board the ‘stronger together’ philosophy of the global anti-piracy coalition ACE, and reports suggested that ACE itself would also be a part of the Korean program.

Noonoo TV in the Spotlight

The Korean anti-piracy coalition’s first public target was revealed at the same time. With tens of millions of visitors per month, movie and TV show streaming giant Noonoo TV was a fairly predictable target.

Blamed for racking up 1.5 billion views of pirated movies and TV shows and allegedly causing billions of dollars worth of losses to legitimate platforms, aggressive site-blocking measures had failed to dull the site’s popularity.

After regularly obtaining circumvention domains in a sequence that began with noonoo1.tv and progressed to noonoo2.tv and beyond, when we reported on the site last month noonoo32.tv was the height of fashion.

At the time of writing, noonoo46.tv is responsible for circumventing ISP blockades, but a message placed on the site this morning also suggests it could be the last domain the site will ever need.

Studiouniversal Calls it Quits

“Hello, this is the Studiouniversal team,” the announcement begins. “It is with a heavy heart that we deliver unfortunate news to everyone who has used Noonoo up until now.”

“Since the official launch of the service in June 2021, we have been able to stay together with the love of many people. After careful consideration based on the outrageous traffic charge problem and the pressure on the site from all directions, we have made a decision to end the service at 00:00 on April 14, 2023.”

The reference to traffic charges may be a general complaint about South Korea’s “sender pays” policies.

These require ISPs to charge for the traffic they receive from each other rather than utilize settlement-free peering as they did in the past. There are indications that these costs are being pushed toward video platforms that host and supply content.

“We can’t dare to count the loss that many users must have suffered with this news of the end of service, but we, too, are also very sorry and we share this news with a very heavy heart,” Noonoo TV continues.

“We would like to express our sincere gratitude to each and every one of you who believed in and used us, and we wish you all the best in everything you do. Once again, thank you very much for using our service.”

Massive Legal Pressure

While the Noonoo TV announcement cites “pressure” as the second most prominent reason for the shutdown, it is this component rather than bandwidth costs that has shifted most during the past few weeks.

In addition to the founding of a major anti-piracy coalition with global reach, rightsholders also announced a US$3.78 billion criminal copyright complaint against Noonoo TV while condemning its use of gambling adverts to generate revenue.

The TV report above aired a few hours ago suggests that Noonoo TV may have been operated by a gambling company but even if that was indeed the case, further business opportunities now appear somewhat limited.

Clones Probably Incoming

The inevitable response to the closure of a platform as significant as Noonoo TV will be the influx of clone and copy sites. Noonoo TV’s shutdown notice warns about this directly.

“Please be careful of impersonation sites derived after the end of the service,” the platform says.

There hasn’t been a flood of mass registrations in the past few hours but dozens of domains with noonoo and noonooTV branding already exist so their owners may see an opportunity to fill a pretty big gap in the market. The big question is whether the gap will be filled with movies and TV shows, or perhaps unexpected extras with the potential to ruin a visitor’s day.

The remaining possibility is that Noonoo will make some kind of return, potentially under different branding. At this stage, those kinds of conversations are entirely normal and may or may not be grounded in fact. Having said that, a site that has persistently linked to new and official Noonoo TV domains seems fairly optimistic that some kind of return is already being planned.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Operators of pirate IPTV services in the United States risk prison sentences and civil copyright infringement lawsuits when things don’t go to plan.

The recent 66-month sentence handed to YouTuber ‘Omi in a Hellcat’ is one example with a particularly hefty price tag – $30+ million in restitution.

IPTV services operated by Texas resident Dwayne Johnson weren’t as big or as profitable, but certainly important enough for Hollywood to step in with overwhelming resources.

Powerful Coalition Sues Johnson

In December 2021, movie and TV giants Universal, Disney, Paramount, Warner, and Columbia teamed up with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and several other studios, in a lawsuit targeting AllAccessTV (AATV) and Quality Restreams.

The complaint alleged that AATV supplied infringing movies and TV shows via its IPTV and VOD services. Titles including The Godfather, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and The Office were distributed to subscribers via their smart TVs, computers, set-top boxes, plus mobile and tablet devices.

The studios said that most subscribers paid between $10 to $45 per month to access around 2,500 channels.

Connected service Quality Restreams allegedly provided infringing movies and TV shows to other pirate IPTV providers, including AATV.

In addition to live IPTV channels, its VOD service supplied 600 movies and 600 TV series, organized into named categories, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Disney+.

Disguised as a VPN Provider

While most IPTV providers make at least some effort to hide their nature, the lawsuit alleged that AATV went a little further by presenting itself as a VPN provider.

The lawsuit revealed that along with many other pieces of ‘cross contamination’ evidence, the studios had already identified Johnson as a manager of VPN Safe Vault LLC, the entity believed to be behind the ‘VPN’ site.

Alleging direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and inducement of copyright infringement, the plaintiffs demanded $150,000 in statutory damages for each willfully infringed work, plus a broad injunction.

Johnson Fights Back

At least initially, Johnson’s legal team put up a spirited defense. Describing aspects of the plaintiffs’ evidence as “biased” and details of the proposed injunction as “unsupported” and “absurd,” the defense said targeting a VPN platform would amount to “an unlawful restraint on trade.”

Within days, however, the parties informed a California district court that they had agreed to the terms of a preliminary injunction. The court handed down the injunction in February 2022.

In May 2022, the parties informed the court that while there was no aversion to reaching a settlement , they would press ahead with discovery nonetheless.

Numerous entries preceded a filing dated November 8, 2022, which was followed by more than four months of complete silence.

Parties Shake Hands on $30m Damages Award

With a trial scheduled for July this year, on March 16 the studios and Johnson reached an agreement to bring hostilities to an end. The settlement includes a permanent injunction restraining any and all unauthorized copying, storing and dissemination of copyrighted content to internet users, whether directly or indirectly through third parties.

Johnson also agreed not to “distribute, transfer, or give any source code, object code, or other technology,” including domain names, trademarks, brands, assets or goodwill, that are in any way related to the AATV and Quality Restreams services.

By having the court sign off on the agreement, Johnson could be held in contempt for breaching its terms. District Court Judge Andre Birotte Jr signed off on the permanent injunction on Monday, along with a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs for copyright infringement and an award for damages.

“Damages are awarded in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendant, in the total amount of thirty million dollars ($30 million),” the judgment reads.

The $30m judgment and associated filings are available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , pdf)

Image Credit: Cdu445/Unsplash

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.