Five Anime Piracy Sites With 137 Million Monthly Users Get U.S. Subpoena Request
The anti-piracy group ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment), comprising some of the biggest media companies in the world -- such as Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal and Warner Bros. -- has requested subpoenas via a U.S. court for some of the world's biggest anime piracy sites in a bid to curb copyright infringement.
Via Torrent Freak, ACE has requested the personal information of the operators of several massive anime piracy sites. Of the top five, even the lowest -- "Animesonlinecc.to" -- receives a massive 18 million monthly visits, followed by "Kickassanime.mx" (18.33 million), "Goojara.to" (27.33 million), "Anitaku.to" (31.33 million) and "Anitaku.so" (42.33 million). These add up to a massive 137 million monthly visits, with other smaller sites mentioned increasing this number further.
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Many of Anime's Biggest Piracy Sites Are Operated via Tonga, Mexico & Somalia
Torrent Freak notes that these subpoena requests are "helpful" rather than definitively resulting in the arrests of its operators. This is owed to pirates providing false information to website domain providers, and is compounded by the clear pattern observed in the above list of the most popular anime piracy sites. Many of the sites end in ".to," intended for use for operations in Tonga, ".mx" (Mexico) or ".so" (Somalia). Alongside Colombia, Russia and China, these countries are often considered to be lax, slow or even uncooperative in taking down sites.
Anime Anti-Piracy Efforts Have Seen Limited Success With AniWatch
Nevertheless, ACE and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA) have seen some recent success. They recently went through courts in India, successfully getting a blocking order to stop users based in the country from accessing the world's formerly biggest anime piracy site, "aniwatch.to." With India comprising a huge percentage of its users, the site quickly folded there -- before promptly rebranding to another site immediately, demonstrating the difficulty of tackling piracy.
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Japan Aims to Prevent Anime & Manga Piracy Via AI Translation, Fines and Arrests
With anime and manga piracy likened to cutting off the head of a hydra, Japan is trying to stop this at the source through controversial initiatives like translating 50,000 manga titles over the next five years. The country hopes that satisfying demand quickly, and at a lower cost, will incentivize customers to choose legal means instead. The Japanese anti-piracy agency CODA is also working with international state police on arresting identified suspects, with local state police raiding 11 homes in Brazil in collaboration with South Korean intelligence. Convicted pirates in Japan face notoriously severe sentences, with the formerly biggest Japanese manga piracy site, Mangamura, fined a massive 1.7 billion yen in a recent court order. As of June 2024, this is the largest cost in damages in Japanese history.
Source: Torrent Freak