In January 2017, Alexa data indicated that The Pirate Bay was the most popular torrent site on the internet. In July that same year, the notorious torrent site entered the Alexa Top 100 with the 99th most popular domain on the internet.

TPB had been there before but following a disastrous period of downtime in 2014, many users simply went elsewhere. That had a significant effect on the site’s traffic and its coveted Top 100 ranking.

The extraordinary background to traffic data now being reported by SimilarWeb was likely affected by downtime too. However, seven years on from The Pirate Bay’s misfortune, the piracy landscape is more complex, enforcement has increased, yet the ecosystem somehow appears to recover more easily than before.

Very Big Numbers

As SimilarWeb’s data shows, HiAnime.to received 331.6 million visits in November 2024. For any site today that’s a very big number yet the data shows the site received fewer visits than the previous month. In October 2024, HiAnime received 364 million visits, 32 million more than November and a remarkable 62 million increase on September’s traffic.

With more than three times the traffic of legal competitor Crunchyroll, HiAnime is obviously a priority target for Japan’s anime producers; but if only it stopped there.

According to the data, HiAnime outranks GitHub in the United States overall, and both Peacock TV and Disney Plus in the United States’ ‘Streaming and Online TV’ category. Outranking Disney Plus globally can’t be ruled out.

As a caveat, we should mention that this data only includes website visits, not traffic that goes to the associated streaming apps.

Roughly 40% of the site’s visits are from users in the United States, four in ten aged between 18 and 24. Over 80% of the site’s social media traffic is reportedly fueled by YouTube, although the majority of overall visits (76%) are direct. How the site managed to pull in so much traffic is extraordinary in itself.

The Secret Sauce

The most significant enforcement action of 2024 saw anti-piracy coalition ACE take down FMovies and several closely linked additional sites, together accounting for over a billion visits each year. One of the sites taken offline was Aniwave.to, a relatively new site but one already enjoying a significant amount of traffic.

The secret sauce that enabled Aniwave to become so popular so quickly, isn’t exactly a secret. Aniwave wasn’t a new site, it was simply a rebranding of another anime giant called 9anime, which previously ‘shut down’ due to alleged legal issues.

So when 9anime/Aniwave was shut down by ACE/MPA so dramatically in Vietnam late August/early September, HiAnime was waiting in the wings to scoop up the traffic. Whether one cuts it this way or that, that traffic was effectively generated by itself.

Chameleons Eat Themselves, Grow Stronger

Compounding the incestuous relationship between these chameleon platforms are events dating back to summer 2023. Under pressure from ACE, the owner of a site called Zoro.to handed over the site’s domains to ACE/MPA. Shortly after, Zoro.to was suddenly “sold to new owners”, who immediately rebranded the world’s then-largest pirate site to Aniwatch .

When Aniwatch came under pressure from ACE in September 2023, the subsequent response was similarly reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto. On a five-star wanted level, the site pulled into a paint shop, received a complete respray, before reappearing as HiAnime; stars wiped clean and traffic intact.

A month after the big shutdown in Vietnam, with HiAnime pulling in extraordinary traffic, ACE was observed in hot pursuit once again .

How this will eventually play out seems almost inevitable; the big question is whether outranking Disney Plus globally comes before or after.

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

In January 2017, Alexa data indicated that The Pirate Bay was the most popular torrent site on the internet. In July that same year, the notorious torrent site entered the Alexa Top 100 with the 99th most popular domain on the internet.

TPB had been there before but following a disastrous period of downtime in 2014, many users simply went elsewhere. That had a significant effect on the site’s traffic and its coveted Top 100 ranking.

The extraordinary background to traffic data now being reported by SimilarWeb was likely affected by downtime too. However, seven years on from The Pirate Bay’s misfortune, the piracy landscape is more complex, enforcement has increased, yet the ecosystem somehow appears to recover more easily than before.

Very Big Numbers

As SimilarWeb’s data shows, HiAnime.to received 331.6 million visits in November 2024. For any site today that’s a very big number yet the data shows the site received fewer visits than the previous month. In October 2024, HiAnime received 364 million visits, 32 million more than November and a remarkable 62 million increase on September’s traffic.

With more than three times the traffic of legal competitor Crunchyroll, HiAnime is obviously a priority target for Japan’s anime producers; but if only it stopped there.

According to the data, HiAnime outranks GitHub in the United States overall, and both Peacock TV and Disney Plus in the United States’ ‘Streaming and Online TV’ category. Outranking Disney Plus globally can’t be ruled out.

As a caveat, we should mention that this data only includes website visits, not traffic that goes to the associated streaming apps.

Roughly 40% of the site’s visits are from users in the United States, four in ten aged between 18 and 24. Over 80% of the site’s social media traffic is reportedly fueled by YouTube, although the majority of overall visits (76%) are direct. How the site managed to pull in so much traffic is extraordinary in itself.

The Secret Sauce

The most significant enforcement action of 2024 saw anti-piracy coalition ACE take down FMovies and several closely linked additional sites, together accounting for over a billion visits each year. One of the sites taken offline was Aniwave.to, a relatively new site but one already enjoying a significant amount of traffic.

The secret sauce that enabled Aniwave to become so popular so quickly, isn’t exactly a secret. Aniwave wasn’t a new site, it was simply a rebranding of another anime giant called 9anime, which previously ‘shut down’ due to alleged legal issues.

So when 9anime/Aniwave was shut down by ACE/MPA so dramatically in Vietnam late August/early September, HiAnime was waiting in the wings to scoop up the traffic. Whether one cuts it this way or that, that traffic was effectively generated by itself.

Chameleons Eat Themselves, Grow Stronger

Compounding the incestuous relationship between these chameleon platforms are events dating back to summer 2023. Under pressure from ACE, the owner of a site called Zoro.to handed over the site’s domains to ACE/MPA. Shortly after, Zoro.to was suddenly “sold to new owners”, who immediately rebranded the world’s then-largest pirate site to Aniwatch .

When Aniwatch came under pressure from ACE in September 2023, the subsequent response was similarly reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto. On a five-star wanted level, the site pulled into a paint shop, received a complete respray, before reappearing as HiAnime; stars wiped clean and traffic intact.

A month after the big shutdown in Vietnam, with HiAnime pulling in extraordinary traffic, ACE was observed in hot pursuit once again .

How this will eventually play out seems almost inevitable; the big question is whether outranking Disney Plus globally comes before or after.

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

In January 2017, Alexa data indicated that The Pirate Bay was the most popular torrent site on the internet. In July that same year, the notorious torrent site entered the Alexa Top 100 with the 99th most popular domain on the internet.

TPB had been there before but following a disastrous period of downtime in 2014, many users simply went elsewhere. That had a significant effect on the site’s traffic and its coveted Top 100 ranking.

The extraordinary background to traffic data now being reported by SimilarWeb was likely affected by downtime too. However, seven years on from The Pirate Bay’s misfortune, the piracy landscape is more complex, enforcement has increased, yet the ecosystem somehow appears to recover more easily than before.

Very Big Numbers

As SimilarWeb’s data shows, HiAnime.to received 331.6 million visits in November 2024. For any site today that’s a very big number yet the data shows the site received fewer visits than the previous month. In October 2024, HiAnime received 364 million visits, 32 million more than November and a remarkable 62 million increase on September’s traffic.

With more than three times the traffic of legal competitor Crunchyroll, HiAnime is obviously a priority target for Japan’s anime producers; but if only it stopped there.

According to the data, HiAnime outranks GitHub in the United States overall, and both Peacock TV and Disney Plus in the United States’ ‘Streaming and Online TV’ category. Outranking Disney Plus globally can’t be ruled out.

As a caveat, we should mention that this data only includes website visits, not traffic that goes to the associated streaming apps.

Roughly 40% of the site’s visits are from users in the United States, four in ten aged between 18 and 24. Over 80% of the site’s social media traffic is reportedly fueled by YouTube, although the majority of overall visits (76%) are direct. How the site managed to pull in so much traffic is extraordinary in itself.

The Secret Sauce

The most significant enforcement action of 2024 saw anti-piracy coalition ACE take down FMovies and several closely linked additional sites, together accounting for over a billion visits each year. One of the sites taken offline was Aniwave.to, a relatively new site but one already enjoying a significant amount of traffic.

The secret sauce that enabled Aniwave to become so popular so quickly, isn’t exactly a secret. Aniwave wasn’t a new site, it was simply a rebranding of another anime giant called 9anime, which previously ‘shut down’ due to alleged legal issues.

So when 9anime/Aniwave was shut down by ACE/MPA so dramatically in Vietnam late August/early September, HiAnime was waiting in the wings to scoop up the traffic. Whether one cuts it this way or that, that traffic was effectively generated by itself.

Chameleons Eat Themselves, Grow Stronger

Compounding the incestuous relationship between these chameleon platforms are events dating back to summer 2023. Under pressure from ACE, the owner of a site called Zoro.to handed over the site’s domains to ACE/MPA. Shortly after, Zoro.to was suddenly “sold to new owners”, who immediately rebranded the world’s then-largest pirate site to Aniwatch .

When Aniwatch came under pressure from ACE in September 2023, the subsequent response was similarly reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto. On a five-star wanted level, the site pulled into a paint shop, received a complete respray, before reappearing as HiAnime; stars wiped clean and traffic intact.

A month after the big shutdown in Vietnam, with HiAnime pulling in extraordinary traffic, ACE was observed in hot pursuit once again .

How this will eventually play out seems almost inevitable; the big question is whether outranking Disney Plus globally comes before or after.

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

Japanese manga comics have always been popular on pirate sites, whereas other categories have seen their growth stall. In contrast, manga piracy continues to grow.

This unauthorized activity is a thorn in the side of publishers, who are increasingly fighting back against this piracy activity, wherever it takes place in the world.

Japan’s largest publisher Shueisha has taken a variety of legal actions, also in U.S. courts. The company obtained several DMCA subpoenas hoping to expose the operators of dozens of pirate sites such as Manganato.com , mangakoma01.net , truyenqqvn.com , and manga-zip.is , for example.

These cases are filed in the U.S. because the manga publisher requests information from third-party intermediaries such as Cloudflare, PayPal, Visa, and Google.

One Piece ‘Pirates’ on X

This week the manga mogul was back in court, requesting a DMCA subpoena from another American intermediary, Elon Musk’s social media platform X. The application targets the X accounts of ‘spoilerplus’ and ‘mangaraw’, which stand accused of repeatedly sharing ‘One Piece’ content without permission.

These are not random X accounts that incidentally shared pirated material. On the contrary, they are linked to well-known pirate sites that have been targeted by similar efforts before.

Spoilerplus and Mangaraw domain names were listed in a broad DMCA subpoena that targeted Cloudflare last year. Not much later, these domains also showed up in a separate request in a California federal court, where Google, Visa, and PayPal were asked to provide information on the alleged operators.

The latter information request is tied to legal developments in Japan, where Shueisha aims to bring the ‘anonymous’ operators to justice. The status of the Japanese process is unclear, as the manga publisher continues to seek information, including sources like X.

X DMCA Subpoena

The request for a DMCA subpoena, filed at a Californian court this week, specifically seeks information on twitter.com/spoilerplus and twitter.com/mangaraw_jp .

Shueisha previously sent a notice to X, asking it to remove both accounts. While X disabled all the highlighted posts that are tied to allegedly infringing material, the Mangaraw account is still online today, linking to the mangaraw01.net website.

Both accounts posted infringing ‘One Piece’ material according to Shueisha. According to a declaration from attorney Hiroyuki Nakajima, these posts were made by “anonymous internet users” without authorization from the rightsholders.

Japanese Lawsuit & Free Speech?

The DMCA subpoena request doesn’t mention a potential lawsuit in Japan. However, the manga publisher stresses that it needs all information tied to these accounts to protect its rights.

While ‘anonymous’ users have previously been shielded by free speech rights under the First Amendment, the rights of copyright holders should carry more weight here, the request argues.

Shueisha specifically cited jurisprudence from a U.S. court which previously held that “to the extent that anonymity is used to mask copyright infringement […] it is unprotected by the First Amendment.”

In this case, the account holders are suspected infringers at the center of potential copyright litigation. That sets it apart from previous instances where the anonymous speech of Redditors was protected because they were merely seen as potential ‘witnesses’.

Email, IP-addresses, Access logs & More

The request for a DMCA subpoena has yet to be approved by the court but, absent any protest from X, that’s just a formality.

Shueisha already shared a list of all the details they would like to receive about the two X accounts. This includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, payment details, IP-addresses, and detailed access logs.

Whether X has access to all this information has yet to be seen. And even if it has, it’s unclear how usable it is. Ostensibly, Shueisha’s previous attempts at Cloudflare, Google, PayPal, and Visa were not sufficient to identify all the culprits with certainty.

Update: There’s a separate DMCA request from Shogakukan looking for information on X user @WeET_COLLECTION ( pdf ).

—

A copy of Shueisha’s DMCA subpoena request at the California federal court and the associated paperwork is available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ).

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

Japanese manga comics have always been popular on pirate sites, whereas other categories have seen their growth stall. In contrast, manga piracy continues to grow.

This unauthorized activity is a thorn in the side of publishers, who are increasingly fighting back against this piracy activity, wherever it takes place in the world.

Japan’s largest publisher Shueisha has taken a variety of legal actions, also in U.S. courts. The company obtained several DMCA subpoenas hoping to expose the operators of dozens of pirate sites such as Manganato.com , mangakoma01.net , truyenqqvn.com , and manga-zip.is , for example.

These cases are filed in the U.S. because the manga publisher requests information from third-party intermediaries such as Cloudflare, PayPal, Visa, and Google.

One Piece ‘Pirates’ on X

This week the manga mogul was back in court, requesting a DMCA subpoena from another American intermediary, Elon Musk’s social media platform X. The application targets the X accounts of ‘spoilerplus’ and ‘mangaraw’, which stand accused of repeatedly sharing ‘One Piece’ content without permission.

These are not random X accounts that incidentally shared pirated material. On the contrary, they are linked to well-known pirate sites that have been targeted by similar efforts before.

Spoilerplus and Mangaraw domain names were listed in a broad DMCA subpoena that targeted Cloudflare last year. Not much later, these domains also showed up in a separate request in a California federal court, where Google, Visa, and PayPal were asked to provide information on the alleged operators.

The latter information request is tied to legal developments in Japan, where Shueisha aims to bring the ‘anonymous’ operators to justice. The status of the Japanese process is unclear, as the manga publisher continues to seek information, including sources like X.

X DMCA Subpoena

The request for a DMCA subpoena, filed at a Californian court this week, specifically seeks information on twitter.com/spoilerplus and twitter.com/mangaraw_jp .

Shueisha previously sent a notice to X, asking it to remove both accounts. While X disabled all the highlighted posts that are tied to allegedly infringing material, the Mangaraw account is still online today, linking to the mangaraw01.net website.

Both accounts posted infringing ‘One Piece’ material according to Shueisha. According to a declaration from attorney Hiroyuki Nakajima, these posts were made by “anonymous internet users” without authorization from the rightsholders.

Japanese Lawsuit & Free Speech?

The DMCA subpoena request doesn’t mention a potential lawsuit in Japan. However, the manga publisher stresses that it needs all information tied to these accounts to protect its rights.

While ‘anonymous’ users have previously been shielded by free speech rights under the First Amendment, the rights of copyright holders should carry more weight here, the request argues.

Shueisha specifically cited jurisprudence from a U.S. court which previously held that “to the extent that anonymity is used to mask copyright infringement […] it is unprotected by the First Amendment.”

In this case, the account holders are suspected infringers at the center of potential copyright litigation. That sets it apart from previous instances where the anonymous speech of Redditors was protected because they were merely seen as potential ‘witnesses’.

Email, IP-addresses, Access logs & More

The request for a DMCA subpoena has yet to be approved by the court but, absent any protest from X, that’s just a formality.

Shueisha already shared a list of all the details they would like to receive about the two X accounts. This includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, payment details, IP-addresses, and detailed access logs.

Whether X has access to all this information has yet to be seen. And even if it has, it’s unclear how usable it is. Ostensibly, Shueisha’s previous attempts at Cloudflare, Google, PayPal, and Visa were not sufficient to identify all the culprits with certainty.

Update: There’s a separate DMCA request from Shogakukan looking for information on X user @WeET_COLLECTION ( pdf ).

—

A copy of Shueisha’s DMCA subpoena request at the California federal court and the associated paperwork is available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ).

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

Japanese manga comics have always been popular on pirate sites, whereas other categories have seen their growth stall. In contrast, manga piracy continues to grow.

This unauthorized activity is a thorn in the side of publishers, who are increasingly fighting back against this piracy activity, wherever it takes place in the world.

Japan’s largest publisher Shueisha has taken a variety of legal actions, also in U.S. courts. The company obtained several DMCA subpoenas hoping to expose the operators of dozens of pirate sites such as Manganato.com , mangakoma01.net , truyenqqvn.com , and manga-zip.is , for example.

These cases are filed in the U.S. because the manga publisher requests information from third-party intermediaries such as Cloudflare, PayPal, Visa, and Google.

One Piece ‘Pirates’ on X

This week the manga mogul was back in court, requesting a DMCA subpoena from another American intermediary, Elon Musk’s social media platform X. The application targets the X accounts of ‘spoilerplus’ and ‘mangaraw’, which stand accused of repeatedly sharing ‘One Piece’ content without permission.

These are not random X accounts that incidentally shared pirated material. On the contrary, they are linked to well-known pirate sites that have been targeted by similar efforts before.

Spoilerplus and Mangaraw domain names were listed in a broad DMCA subpoena that targeted Cloudflare last year. Not much later, these domains also showed up in a separate request in a California federal court, where Google, Visa, and PayPal were asked to provide information on the alleged operators.

The latter information request is tied to legal developments in Japan, where Shueisha aims to bring the ‘anonymous’ operators to justice. The status of the Japanese process is unclear, as the manga publisher continues to seek information, including sources like X.

X DMCA Subpoena

The request for a DMCA subpoena, filed at a Californian court this week, specifically seeks information on twitter.com/spoilerplus and twitter.com/mangaraw_jp .

Shueisha previously sent a notice to X, asking it to remove both accounts. While X disabled all the highlighted posts that are tied to allegedly infringing material, the Mangaraw account is still online today, linking to the mangaraw01.net website.

Both accounts posted infringing ‘One Piece’ material according to Shueisha. According to a declaration from attorney Hiroyuki Nakajima, these posts were made by “anonymous internet users” without authorization from the rightsholders.

Japanese Lawsuit & Free Speech?

The DMCA subpoena request doesn’t mention a potential lawsuit in Japan. However, the manga publisher stresses that it needs all information tied to these accounts to protect its rights.

While ‘anonymous’ users have previously been shielded by free speech rights under the First Amendment, the rights of copyright holders should carry more weight here, the request argues.

Shueisha specifically cited jurisprudence from a U.S. court which previously held that “to the extent that anonymity is used to mask copyright infringement […] it is unprotected by the First Amendment.”

In this case, the account holders are suspected infringers at the center of potential copyright litigation. That sets it apart from previous instances where the anonymous speech of Redditors was protected because they were merely seen as potential ‘witnesses’.

Email, IP-addresses, Access logs & More

The request for a DMCA subpoena has yet to be approved by the court but, absent any protest from X, that’s just a formality.

Shueisha already shared a list of all the details they would like to receive about the two X accounts. This includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, payment details, IP-addresses, and detailed access logs.

Whether X has access to all this information has yet to be seen. And even if it has, it’s unclear how usable it is. Ostensibly, Shueisha’s previous attempts at Cloudflare, Google, PayPal, and Visa were not sufficient to identify all the culprits with certainty.

Update: There’s a separate DMCA request from Shogakukan looking for information on X user @WeET_COLLECTION ( pdf ).

—

A copy of Shueisha’s DMCA subpoena request at the California federal court and the associated paperwork is available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ).

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

More than two-and-a-half years ago, a group of Israel-based TV companies entered a new phase of their multi-year war against the country’s most popular and resilient pirate sites.

Companies including United King Film Distribution, Keshet Broadcasting, Hot Telecommunications Systems, and Reshet Media, requested a broad injunction at a federal court in the United States. The targets were three popular and highly-resilient pirate streaming sites; Israel-tv.com, Israel.tv, and Sdarot.tv, at the time Israel’s most-visited pirate site.

Blocking orders previously obtained in Israel had failed to put the platforms out of business. In the United States, the companies simply requested three of the most oppressive injunctions ever seen in a piracy case, and surprisingly the court obliged .

All ISPs…and any other ISPs providing services in the United States shall block access to the Website at any domain address known today…or to be used in the future by the Defendants…by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems.

The injunctions also prevented CDN providers, DNS providers, domain companies, advertising services, financial institutions, and payment processors, from doing any business with the sites, ever. This unprecedented overreach provoked a significant reaction from Cloudflare and soon after the injunction was withdrawn .

TV Companies Try Their Hand at the High Court in London

While the Holy Grail of site-blocking injunctions ultimately proved elusive, other measures detailed in redacted or sealed court filings were eventually sanctioned in the United States. The nature of the measures is unknown but after being deployed for the last two-and-a-half years, most likely at great expense, the job still isn’t done.

In today’s shape-shifting world of self-resurrecting pirate sites, and clone sites that effectively mimic fallen originals, it’s difficult to say whether the various Sdarot-branded platforms online today are connected to the original or not. Israel TV, on the other hand, is an IPTV subscription platform with a style of business that’s more difficult to mimic, at least convincingly so.

The TV companies and the site are by now sworn enemies. The former doggedly refuses to give up and the latter bluntly refuses to give in. News of action at the High Court in London therefore suggests a new battleground is about to emerge.

Filed on December 24, 2024, the action sees United King Film Distribution, Keshet Broadcasting, Hot Telecommunications Systems, and Reshet Media, facing off against the UK’s largest internet service providers; British Telecommunications, EE, Plusnet, Sky UK, Talktalk, and Virgin Media Limited.

With no pirate sites mentioned at this stage but all other tell-tale signs present, this is unmistakably an application for a blocking injunction under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

An Interesting Coincidence

What the Israeli companies have in mind isn’t entirely clear beyond the basics, and details are unlikely to arrive in the public domain for quite some time. Yet coincidentally or not, during the last few weeks an unusual listing appeared on freelancing platform, Upwork, that may shine some light on current planning.

Placed by a small IT company reportedly doing business in New York, which to date has spent $196K on 261 hires (67 active), the listing requests very specific information of the type typically required as part of a S97 application.

The item listed as ‘Task #2’ also fits neatly into a hypothetical scenario of this exercise being connected to an application for a blocking injunction. The TV company applicants have already shown considerable determination in their pursuit of Moonpay.

On reading the text, whoever won the contract for the work seems to have been advised that a particular outcome is a necessity; i.e this report should include a more specific transfer to their processing domain called billnet domain and more importantly to show that billnet always transfers to moonpay.com

In the unlikely event that a Section 97A order under copyright law would also instruct the blocking of a payment provider, showing that all of an infringer’s business can be attributed to a single processor might be quite useful. The text at the end (emphasis ours) may or may not be a reference to that but if such an order was made under copyright law, it would be the first of its type, at least as far as we’re aware.

Significantly Easier Than the U.S.

For the last 14 years or so, rightsholders have obtained blocking injunctions against broadly the same ISPs, hoping to reduce the availability of pirated content in the UK. The major Hollywood studios, major record labels, and to a lesser extent publishers, are adamant that site-blocking works. Yet in most months, new blocks targeting hundreds of domains are urgently pushed through in response to the latest pirate countermeasures.

The ISPs’ familiarity with this process is a big plus for the Israeli companies. Unless there’s a glaring issue that needs to be addressed, it’s likely they’ll receive no opposition from the ISPs; after all, several are TV companies who also wish to restrict infringement.

If recent history is any barometer, the ISPs may not even attend court. In that respect, they’ll probably have something in common with Israel TV.

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

More than two-and-a-half years ago, a group of Israel-based TV companies entered a new phase of their multi-year war against the country’s most popular and resilient pirate sites.

Companies including United King Film Distribution, Keshet Broadcasting, Hot Telecommunications Systems, and Reshet Media, requested a broad injunction at a federal court in the United States. The targets were three popular and highly-resilient pirate streaming sites; Israel-tv.com, Israel.tv, and Sdarot.tv, at the time Israel’s most-visited pirate site.

Blocking orders previously obtained in Israel had failed to put the platforms out of business. In the United States, the companies simply requested three of the most oppressive injunctions ever seen in a piracy case, and surprisingly the court obliged .

All ISPs…and any other ISPs providing services in the United States shall block access to the Website at any domain address known today…or to be used in the future by the Defendants…by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems.

The injunctions also prevented CDN providers, DNS providers, domain companies, advertising services, financial institutions, and payment processors, from doing any business with the sites, ever. This unprecedented overreach provoked a significant reaction from Cloudflare and soon after the injunction was withdrawn .

TV Companies Try Their Hand at the High Court in London

While the Holy Grail of site-blocking injunctions ultimately proved elusive, other measures detailed in redacted or sealed court filings were eventually sanctioned in the United States. The nature of the measures is unknown but after being deployed for the last two-and-a-half years, most likely at great expense, the job still isn’t done.

In today’s shape-shifting world of self-resurrecting pirate sites, and clone sites that effectively mimic fallen originals, it’s difficult to say whether the various Sdarot-branded platforms online today are connected to the original or not. Israel TV, on the other hand, is an IPTV subscription platform with a style of business that’s more difficult to mimic, at least convincingly so.

The TV companies and the site are by now sworn enemies. The former doggedly refuses to give up and the latter bluntly refuses to give in. News of action at the High Court in London therefore suggests a new battleground is about to emerge.

Filed on December 24, 2024, the action sees United King Film Distribution, Keshet Broadcasting, Hot Telecommunications Systems, and Reshet Media, facing off against the UK’s largest internet service providers; British Telecommunications, EE, Plusnet, Sky UK, Talktalk, and Virgin Media Limited.

With no pirate sites mentioned at this stage but all other tell-tale signs present, this is unmistakably an application for a blocking injunction under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

An Interesting Coincidence

What the Israeli companies have in mind isn’t entirely clear beyond the basics, and details are unlikely to arrive in the public domain for quite some time. Yet coincidentally or not, during the last few weeks an unusual listing appeared on freelancing platform, Upwork, that may shine some light on current planning.

Placed by a small IT company reportedly doing business in New York, which to date has spent $196K on 261 hires (67 active), the listing requests very specific information of the type typically required as part of a S97 application.

The item listed as ‘Task #2’ also fits neatly into a hypothetical scenario of this exercise being connected to an application for a blocking injunction. The TV company applicants have already shown considerable determination in their pursuit of Moonpay.

On reading the text, whoever won the contract for the work seems to have been advised that a particular outcome is a necessity; i.e this report should include a more specific transfer to their processing domain called billnet domain and more importantly to show that billnet always transfers to moonpay.com

In the unlikely event that a Section 97A order under copyright law would also instruct the blocking of a payment provider, showing that all of an infringer’s business can be attributed to a single processor might be quite useful. The text at the end (emphasis ours) may or may not be a reference to that but if such an order was made under copyright law, it would be the first of its type, at least as far as we’re aware.

Significantly Easier Than the U.S.

For the last 14 years or so, rightsholders have obtained blocking injunctions against broadly the same ISPs, hoping to reduce the availability of pirated content in the UK. The major Hollywood studios, major record labels, and to a lesser extent publishers, are adamant that site-blocking works. Yet in most months, new blocks targeting hundreds of domains are urgently pushed through in response to the latest pirate countermeasures.

The ISPs’ familiarity with this process is a big plus for the Israeli companies. Unless there’s a glaring issue that needs to be addressed, it’s likely they’ll receive no opposition from the ISPs; after all, several are TV companies who also wish to restrict infringement.

If recent history is any barometer, the ISPs may not even attend court. In that respect, they’ll probably have something in common with Israel TV.

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

More than two-and-a-half years ago, a group of Israel-based TV companies entered a new phase of their multi-year war against the country’s most popular and resilient pirate sites.

Companies including United King Film Distribution, Keshet Broadcasting, Hot Telecommunications Systems, and Reshet Media, requested a broad injunction at a federal court in the United States. The targets were three popular and highly-resilient pirate streaming sites; Israel-tv.com, Israel.tv, and Sdarot.tv, at the time Israel’s most-visited pirate site.

Blocking orders previously obtained in Israel had failed to put the platforms out of business. In the United States, the companies simply requested three of the most oppressive injunctions ever seen in a piracy case, and surprisingly the court obliged .

All ISPs…and any other ISPs providing services in the United States shall block access to the Website at any domain address known today…or to be used in the future by the Defendants…by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems.

The injunctions also prevented CDN providers, DNS providers, domain companies, advertising services, financial institutions, and payment processors, from doing any business with the sites, ever. This unprecedented overreach provoked a significant reaction from Cloudflare and soon after the injunction was withdrawn .

TV Companies Try Their Hand at the High Court in London

While the Holy Grail of site-blocking injunctions ultimately proved elusive, other measures detailed in redacted or sealed court filings were eventually sanctioned in the United States. The nature of the measures is unknown but after being deployed for the last two-and-a-half years, most likely at great expense, the job still isn’t done.

In today’s shape-shifting world of self-resurrecting pirate sites, and clone sites that effectively mimic fallen originals, it’s difficult to say whether the various Sdarot-branded platforms online today are connected to the original or not. Israel TV, on the other hand, is an IPTV subscription platform with a style of business that’s more difficult to mimic, at least convincingly so.

The TV companies and the site are by now sworn enemies. The former doggedly refuses to give up and the latter bluntly refuses to give in. News of action at the High Court in London therefore suggests a new battleground is about to emerge.

Filed on December 24, 2024, the action sees United King Film Distribution, Keshet Broadcasting, Hot Telecommunications Systems, and Reshet Media, facing off against the UK’s largest internet service providers; British Telecommunications, EE, Plusnet, Sky UK, Talktalk, and Virgin Media Limited.

With no pirate sites mentioned at this stage but all other tell-tale signs present, this is unmistakably an application for a blocking injunction under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

An Interesting Coincidence

What the Israeli companies have in mind isn’t entirely clear beyond the basics, and details are unlikely to arrive in the public domain for quite some time. Yet coincidentally or not, during the last few weeks an unusual listing appeared on freelancing platform, Upwork, that may shine some light on current planning.

Placed by a small IT company reportedly doing business in New York, which to date has spent $196K on 261 hires (67 active), the listing requests very specific information of the type typically required as part of a S97 application.

The item listed as ‘Task #2’ also fits neatly into a hypothetical scenario of this exercise being connected to an application for a blocking injunction. The TV company applicants have already shown considerable determination in their pursuit of Moonpay.

On reading the text, whoever won the contract for the work seems to have been advised that a particular outcome is a necessity; i.e this report should include a more specific transfer to their processing domain called billnet domain and more importantly to show that billnet always transfers to moonpay.com

In the unlikely event that a Section 97A order under copyright law would also instruct the blocking of a payment provider, showing that all of an infringer’s business can be attributed to a single processor might be quite useful. The text at the end (emphasis ours) may or may not be a reference to that but if such an order was made under copyright law, it would be the first of its type, at least as far as we’re aware.

Significantly Easier Than the U.S.

For the last 14 years or so, rightsholders have obtained blocking injunctions against broadly the same ISPs, hoping to reduce the availability of pirated content in the UK. The major Hollywood studios, major record labels, and to a lesser extent publishers, are adamant that site-blocking works. Yet in most months, new blocks targeting hundreds of domains are urgently pushed through in response to the latest pirate countermeasures.

The ISPs’ familiarity with this process is a big plus for the Israeli companies. Unless there’s a glaring issue that needs to be addressed, it’s likely they’ll receive no opposition from the ISPs; after all, several are TV companies who also wish to restrict infringement.

If recent history is any barometer, the ISPs may not even attend court. In that respect, they’ll probably have something in common with Israel TV.

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