The DMCA subpoena can be a potent weapon for entertainment companies seeking to identify pirate site operators. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and its partners MPA went back to court recently, demanding access to the identities of the people behind the major torrent site EZTV and several other platforms with more than 1.3 billion annual visits in total.
The global entertainment coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment is involved in perhaps one of the most far-reaching anti-piracy operations the Internet has ever seen.
The group, which has major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon and dozens of top content creators as members, has carried out many highly publicized takedowns. Streaming platforms, IPTV providers, file-hosting platforms, and torrent-related entities have all come under attack, but that's the tip of a very large iceberg.
At the time of writing, ACE and its partners, the MPA, have seized more than 200 domain names connected to pirate services, large and small, a list that grows every week. These seizures are often due to investigations involving Cloudflare turning over identifying information after receiving a subpoena from the DMCA.
As a result, a new pair of citations obtained in recent days by ACE / MPA may give an indication of which sites and services could soon be in the line of fire.
Citations go to sites with more than 1.3 billion annual visits
While ACE / MPA regularly focuses on smaller operations, it makes perfect sense for the larger platforms to get most of the attention. The new pair of citations covers a variety of sites and when their traffic is combined, the reason they are being targeted is clear. The 23 domains listed in the citations together attract more than 1.3 billion visits per year according to statistics from SimilarWeb.
At the top of the list in terms of pure traffic with around 26.5 million visits per month is the torrent site EZTV.re. This index grabbed eighth place in our 2021 report of the most visited torrent sites in the world. The TV-centric platform proudly displays the well-known EZTV brand, but the original team was forced to retire after a hostile takeover several years ago. Now it appears that ACE / MPA may be planning an acquisition of its own.
Had it not witnessed an inexplicable drop in traffic in recent months, KissAsian.li would have topped EZTV's traffic in this latest batch of ACE / MPA citations. However, after falling from 46 million views per month in May, in July the streaming site was attracting 'only' 24.7 million views, most of that traffic from the Philippines. However, sites of this size are always of interest to the world's biggest movie and TV show producers, so this drop in traffic keeps you on the radar.
Another major player, Olevod.com, appears to be on an upward trajectory. The service appears to be aimed at a large Chinese audience and received around 11.2 million visits during February. By July, however, traffic had skyrocketed to about 19 million visits per month, progress that ACE / MPA will want to reduce. The same can be said for Dandanzan.com, which also targets a Chinese audience and currently enjoys around 5.7 million visits per month.
'WatchSeries' branded sites have always been a thorn in the side of movie and TV show companies and Watchseries.ninja is no different. The site appears to be losing popularity in recent months, but with 5.7 monthly visits in July, it is still a major player.
Spanish and South American sites
Another high-traffic site that citations point to is Hackstore.net. It currently enjoys around 10.2 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb, with 27% of that traffic coming from Mexico. Ironically, perhaps, our attempts to access the site were thwarted by a blocking message from Cloudflare, but with over 125 million visits per year, the site is clearly of interest to entertainment companies.
With around 8.6 million visits per month, Cuevana2.io is next on the list and provides a clear indication that ACE / MPA wants to finish a job they started a few months ago. In May, ACE Announced that he had won a major battle against Cuevana brand sites, which had dominated the pirate streaming arena in Latin America.
What ACE did not report, however, is that the most popular Cuevana domains, including Cuevana2.io and Cuevana3.io, were still in business generating tens of millions of visits each month. Cuevana3 was attacked in a previous summons against Cloudflare and now Cuevana2 is also in the crosshairs.
Other sites in Spanish and focused on South America include Assistirseriados.net (4.3 million) and Gofilmes.me (2.75 million), which are popular in Brazil and Megadede.se (1.1 million), popular in Spain. . Fanpelis.org, Repelis24.info, Pelispe.com and Pelismegahd.pe have a few million visits between them and are popular in Mexico.
Finally, there are some dead or dying domains on the list. Pelisplus.movie had 20 million views per month in February, but since then traffic has fallen off a cliff. Hdfull.cx had 3 million views in February, but has now plummeted to next to nothing. Other sites with low traffic reports include Reboot.tube, Duboku.fun, and Embedforfree.co, although the latter may be more significant than the reports suggest.
ACE / MPA's New Citations Against Cloudflare Can Be Found here and here (pdf)
