When torrent sites were gaining significant traction in the mid-2000s, discovering information about their infrastructure and even their operators could be a simple matter.
Even if the WHOIS domain information was protected with an anonymity service, basic searches would often reveal where the sites were hosted, meaning that platforms could come under immediate pressure, when the legal environment permits. Today, things are much less simple.
Thousands of pirate sites now use Cloudflare to hide information about their platforms. The site's IP addresses are hidden behind the service, which means that some research progresses more easily when Cloudflare delivers crucial information. The company won't do that without a court order, but Hollywood in particular is very familiar with that process.
ACE / MPA obtains subpoenas from DMCA to expose pirate operators
To force Cloudflare to provide details of allegedly infringing customers, copyright holders can go to court in the United States and file a request for a DMCA subpoena. Once granted, these oblige the CDN provider to provide the requested personal information. They are rarely fought or rejected and since they do not need to be supervised by a judge, issuing them is a matter of procedure in most cases.
Last week, the Motion Picture Association acted on behalf of members of the Alliance for Creativity to file two DMCA subpoena requests in a California court. They name about two dozen torrent and streaming site domains that ACE is clearly investigating and some have large numbers of visitors.
DMCA Citation 1: A Simple Beginning
As always with ACE / MPA subpoena requests, statements are provided by Jan van Voorn, MPA Executive Vice President and Chief Global Content Protection Officer. The first claim is that two pirate services are violating Hollywood copyrights in the movies Jack Reacher and Fast and Furious 9.
The domains listed are vibetvapp.com and webplay.tv123.org and the app also references the 'backend' link URLs where the movies are apparently hosted. What ACE / MPA are really looking for, however, are the identities of the people behind iptvsubscription.org, a platform that offers pirated IPTV subscriptions in addition to reselling and streaming services.
โACE members (through Motion Picture Association, Inc.) request the issuance of the attached proposed subpoena that would direct Cloudflare, Inc. to disclose identities, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, addresses of email, payment information, account updates and account histories of users operating iptvsubscription.org, โthe app reads.
DMCA Summons 2 - The Main Course
The second DMCA subpoena request follows a similar format but is much longer and targets sites with very significant traffic.
Pelisplushd.net is perhaps less known in English-speaking regions, but in Latin America it is a true giant. Specializing in movies, TV shows, and anime, this streaming platform attracts approximately 58 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb statistics, making it the 53rd most popular site in Mexico. Even then, only 33% of its visitors come from that country, with countries like Colombia and Argentina providing significant traffic.
Another important site on the list is Mrpiracy.top. Again, this won't be a particularly familiar domain for English-speaking audiences, but with over 21 million views per month, it dominates a specific region. At the time of writing, 94% of this site's traffic comes from Portugal, making it the 14th most popular site in the entire country. On Friday, MrPiracy announced that it had closed with immediate effect, with the operators citing personal reasons.
Interestingly, the SimilarWeb data also lists the site as Seventh most popular gambling-related domain on the planet, although it is not yet clear what is happening there.
Another major player targeted in the subpoena is French torrent giant YGGTorrent. The site has supported domain issues Over the years, it tends to jump from one side to the other. However, ACE / MPA is interested in getting the details of their operators, specifically the ones behind yggtorrent.li, yggtorrent.si, and their new domain, yggtorrent.nz. Just a few months ago, this site attracted more than 18 million monthly visits.
Smaller players still have considerable traffic
Lowering the ACE / MPA goals reveals many other domains that cannot match the successes of the previous ones, but are still major players. Watchtvseries.si, for example, enjoys around 5.2 million views per month, 25% from the US, 17% from the UK, followed by Canada with around 13%. Relatively unusual for a site of this size, Watchtvseries.si is not blocked by ISPs in the UK, making it a likely candidate to appear in a future MPA injunction.
Next up are Gnula.cc and Gnula.link, which appear to be part of the same streaming operation. Popular in Spanish-speaking countries, the former enjoys around five million monthly visits, with around 50% of users coming from Spain, followed by Argentina, Mexico and Chile.
Movieboxpro.app attracts around 4.8 million visitors a month, mostly from the United States. The site is also popular in Canada and, like Watchtvseries.si, it is not blocked by ISPs in the UK, which explains its rapid growth there. The site also has an unusual login system that requires people to associate the membership with their Google account.
With around four million views per month, Emovies.io is another fairly large streaming site under the eye of ACE / MPA and the same can be said for the sports streaming site Sports24.stream, which currently enjoys around 1.7 million. visits per month.
Sports24 unexpectedly disappeared from the internet this week and it is certainly possible that the DMCA subpoena had something to do with it.
123movies.london has roughly the same levels of visitors to its streaming service (1.75 million) with a quarter coming from the US The site is growing rapidly in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Again, this service is not blocked in the UK so it could lead to a court order in the future. The Spanish torrent site Elitetorrent.com also makes an appearance with around one million visitors a month.
Other less popular lenses
Several other domains on the ACE / MPA list trigger severe malware warnings, including topflix.vc, ymovies.to, pelisplus.so, and the France-centric Fandefilm.com site. Like waklov.com, bambip.com, jogiiasd.xyz, pornoman.cc, and kinomax.to, the site's traffic is relatively low, making them interesting targets for copyright holders who are likely to want to avoid their increase.
Citations and supporting documents can be found here. 1,2,3 (pdf)
