ACE Subpoenas Target IPTV Services, Piracy Apps, and Streaming Portals

June 16, 2024

9 3 minutes read

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), arguably the world’s most active anti-piracy coalition, is backed by dozens of major rightsholders.

The group is largely managed by the Motion Picture Association, which has requested many DMCA subpoenas on its behalf over the past few years.

New Subpoena Round

After the MPA’s former Chief of Global Content Protection Jan Van Voorn left for a new opportunity, ACE went quiet on the subpoena front. The legal requests were always signed by Van Voorn, so someone else had to fill this role going forward. But who?

The answer arrived late last week when several new subpoena requests were docketed at a California federal court. The requests are similar to those seen before, now signed by Dani Bacsi, MPA’s Deputy Chief of Content Protection.

Through the subpoenas, ACE asks Cloudflare and the .To domain registry (Tonic) for information related to several domain names. These targets can be broadly divided into three groups – streaming sites, apps, and IPTV services – some with dozens of millions of monthly visits.

Pirate Streaming Sites

Anime site Anitaku is the most prominent target, with more than 125 million visits between March and May. However, other sites such as Goojara and Kickassanime have no traffic shortage either.

The subpoenas target a total of 17 pirate streaming site domains. ACE and the MPA hope that, through their requests for information, they can learn more about the identities and whereabouts of the operators.

Domains with the most traffic (full list here)

Domain
3 Month Visits

Anitaku.so
127 million

Anitaku.to
94 million

Goojara.to
82 million

Kickassanime.mx
55 million

Animesonlinecc.to
54 million

Piracy Apps and IPTV

In addition to streaming sites, ACE has also listed domain names of websites that offer downloads to dedicated piracy apps including ‘Gold Core App’, ‘Live NetTV’, ‘RedPlay’ and ‘MagisTv’.

In addition, the subpoenas include domain names of IPTV portals such as Atlaspro, Newtelevision, and Honeybeeiptv. The latter is particularly popular in Singapore, where it’s one of the most visited sites in the Computers and Technology category.

As with the other sites and services, links to show how these domains match to infringing titles are included for each domain.

The goal of these proposed subpoenas is to require Tonic and Cloudflare to share identifying information on the users who maintain the associated accounts. That includes any names, physical addresses, IP addresses, e-mail addresses, payment information, and account histories.

Helpful, Not Perfect

Most operators of pirate sites and services know that ACE can obtain these DMCA subpoenas. They often preempt this by using false information. However, according to MPA’s Deputy Chief of Content Protection, Dani Bacsi, these efforts can still pay off.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Bacsi says that the subpoenas are part of a legal tool set used to unmask pirates behind mass-scale infringing services. The MPA can’t share its success rate, but subpoenaed information has been fruitful in multiple cases.

Ideally, ACE, MPA, and other rightsholder representatives would like intermediaries to verify their customers’ identities.

Without referring specifically to Cloudflare or Tonic, Bacsi confirms that it would be a positive step if online intermediaries adopted robust ‘Know Your Business Customer’ (KYBC) procedures.

“Applying a KYBC policy will also ensure legal compliance, enhance security, prevent fraud, and protect the intermediary’s reputation by verifying the legitimacy of its business customers and mitigating associated risks,” Bacsi concludes.

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A full list of all targeted domains is available below. The associated paperwork can be found here (1,2,3,4,5,6).

– vegamovies.to
– goojara.to
– supernova.to
– animesonlinecc.to
– anitaku.to
– ssoap2day.to
– anitaku.so
– braflix.video
– kickassanime.mx
– movieffm.net
– hdtodaytv.icu
– animepahe.com
– animepahe.org
– gogoanime.me
– soaper.tv
– soap2day.tf
– soap2day.qa
– vegamovies.to
– gold.coreplay.tv
– livenettv.bz
– redplaycard.com
– magistv.app
– atlaspro.tv
– atlaspro.io
– newtelevision.online
– best-usahosting.com
– honeybeeiptv.com