That designation, applied for the first time in over a decade, triggered a Section 301 investigation, opening the door to potential trade sanctions.

As part of this process, stakeholders were requested to provide input on Vietnam’s alleged shortcomings. This includes the piracy challenges and concerns, which were highlighted as the primary concern.

One of the key submissions came from the Motion Picture Association (MPA). As we reported earlier, Hollywood’s trade group called for tougher prison sentences and action against copycat pirate sites that swiftly take the place of ones that are shut down.

In total, there were more than 170 submissions from stakeholders. These include a massive 3,500+ page response filed on behalf of the Government of Vietnam, which we initially missed. It is worth highlighting separately, however, as the timing ties into the broader enforcement picture.

Vietnam Responds

Vietnam filed its response on July 2, before the USTR deadline. As expected, the country argues that it doesn’t belong on the priority watchlist, because its practices are not “unreasonable or discriminatory,” and they do not “burden or restrict U.S. commerce,” the two tests that matter under Section 301.

Instead, the country argues that any remaining problems are mostly capacity limitations, not policy shortcomings.

The submission closes by asking USTR to reconsider its stance, and remove Vietnam from the Priority Foreign Country List, without issuing any sanctions or imposing trade tariffs.

Piracy Crackdowns and Site Blocking as Defense

To back up its request, Vietnam cites a variety of anti-piracy efforts. The submission notes that more than 1,200 pirated websites were blocked in 2025, which is notable as the U.S. itself is still mulling its own site blocking legislation.

The report also cites other prominent enforcement actions. This includes the shutdown and prosecution of the Fmovies piracy ring, which was once the largest online piracy operation. This operation was dismantled in 2024 with intelligence from ACE, the MPA’s anti-piracy arm.

Meanwhile, Vietnam also mentions the shutdowns of Xoilac TV, Rophim, and Y2Mate. The latter operation was taken down in collaboration with music group IFPI, which should signal to Washington that it is cooperating on intellectual property matters.

The HiAnime Card

What stands out most in the submission is the timely mention of the HiAnime prosecution. This was publicly announced by the Vietnamese authorities on July 2, the same day that it submitted its USTR rebuttal.

The submission tells USTR that “on 1 July 2026, the Ministry of Public Security initiated criminal proceedings […] against 07 suspects” under Article 225 of the Criminal Code. It references more than 100 websites offering over 26,000 unauthorized films and roughly USD 12.85 million in advertising revenue.

While HiAnime isn’t mentioned in this description, we were able to pinpoint it as the key target in this prosecution, which was also confirmed by ACE.

Vietnam’s USTR submission does mention HiAnime.to by name elsewhere, among the sites and services that were “shut down or forced to terminate their operations.”

Crucially, the HiAnime operation already closed its doors in March, months before the prosecution was announced on July 2. This coincides with the USTR submission deadline, where that same prosecution is used in Vietnam’s defense.

Whether the timing is coincidence or tied to the deadline is unknown.

All Eyes on the Sentences

The enforcement actions highlighted by Vietnam are not news. The MPA and USTR have acknowledged the same takedowns, but complained that the resulting sentences carry no deterrent. For example, the Fmovies operators previously dodged prison, which allegedly does little to tackle the country’s piracy image.

Vietnam does not dispute this. Its submission restates the U.S. view that enforcement has been “light, mainly suspended sentences and low fines,” and answers by asking Washington to “recognize the efforts undertaken” rather than defending the outcomes.

What it offers instead is to update the current legislation. The MPA previously noted that Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security is drafting amendments to the Penal Code to better address high-tech crimes and cyber offenses.

Whether that will indeed result in harsher sentences and a deterrent effect that will make it less appealing for locals to run pirate sites has yet to be seen.

The HiAnime defendants are the next test. Four remain in custody awaiting trial, while the other three were placed under travel restrictions. At the time of writing, USTR has not issued a determination in the Section 301 investigation.

—

A copy of Vietnam’s submission, filed through the Ministry of Science and Technology, is available here (pdf).

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

More recently, it has been one of the pirate site blocking pioneers. In addition to demanding action from ISPs, their orders also targeted DNS resolvers and VPN providers.

While the expansion of the blocking measures is still contested, French lawmakers have already prepared the next one.

The French Parliament has handed ARCOM, the country’s audiovisual and digital regulator, the power to block pirate sports streams in real time without checking each targeted piracy source manually. The change is part of a broader professional sports law that both chambers formally adopted on July 21.

Article 10 of the new law rewrites the section of the previous sports law, Article L. 333-10, which rights holders have used to block pirate streaming sites in recent years.

From Manual Checks…

Under the old system, a rightsholder would obtain a blocking order in court, targeting specific domain names. These orders would require ISPs, DNS resolvers, or VPN services to block access on their systems.

If new domains were spotted later, rightsholders would send these to ARCOM, whose sworn agents would confirm that each one is streaming matches illegally before ISPs are ordered to block these.

One of these older orders was issued on July 8 by the Court of Paris. In that case, the French football league (LFP) won a block against nine Internet providers, covering the full 2026/2027 season, with ARCOM having to approve each new site that’s added along the way.

The order lists 30 domains and their associated subdomains, including kzontop.com, ligue1live.xyz, iptvfrancai.com, euroiptv.fr and sportsurge100.is.

…To Automated Blocks

Under the old system, it can take days before a new target is added. That’s a problem when dealing with live-streaming piracy, one that the new law aims to fix.

The new law strips out the pre-check of domain names (or IP addresses) that are added after the initial order is issued. It lets ARCOM run an automated system that pushes freshly identified targets straight to providers during a live broadcast. The providers then have to take action “without delay”.

ARCOM’s agents no longer approve each block in advance, but they keep an oversight role. They will now audit the new additions afterward, and a blocked party can appeal to ARCOM’s president, even while the targeted sports event is ongoing.

The new law is expected to significantly increase the volume of blocked sites and services, with the goal to further deter live-streaming piracy.

The judicial process leading up to the blocks barely changes, with one significant exception. Foreign entities that organize or hold rights to competitions abroad can now bring these actions in French courts themselves, opening the door for Spain’s LaLiga and England’s Premier League.

The groundwork for the blocking scheme was already laid. Under a private 2025 agreement between rights holders and ISPs, first revealed by L’Informé, the parties tested real-time IP address blocking during the 2026 World Cup, with ARCOM involved.

Italy’s “Piracy Shield” as Inspiration

French officials have not hidden the inspiration for the new law. In a study delivered to the Assemblée nationale in December 2025, the regulator recommended this automated real-time system, citing foreign precedents including Italy’s “Piracy Shield”.

The head of Italy’s own regulator AGCOM, Massimiliano Capitanio, publicly welcomed the vote on Instagram, describing it as France adopting a version of its “Piracy Shield” model.

That comparison is sensitive. Italy’s system has been heavily criticized for overblocking, at one point knocking Cloudflare and countless unrelated sites offline. European ISPs have since demanded that rightsholders be held liable for overblocking damage.

This critique is one of the reasons why ARCOM keeps a human supervision element in the takedown process. This is to avoid overblocking, which the regulator considered as being potentially unconstitutional in France.

Not Live Yet

With the new French law, yet another country moved to a more automated site blocking process. This follows the example of Italy and other countries, with support from rightsholders including the Motion Picture Association.

The updates to the French sports law still have to be implemented formally, which isn’t expected to happen until later this year.

Whether existing orders like the LFP’s will migrate to the automated system once it goes live, or whether only future orders will, is not yet clear. For now, however, France’s pirate sports blocking still runs the old, manual way.

—

The Sports Law, adopted on July 21, can be found via the Assemblée nationale dossier here. A copy of the Court of Paris ruling in the LFP blocking case, issued on July 8, is available here (pdf).

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

To facilitate this process, the company has rolled out several anti-piracy initiatives in recent years.

Both Facebook and Instagram use a “Rights Manager” tool, which is an automated system that runs copyright checks. After rightsholders upload reference files, the system detects infringing material and allows owners to take down or monetize this content.

Rights Manager has been working without much noise for close to a decade. According to Meta’s latest transparency report, Rights Manager is part of a broader enforcement system that proactively removes millions of infringing posts from Facebook and Instagram every month.

Rights Manager’s Backdating Lawsuits

The automated copyright enforcement system is not without flaws. In India, for example, several lawsuits filed at the Delhi High Court alleged that the same copyright enforcement system can be turned against the creators it is meant to protect.

The Rights Manager exploit relies on Facebook’s desktop “Edit Post” feature. When a user edits an existing Facebook post and replaces its attached image or video, the platform keeps the original publication date. This means that users and Meta’s enforcement systems will see the content as older than it really is.

Scammers can allegedly exploit this weakness, Bar and Bench first reported. They can edit their older Facebook pages to add videos, reels, or photos they copied from other creators. To Instagram and Facebook it will appear that their content is older, so they can use it to claim ownership through Rights Manager.

As a result, the scammers can reportedly monetize videos of the original creators, while adding strikes to their accounts too.

Financial educator and entrepreneur Pushkar Raj Thakur says at least 36 of his videos were taken down worldwide this way. His suit argues Meta acted on the claims without checking the rightsholder, metadata or edit history of the posts.

Meta Rights Manager Lawsuit

Thakur took the matter to the Delhi High Court in May as part of a broader lawsuit about false claims. Early on, Meta’s counsel said the company needed to investigate, but the false claims did not stop right away.

In a follow-up hearing, Meta offered the court a series of assurances. It agreed not to remove Thakur’s videos over copyright strikes, not to close his account over repeat strikes, and to restore the deleted content.

Thakur is not backing down, seeking roughly 2 crore rupees (about $210,000) in damages. He also wants the court to order Meta to build safeguards into Rights Manager, including KYC checks, timestamp protections, and metadata verification.

Interestingly, Thakur says Meta denied him access to Rights Manager to protect his own brand, even as the scammers used the very same tool against him.

Meta Must Hand Over the Data

Thakur’s lawsuit is not the only one. Another creator, Neeraj Joshi, filed a similar complaint over the same backdating trick, and this case already resulted in a more actionable order.

On July 9, Justice Jyoti Singh required Meta to preserve Joshi’s verified Instagram account and to hand over the basic subscriber information and IP logs tied to the fraudulent claims within three weeks.

Those records could reveal who is behind the scheme and Joshi’s request for an interim injunction will be heard on August 5.

A Third Case Targets the Rules

The two lawsuits are not the only pressure on Meta. On July 15, another creator, Nitin Joshi, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) that goes after the legal framework itself.

The petition asks the court to set up a Special Investigation Team to probe what Joshi describes as an organized extortion racket, where syndicates file bogus strikes through bot accounts and then demand payment to withdraw them.

It also challenges Rules 3(1)(c) and 4 of India’s IT Rules, arguing they let platforms disable accounts without notice, without naming the complainant, and without checking whether the claimant owns the content.

Joshi wants a forensic audit of Instagram’s copyright strike system, as well as regular transparency reports on repeat complainants. This case remains in its early stages, and it has yet to be heard.

Patching An Exploitable Loophole

For now, the three cases leave Meta with an unusual problem. The same automated system that’s used to remove millions of infringing posts is allegedly being used by scammers to monetize copyright infringement.

Whether Meta has already addressed the loophole, and whether the scammers will be unmasked, remains to be seen. The company has yet to respond to the allegations in court, and it hasn’t commented publicly on the claims.

In any case, it appears that Meta has some work to do on the transparency side as well. At the time of writing, its most recent copyright transparency report is more than two years old, covering 2023.

—

A copy of the order in the Neeraj Joshi case is available here (pdf). The July 1 order in the Pushkar Raj Thakur case can be found here (pdf), and the earlier May 29 order is here (pdf).

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

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have three newcomers on the list.

“Disclosure Day” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on July 27 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

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

After Meta’s motion to dismiss was denied last month by U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee, Strike 3 filed an amended complaint expanding its claims to 2,973 films, up from the original 2,396.

With that many works at stake, potential statutory damages could reach a massive $446 million.

This week, Meta filed its answer to the amended complaint at the California federal court, denying all allegations while raising several affirmative defenses. At the same time, the company also gave further insight into the piracy allegations.

Meta’s Data Engineer

The original complaint identified a then-unnamed Facebook employee who allegedly used a residential Comcast IP address to download content, while also sharing files through Meta corporate IPs and what Strike 3 described as “stealth” IP addresses.

According to the amended complaint, that single address was linked to the infringement of 97 of Strike 3’s works.

Meta’s answer offers a straightforward explanation that has nothing to do with an organized data collection effort. The company admits that “the subscriber’s adult son was a Contingent Worker at Meta from October 2022 to October 2024.” It further confirms that the same person became “an employee at Meta with the title Data Engineer from April 2025 to May 2026.”

This phrasing is careful. By referring to “the subscriber’s adult son,” Meta positions the alleged torrenting as personal activity on a family member’s home Internet connection, unrelated to Meta.

Strike 3 apparently identified this person through their LinkedIn profile, which Meta says “speaks for itself”. In any case, Meta flatly denies that any employee’s BitTorrent activity was connected to its AI research or data collection.

The amended complaint, however, alleges that the infringement from the subscriber’s account stopped when the son’s contract with Meta ended.

Denials and a Fair Use Fallback

The broader answer follows a standard pattern of denials, which is common at this stage of a lawsuit. Meta denies downloading or uploading any of Strike 3’s adult films.

The tech company does admit downloading “portions of certain publicly available text datasets through direct download and by torrenting for purposes of developing and training some of its LLaMA models,” but insists these did not include adult films.

The company also acknowledges that it tried to prevent distributing any of the text files it had downloaded via BitTorrent for developing and training its language models. This shows that Meta admits sharing other content via BitTorrent, while explicitly denying Strike 3’s torrenting allegations.

In its affirmative defenses, Meta explicitly reserves fair use without asserting it. The company denies sharing any adult content, so fair use is not relevant, but it keeps it as an option just in case.

In the related Kadrey v. Meta lawsuit, where Meta admitted torrenting books for AI-training, fair use is the central defense, and Meta wants to keep that option open here as well.

Seeding Was “De Minimis”

As America’s most prolific copyright litigant, Strike 3 has built tens of thousands of lawsuits on the premise that sharing files via BitTorrent is copyright infringement. In those cases against individual defendants, a typical defense is that an IP address doesn’t identify a person.

Meta takes a different route. The company’s ninth affirmative defense doesn’t deny that data was uploaded from its IP addresses. Instead, it argues that any uploads during the torrenting process were “de minimis and did not result in the creation of an identifiable or usable copy of any copyrighted work.”

In other words, the fragments exchanged during BitTorrent transfers don’t amount to a meaningful copy. As far as we know, this argument has not been tested in court before, so it will be interesting to see how this will fare.

Meta also takes aim at Strike 3’s copyrights themselves. The tenth affirmative defense alleges that the adult films may incorporate others’ works without permission and may be “derivative of or copy preexisting works, including works undisclosed in Plaintiffs’ copyright filings with the U.S. Copyright Office.” Strike 3, Meta suggests, may have overstated its own copyright claims.

The remaining defenses include a statute of limitations argument, uncertainty about Strike 3’s copyrights, and a constitutional challenge arguing that the statutory damages would violate the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

With potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, it is clear that Meta will fight the matter tooth and nail. Alternatively, an early settlement is also an option. The case now moves forward, with mediation due by early August and a jury trial set for February 2028.

—

A copy of Meta’s answer to the amended complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf). For full context, Strike 3’s amended complaint is available here (pdf).

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

The social media company allegedly failed to respond adequately to takedown notices and lacked a proper repeat infringer policy. The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) claimed it had sent over 300,000 formal infringement notices, many of which didn’t lead to immediate removals.

The battle escalated in January, when X Corp. filed a landmark antitrust complaint against the NMPA and a coalition of major music publishers, accusing them of coordinating a “weaponized” DMCA takedown campaign to coerce X into industry-wide licensing deals.

These explosive allegations set the stage for a high-profile legal battle. However, it didn’t get that far.

Last week, both lawsuits ended without any further fanfare. Joint stipulations of dismissal were filed in the Middle District of Tennessee and the Northern District of Texas on the same day, with identical terms. In both cases, all claims dismissed with prejudice, with both sides paying their own fees and expenses.

The coordinated timing and matching language leave little doubt that these cases were resolved as part of a package deal.

From ‘Maximum Pain’ to Package Deal

The settlement ends a legal battle that took several dramatic turns.

In 2024, X scored a partial win when the court dismissed the music publishers’ direct and vicarious copyright infringement claims, and partially dismissed claims of contributory infringement.

Judge Trauger concluded that X can’t be held liable for making it ‘very easy’ to upload infringing material or for monetizing pirated content. These characteristics are not exclusive to infringing material and apply to legitimate content too, she argued.

The reduced lawsuit continued and by June 2025, X filed a heavily redacted motion to compel, alleging that the NMPA had used its takedown notice campaign to inflict “maximum pain” on X’s business, to motivate Elon Musk’s platform to sign music licensing agreements.

This revelation appeared to bring a potential settlement closer last year, but an agreement was not reached at the time.

Evolving Legal Claims

Instead, X responded with a countersuit. In January, it filed an antitrust complaint accusing the NMPA and the major publishers of a conspiracy to weaponize the DMCA, alleging that a flood of “baseless” notices targeted over 200,000 posts and suspended 50,000 users to coerce licensing deals.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cox v. Sony this Spring, the landscape changed again. X argued that the music publishers’ surviving contributory infringement claim now failed as a matter of law.

The publishers responded with a Second Amended Complaint, reframing their case as an inducement claim, but X called this an attempt to “retrofit” the case, without proper backing. Meanwhile, the publishers moved to dismiss X’s antitrust suit, pointing at weak evidence.

With both sides looking at weakened claims, settlement suddenly seemed a rational exit.

SpaceX Subsidiary

While neither party commented in the reason for the settlement, there may be another reason why the timing made sense for X. The breakthrough follows just a few weeks after the company went public again through its new parent company SpaceX.

SpaceX went public on June 12, raising a record $75 billion at a $1.8 trillion valuation. While X may only be a small part of the new conglomerate, the lawsuit posed a serious uncertainty for investors.

In a pre-IPO prospectus filed with the SEC, SpaceX listed the music publishers’ copyright case as one of seven significant litigation matters. Across all cases, SpaceX reported $399 million in accrued litigation losses as of March 2026. These are probable estimated losses that pose a risk to the company’s finances.

On August 4, SpaceX will announce its first-ever quarterly earnings as a publicly traded company. That’s also the date when several insiders can start selling stock. With that in mind, it doesn’t hurt to have a major liability resolved.

There is no evidence that SpaceX’s IPO directly caused the settlement. Both sides had other reasons to settle after Cox weakened the publishers’ case and the publishers’ dismissal motion threatened X’s antitrust claims. However, it may have played a role nonetheless.

Explosive Claims Fade Out

With both cases now dismissed, the explosive claims from both sides will never be tested in court.

That applies to the music companies’ mass piracy allegations against X, as well as X’s claim that the NMPA used its takedown campaign to inflict “maximum pain” on the social media company. Both claims remain unproven.

Whether the settlements include any financial arrangements remains unknown too. There is no mention of compensation from either side and no licensing deals have been announced either.

When the NMPA settled a similar dispute with Roblox in 2021, it publicly announced an industry-wide licensing deal. In that light, the silence on the X settlement, after more than a week later, is notable.

For now, the three-year legal war between X and the music industry is over. Whether more details will show up in future SpaceX SEC filings or industry disclosures has yet to be seen.

—

Copies of the joint stipulations of dismissal are available here (copyright claim – pdf) and here (antitrust suit – pdf).

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

That original order targeted a specific service and a fixed set of domain names. If rightsholders wanted to add a domain to the blocklist, they had to go back to court.

Later orders against Soap2Day and, more recently, various stream-ripping sites, went a step further. Instead of targeting specific operations run by the same people, they allowed rightsholders to update the blocklist with alternative domains that would pop up, as well as copycats of the already named brands.

These new orders streamlined the site blocking process. Rightsholders no longer had to file a new case for every domain that popped up. They did, however, still have to go back to the Federal Court, which had to issue a new order before anything new could be blocked.

Rightsholders say these types of blocking orders are needed to effectively curb piracy. However, they are not without criticism. Opponents including the Canadian ISP TekSavvy have previously complained that site blocking is a slippery slope, where more sites might eventually get blocked with less oversight.

Hollywood Seeks Broad Blocking Order

Thus far the global trend has indeed been to expand blocking powers and the latest Federal Court order, issued earlier this month, is no exception.

The blocking order, requested by Rogers, TVA, Netflix and various Hollywood studios such as Disney and Warner Bros., targets thirteen named piracy brands. This includes existing domain names, but also any future domains that use the same brands, whether these are linked to the original operation or not.

The order requires Canadian ISPs, including Bell, Rogers, Telus, and TekSavvy, to block an initial list of 18 domains and subdomains. It is also the first Canadian blocking order to cover both IPTV subscription services and public streaming sites in a single proceeding.

The order splits its targets into two groups. Six are IPTV subscription services: Apollo Group TV, Diablo IPTV, GLO TV, IPGuys, Jio TV, and Smart4K/Platinum. The other seven pirate streaming sites are 123Movies, Cineby, FMovies, HydraHD, Putlocker, TheTVApp, and WatchSeries.

After the first site blocking order survived several appeals, there hasn’t been any significant opposition from ISPs to the follow-up orders. That also applies here, as the most recent blocking order was approved without any notable pushback.

Schedule 1 lists 13 domains and five subdomains. With more than 50 million global monthly visitors, 123moviesfree.net is one of the prime targets. However, the value of this order lies less in what it blocks today than in what it can block tomorrow.

The Catch-All ‘Expanded Scope’ Order

The blocking order adds a new feature which is framed as an “Expanded Scope.” Earlier Canadian orders reached a single brand and its copycats. The latest blocking order goes further, as it also covers “similarly infringing platforms operating under other brands.”

This effectively means that the movie studios and other rightsholders can add new pirate sites and services to the blocklist. Justice Southcott agreed that this is needed to deal with the piracy whac-a-mole problem where new pirate sites swiftly take the place of blocked ones.

“[W]hen access to infringing platforms is blocked, other similarly infringing platforms appear and/or increase in popularity,” the order reads.

To justify the expansion, Justice Southcott looked at a recent UK High Court order, described as an “omnibus order,” which we covered in May. According to the Motion Picture Association, which represents its member studios in site blocking efforts, this order makes it possible to block any “structurally infringing audiovisual piracy service” without naming it in advance.

The UK judgment itself has still not been published on BAILII or the National Archives, as far as we know, but it is clearly seen as the new frontier in site blocking efforts.

Adding New Brands

The order explains how new brands are added through what it calls a “Simplified Procedure.” To add a platform, rightsholders must file an affidavit which confirms that the new target meets the order’s conditions.

In this case, it means that the target’s sole or predominant purpose is the unauthorized distribution of the studios’ film and television works, that it operates like the IPTV or open-web services already named, that it is reachable in Canada, and that the operator was sent a notice of infringement and given seven days to respond.

If no targeted ISP files a notice of motion to object within five business days, the updated list takes effect without any hearing and no further order from the court. These new submissions can be made every ten business days.

That last part is a subtle but notable change. Under the stream-ripper order issued last month, ISP silence meant the Court “may grant an Order amending Schedule 1 as proposed by the Applicants without further proceedings.” A judge still signed off, even if nobody argued.

Under the new order, silence alone is enough. The proposed list “shall be considered Schedule 1 under this Order,” with no involvement from the court at all.

Together, the two changes remove both limits that applied before. The court no longer has to sign off on blocklist updates, and the additions no longer have to involve a brand that was already named in the case.

Justice Southcott describes this as “an incremental modification to precedent site-blocking orders.”

A Judicial Guardrail

Justice Southcott did not grant everything the studios asked for. The rightsholders wanted the new order to also apply to “any works for which the Applicants own the copyright.”

The order limits its scope to “the Applicants’ Works,” meaning the specific titles mentioned in the judgment. In practice, that prevents the studios from using copyrights they acquire later to justify new additions, without first going back to court.

Not everyone is convinced that the safeguards go far enough.

TekSavvy, which previously fought back against site blocking in Canada, published a critical compliance page for the order. While the company did not oppose the current order, it remains highly skeptical.

“[W]e see blocking orders as a grave violation of network neutrality and a fundamental change to what we do as an ISP. The principles of common carriage and network neutrality mean ISPs carry traffic to and from end users in as neutral a fashion as possible,” TekSavvy notes.

The latest order runs for two years, with the blocklist starting at 13 domains and five subdomains. The more telling figure may be how many names get added before it expires.

—

A copy of the site-blocking order, issued by Justice Southcott, is available here (pdf). The full domain list can be found here (pdf).

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

The platform remained online despite a fierce anti-piracy crackdown that led to the demise of Megaupload, Hotfile, and many other file-hosting services.

Uptobox eventually met its fate in September 2023, when a coalition of entertainment companies including Disney, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Bros. obtained a court order to seize its servers at various data centers.

Uptobox Crackdown

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment claimed responsibility for the operation, which was carried out simultaneously in France and the UAE. While Uptobox put up a fight in court, hoping for a comeback, the courts disagreed and kept it offline.

Behind the scenes, Disney was pursuing a parallel case against a French national residing in the UAE. Local news site L’Informé previously identified the defendant by his X.com pseudonym “Starouille”, who previously described himself as the CTO of Uptobox.

In October 2023, Disney obtained an order from a Paris enforcement judge, authorizing seizures of up to €16.127 million against his personal bank accounts. In the legal paperwork, Disney described the defendant as one of the “founders, operators, and de facto co-directors” of Uptobox.

When the seizure was executed at the BNP Paribas bank, it froze approximately €197,000. Two additional seizures followed under separate orders. These seized assets are not damages awards, but they are kept as a security while the case is fought on its merits.

Not a Director

Starouille, who is identified in the legal paperwork as ‘M. [U]’, did not agree with the way Disney described him. His lawyer Me Damien Faupin argued that he was a technical contractor who managed server infrastructure, not a co-director. The CTO title on social media did not reflect reality, the lawyer clarified.

In January 2025, the enforcement judge agreed that Disney could not prove the defendant’s director role, ordering the seized funds released. However, Disney objected and requested a stay of execution while they appealed. This decision eventually came this month.

After considering all evidence, the Court of Appeal upheld the finding that Disney failed to prove Starouille was a de facto director. The evidence showed he began as a freelancer in 2012, but there’s no evidence that he actually had a managerial function.

“The fact that [the defendant] presented himself on social media, notably on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, as ‘Chief Technical Officer’ (CTO) of Uptobox does not in itself constitute, even assuming this title to be accurate, a sufficient element to establish that, beyond operations of installation, maintenance, and upgrading of servers, he was more generally engaged in management or technical development of the service,” the court said (all quotes are translated).

The Court of Appeal noted that there was insufficient evidence to prove the defendant was engaged in the general management of the service. Instead, his role was strictly limited to operations, maintenance, and server upgrades. This was corroborated by evidence seized at hosting provider Opcore, which listed him as “interlocuteur technique N1” (Technical Liaison Level 1).

While the court concluded that Disney failed to prove that the defendant had a director role, it ultimately ruled that the funds should remain frozen for another reason.

DNS Tweets Keep Funds Frozen

The court order notes that the defendant was not ignorant of the alleged piracy-facilitating activities of Uptobox. In fact, his own social media posts showed that he was aware of site blocking efforts and shared information on how these could be bypassed.

For example, in one of the X/Twitter posts that are no longer public, Starouille wrote (translated): “for those who can no longer access Uptobox/Uptostream, change your DNS on all your devices (procedure here: uptobox.info/dns). You can also use uptobox.link.”

When a user asked whether this was about “yet another court order,” Starouille replied: “yes, where Uptobox is not condemned, just 4 ISPs. As usual…” He later posted specific instructions for changing DNS settings in a Freebox router’s download manager.

According to the Court of Appeal, these posts show that the defendant was aware of the blocking orders, as well as the copyright-related reasons for these blocking measures. His defense that the DNS instructions were meant to help rightsholders contact the service was dismissed.

“[The defendant] cannot validly maintain that his message, far from enabling the circumvention of an institutional block, was solely intended to allow users, rightsholders such as the appellant, or any other natural or legal person to be able to contact the company or the service, in particular to report a copyright infringement problem.”

This was not the first time Starouille’s social media activity was used against him in court. As L’Informé previously reported, a since-deleted tweet showing a car entering a parking lot tagged “@online DC2” helped entertainment companies locate Uptobox servers at Scaleway’s second data center in Vitry-sur-Seine, facilitating the September 2023 raid.

Importantly, this is not a finding on the merits. Starouille is not held liable, the court merely concluded that Disney’s claims are plausible enough to keep the funds frozen for now.

From €16 Million to €306,000

The defendant also booked a win, at least on paper. Disney previously calculated its claim using the lost Disney+ subscription revenue over 2020-2023, applying its 15% streaming market share to Uptobox’s estimated one million monthly unique visitors.

The Court of Appeal adjusted this number downward, citing a study which concluded that roughly 80% of pirates already subscribe to legal streaming services. This means that these would not necessarily result in lost revenue.

Additionally, the court found that Starouille’s alleged wrongful conduct was limited to his July-August 2023 social media posts, which further limits the claim.

Ultimately, this shorter ‘liability’ window and the reduced lost subscriptions, slashed the authorized asset freeze of more than €16 million to €306,000. However, since this is still more than the €197,000 that’s frozen at BNP Paribas, nothing is returned yet.

For now, Starouille’s savings remain frozen and the merits case is pending. No piracy damages have been awarded yet, but the ruling shows that publicly instructing users to circumvent court orders can be used to justify piracy-related asset seizures.

—

A copy of the Paris Court of Appeal ruling is available here (pdf).

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

While the associated site already closed its doors in March, the action is vital for Vietnam since the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) recently classified it as “Priority Foreign Country,” because of its lacking anti-piracy enforcement.

Last month, USTR formally started a Section 301 investigation which opened the door to potential trade sanctions. As part of this process, stakeholders were requested to provide input on Vietnam’s alleged shortcomings. This includes the piracy challenges and concerns, which are highlighted as the primary concern.

One of the key submissions for the USTR investigation comes from the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents the major Hollywood studios, Netflix and Amazon. The MPA has vast experience in the country through its anti-piracy arm ACE and assisted in local copyright enforcement efforts for years.

This cooperation resulted in the takedown of the Fmovies piracy ring, for example, and ACE also provided key intelligence for the recent HiAnime action. While the MPA is pleased with the enforcement efforts, it hasn’t been pleased with how Vietnamese courts and prosecutors deal with the matter.

MPA: ‘Mild Sentences are the Problem’

When MPA submitted its commentary the HiAnime arrests had not been announced yet. The MPA has since applauded the arrests, but its USTR filing suggests that the eventual sentences will be crucial.

Previously, the prosecutions of key defendants in the Fmovies piracy ring, dubbed the largest piracy operation ever, resulted in suspended prison sentences and relatively low fines. The same applied to the operator of the popular BestBuyIPTV service.

MPA’s SVP Global Policy and Government Affairs, Gail MacKinnon, informed the USTR that the lack of deterrent penalties in Vietnam are the main reason why online piracy remains a significant problem in the country.

“Without sentences and monetary penalties that outweigh the financial gains from copyright infringement, online piracy operations originating in Vietnam will not be sufficiently deterred,” MPA’s submission reads.

“There needs to be visible and credible consequences to effectively deter infringement and counter the perception that piracy is a low-risk, high-reward activity,” MacKinnon adds.

Copycats, Successors, and Resurgents

MPA notes that, as a result of the mild sentences, major takedowns are often only a short-lived success. Pirate brands or operations often reappear swiftly, a problem India’s High Court previously likened to a “hydra-headed” threat.

In its recommendations to the USTR, MPA urges Vietnam to make sure that such copycats and successors are also addressed properly.

“Take effective and deterrent enforcement action against the notorious piracy services identified by MPA, including timely follow-up actions against any successor, mirror, or copycat sites that emerge”

“Criminal enforcement action must be taken against the operators of these pirate syndicates to ensure that they do not resurface. Consistent enforcement is also necessary to deter the emergence of copycat
services that fill the gap left by these shutdowns.”

Much of the same critique is shared by International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), which highlighted the same problem in their submission to the USTR’s Vietnam investigation.

The IIPA documents the same pattern in more detail, tracing a rather obvious branding shift that started in 2023, when Zoro.to was shut down by ACE, but not before it was rebranded as AniWatch. A year later, Aniwatch became HiAnime, which eventually went offline this year.

IIPA’s submission, which also predates the HiAnime crackdown announcement, also calls for tougher enforcement and deterrent sanctions.

“It is critical for responsible enforcement authorities, including the relevant police units, the MPS, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MOCST), to follow through on infringement complaints, take meaningful and effective enforcement actions, and impose deterrent sanctions against infringing websites.”

Dispatch 38

Both the MPA and IIPA acknowledge that Vietnam has started to take the piracy problem more seriously. In May, the Vietnamese government issued Official Dispatch No. 38, asking agencies nationwide to intensify IP-related enforcement efforts, including actions against piracy websites.

Dispatch 38 also requests prosecutors and courts to prioritize serious copyright cases, improve prosecution timelines, and to strengthen deterrence. The MPA separately notes that the Ministry of Public Security is drafting amendments to the Penal Code to better address high-tech crimes and cyber offenses.

Whether the recent wave of enforcement actions and policy signals will be enough to change Vietnam’s piracy image has yet to be seen. The HiAnime arrests are recent, and the planned prosecution of the site’s operators will be the first real test of whether the judicial system is ready to move along.

—

The IIPA’s Section 301 comments are available here (pdf). The MPA’s filing can be found here (pdf).

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

With help from private and public partners from all over the world, authorities seized well over a thousand domain names of pirate sports streaming sites. In the United States, the effort was branded “Operation Offsides”, which initially targeted nearly 400 domain names offering unauthorized World Cup streams. That turned out to be just the start.

Operation Offsides

Note: More details were released on July 20 by the DoJ and ACE. These are available below.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Operation Offsides on June 26, targeting pirate sites that streamed World Cup matches. The seizure warrant was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, but this appears to be sealed, as we were unable to locate a copy in the court database.

The DOJ and Homeland Security Investigations ran a similar crackdown during the 2022 Qatar World Cup, seizing 78 domains at the time. The 2026 action is at least five times larger, however, and was the result of international cooperation.

The domains were identified with assistance from FIFA, beIN Media Group, NBCUniversal, ACE, the UFC, and Warner Bros. International coordination through the DOJ’s ICHIP network extended the operation’s reach to Peru and Bulgaria, described in the announcement as known centers of online piracy activity, with supporting actions in Croatia, Romania, Poland, and Colombia.

The authorities did not mention any domains by name but TorrentFreak traced many through passive DNS data, with the current tally at 627 identified domains (listed below). While the seizures hit several major sports streaming sites, other popular sites operating under foreign-registry TLDs outside U.S. jurisdiction managed to survive.

Visitors of the blocked domain names, meanwhile, ran into the following splash banner, listing many of the partners involved.

The “Operation Offsides” seizures came in waves. Last weekend, more than 100 additional domains were seized, many of them fallback domains that pirate sites had switched to after the initial round. That same report also revealed that several operators switched to Iranian .ir fallback domains, in an effort to switch to infrastructure that is harder for U.S. law enforcement to reach.

Colombia Leads “Operation Red Card”

Two days before the World Cup final, Colombia’s Fiscalía General announced the results of a separate multinational enforcement effort it had coordinated under the name “Operación Tarjeta Roja” (Operation Red Card).

The international action brought together prosecutors, law enforcement agencies, and public ministries from nine countries: Colombia, the United States, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Chile, with support from private-sector audiovisual and sports organizations.

In Colombia alone, 1,140 domains and URLs used for unauthorized sports streaming were ‘blocked’. Across all participating countries, the total reached 1,840. Similar to the U.S. operation, the authorities did not name any domains.

“While the planet focused on the FIFA World Cup 2026, a group of nations went after the structures that profit from counterfeiting and theft of digital content,” said Fiscalía’s Raúl González Flechas, commenting on the news.

The Colombian operation, which targeted both counterfeiting and piracy, also resulted in 15 arrests. Four suspects in Soacha, near Bogotá, were accused of hacking into a telecom company’s platforms to offer cheap ‘pirated’ cable TV, posing as employees of the company. Two of the four accepted the charges.

Separately, 11 people running shops selling counterfeit World Cup merchandise were charged with trademark infringement and related offenses. Authorities seized 4,223 counterfeit sports items, 11,353 fake logos ready to be applied to garments, and 2,150 counterfeit Colombian Football Federation shields during raids in Bogotá, Itagüí, Cali, Acacías, and Bucaramanga.

Argentina Blocks FútbolLibre

Argentina also contributed to Operación Tarjeta Roja earlier in the tournament. In early July, the country’s UFECI cybercrime unit opened investigations against three platforms: Stella TV, Tele Latino, and sites associated with FútbolLibre, one of the most widely used pirate sports streaming brands in the country.

FútbolLibre had already been under investigation since 2022. This time, complaints from rightsholders DirecTV and Personal Flow provided additional evidence.

Three federal judges ordered ENACOM, Argentina’s communications regulator, and NIC Argentina, the country’s domain registry, to block access to 14 platforms and sites. However, as is often the case, there is no shortage of copycats using the same brands.

Pirate Ad Revenue Targeted

The enforcement wave was not limited to government action. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) previously announced that it had cut off advertising revenue to 1,376 sites that illegally streamed sports or offered other World Cup content, through its Pirate Domain Exclusion List.

Rather than targeting domains directly, TAG aims to starve pirate streaming site operators of the ad revenue, so they will eventually give up.

“Global sporting events like the World Cup are prime targets for criminals who try to intercept legitimate ad dollars by stealing popular streaming content,” said TAG COO Rachel Nyswander Thomas.

More Results Expected

With the World Cup final set for this weekend, additional enforcement results from other participating countries may still be announced.

Whether these combined efforts have had lasting impact on pirate sports streaming availability has yet to be seen. The disruption certainly has an effect, but the enforcement efforts have also shown that some pirate site operators are resilient.

The success of these and future enforcement efforts will largely depend on how far the reach of the international authorities goes, and whether pirate site operators can still find unblocked fallback infrastructure. By the next World Cup in 2030 we should know more.

This article will be updated if more results from participating countries or partners come in.
—

Update July 20: A day after the World Cup final, the DOJ announced that Operation Offsides seized more than 1,000 domains across three separate enforcement actions during the tournament, up from the “nearly 400” cited in its original June announcement.

Below is a non-exhaustive and non-verified list of 627 domain names that, according to information gathered by TorrentFreak, were seized as part of Operation Offsides.


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

Since the framework officially launched in 2025, a series of orders have targeted sports streaming sites, shadow libraries, movie piracy portals, and pirate IPTV services.

The official blocklist has grown to more than 1,000 domain names and a new order, issued by the President of the French-speaking Business Court of Brussels on July 3, classified 113 additional domain names as copyright infringing.

French Piracy Portals

BAPO published its implementation decision on 10 July, without revealing the names of the requesting rightsholders. However, since the targeted sites mostly deal with movie and TV piracy, it would not be a surprise if it comes from Hollywood, Netflix, and Apple again.

The implementation order does not mention any of the domains by name, but TorrentFreak obtained a copy of the full blocklist, which shows that 113 domain names were added through the latest order. Most of these domains are connected to the French-language download portals Zone-Telechargement and Wawacity. Others include Lookmovie, Movix and KissKH.

The order requires five of Belgium’s large ISPs, including Telenet, Proximus, Mobile Vikings, Orange Belgium, and DIGI Communications, to block these sites. Unlike one of the earlier orders, it does not require third-party DNS resolvers to act.

The French-language orientation makes sense given it was issued by the French-speaking Business Court of Brussels, but it also connects this order to a much older enforcement cycle in a neighboring country.

Blocks are Outdated Already

The list of all new domains, which is available below, shows that Zone-Telechargement and Wawacity use a wide variety of largely identical novelty TLDs. This appears to be a direct response to site blocking orders issued by France’s ARCOM.

Each time French ISPs implement a new round of DNS blocks, the operators register a fresh domain name and redirect their user base through dedicated landing pages and Telegram channels. These updates happen so frequently that the Belgian site blocking order was already outdated before ISPs got the chance to implement it.

To illustrate, the order includes 37 Wawacity domains and 36 Zone-Telechargement domains. However, both sites have been operating from a .poker TLD since July 9th, and several of the previous iterations such as .codes and .expert are not in the Belgian blocklist either.

The rightsholders are aware of the domain hopping habits of these sites, as they specifically requested the court to block “signpost” information pages that help people to bypass blockades.

Blocking Info Pages With No Infringing Content

For example, the blocklist includes wawacity-info.com and zone-telechargement-info.com. These sites do not host copyrighted content and do not link to any infringing files. They are simple landing pages that tell visitors what the current active domain is, and how blocking measures can be bypassed.

Rightsholders asked the court to block these domain names as well and this request was granted by the court and also approved in BAPO’s implementation order. While the signpost pages don’t link directly to infringing material, they are facilitating access.

This would fall under the Belgian blocking powers and the “facilitate access” language is specifically referenced in the implementation order, as shown above.

Whac-A-Mole

The two blocked signpost pages are nearly identical, suggesting that Wawacity and Zone-Telechargement are run by the same operation. This also explains why they change their domain names in tandem.

Whether the operators plan to change the domain names of their signpost pages is unclear. They also update tens of thousands of followers through Telegram, where the messaging is again identical, which points to a joint operation.

These sites are not the only ones that regularly change domain names either. Movix, which is also targeted in the same order, has already moved to a new TLD as well and remains accessible.

If anything, the Belgian example shows that site blocking itself is far from a perfect remedy. Although BAPO’s blocking order can be updated weekly with up to 50 new domains, pirate site operators often only need a few minutes to direct traffic to a new TLD.

It would not be a surprise to see rightsholders target the Telegram channels next, hoping to further limit the exposure. Whether these and other measures will eventually break the morale of pirates has yet to be seen.

—

– animepahe.pw 
– animepahe.com 
– animepahe.org 
– anime-sama.to 
– anime-sama.pw 
– anime-sama.org 
– anime-sama.si 
– anime-sama.tv 
– kisskh.co 
– kisskh.do 
– kisskh.id 
– kisskh.la 
– kisskh.ovh 
– kisskh.at 
– kissdl.eu 
– lookmovie.foundation 
– lookmovie.pn 
– lookmovie0.to 
– lookmovie2.la 
– lookmovie2.pe 
– lookmovie2.to 
– lookmovie4.to 
– lookmovie5.to 
– lookmovie6.to 
– lookmovie7.to 
– lookmovie8.to 
– lookmovie9.to 
– lookmovie.com 
– movix.cash 
– movix.chat 
– movix.cloud 
– movix.golf 
– movix.club 
– movix.llc 
– movix.online 
– streamex.net  
– streamex.sh 
– voir-anime.to 
– watchseries.bar  
– watchseries.best 
– wawacity.tours 
– wawacity-info.com 
– wawacity.beauty 
– wawacity.click 
– wawacity.cv 
– wawacity.diy 
– wawacity.energy 
– wawacity.farm 
– wawacity.futbol 
– wawacity.golf 
– wawacity.gratis 
– wawacity.im 
– wawacity.ing 
– wawacity.irish 
– wawacity.lat 
– wawacity.lifestyle 
– wawacity.motorcycles 
– wawacity.news 
– wawacity.party 
– wawacity.pet 
– wawacity.pictures 
– wawacity.pizza 
– wawacity.promo 
– wawacity.rent 
– wawacity.rodeo 
– wawacity.run 
– wawacity.shop 
– wawacity.supply 
– wawacity.surf 
– wawacity.taxi 
– wawacity.team 
– wawacity.tips 
– wawacity.today 
– wawacity.tools 
– wawacity.town 
– wawacity.win 
– wawacity.zone 
– zone-telechargement.tours 
– zone-telechargement-info.com 
– zone-telechargement.beauty 
– zone-telechargement.cv 
– zone-telechargement.diy 
– zone-telechargement.energy 
– zone-telechargement.farm 
– zone-telechargement.futbol 
– zone-telechargement.golf 
– zone-telechargement.gratis 
– zone-telechargement.im 
– zone-telechargement.ing 
– zone-telechargement.irish 
– zone-telechargement.meme 
– zone-telechargement.monster 
– zone-telechargement.motorcycles 
– zone-telechargement.news 
– zone-telechargement.party 
– zone-telechargement.pet 
– zone-telechargement.pictures 
– zone-telechargement.pizza 
– zone-telechargement.promo 
– zone-telechargement.rent 
– zone-telechargement.rodeo 
– zone-telechargement.run 
– zone-telechargement.shop 
– zone-telechargement.supply 
– zone-telechargement.surf 
– zone-telechargement.taxi 
– zone-telechargement.team 
– zone-telechargement.tips 
– zone-telechargement.today 
– zone-telechargement.tools 
– zone-telechargement.town 
– zone-telechargement.win 
– zone-telechargement.zone 

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

While the diary’s importance is universally recognized, the accessibility of its digital manuscripts has been at the center of a Dutch copyright battle that eventually made its way to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

The legal dispute was triggered by differences in copyright protection terms in the EU. Parts of Anne Frank’s manuscripts remain protected in the Netherlands until 2037, while the same material entered the public domain in Belgium and many other EU member states years ago.

To navigate these conflicting laws, the Dutch Anne Frank Stichting published a scholarly edition online using “state-of-the-art” geo-blocking to prevent Dutch residents from accessing the site. Visitors from the Netherlands and other countries where the work is protected are met with a clear message, informing them about these access restrictions.

“The scholarly edition of the Anne Frank manuscripts cannot be made available in all countries, due to copyright considerations,” is the message blocked visitors get to see.

Despite these blocking measures, the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds was not pleased. The Fonds essentially argued that if a block isn’t 100% bypass-proof, the content shouldn’t be online at all.

The Dutch lower court dismissed this argument, stating the defendants had taken reasonable measures to prevent access from the Netherlands. The Fonds appealed, without result, and the case is now heading back to the Dutch Supreme Court, which referred several questions to the EU’s top court to decide the fate of VPN neutrality and the sufficiency of geo-blocking.

State-of-the-Art Geo-Blocking Is Good Enough

In January, Advocate General Rantos published his opinion concluding that geo-blocking is a sufficient measure and that VPN providers are neutral intermediaries. That opinion was not binding, but it set the tone for what followed.

Last week, the CJEU’s Second Chamber delivered its final judgment. The Court ruled that a work that’s in the public domain in some EU member states, but still under copyright in another, can be published on a geo-blocked website without being considered an infringing “communication to the public” in the protected country.

The Court recognized that geo-blocking can be circumvented with a VPN, but that is not the decisive factor. If a publisher specifically chose to use a state-of-the-art geo-blocking to block visitors from a specific country, it is clear that these people are not the intended audience.

“While it is true that geo-blocking measures, including state-of-the-art measures, can, like any technological measure, be circumvented, particularly through the use of a VPN or similar service, the possibility of such circumvention cannot, in itself and in all circumstances, be a decisive factor in finding those measures to be inadequate and, therefore, ineffective,” the judgment reads.

The Court also rejected the idea that publishers should be required to use stricter access controls, such as subscriptions or login requirements. Imposing those measures would disproportionately restrict free access for users in public-domain countries.

The Anne Frank website also uses a self-declaration barrier, shown above, asking visitors to confirm that they are accessing the site from a public-domain country. The Court found that this type of measure, on its own, is not sufficient or effective.

VPN Providers Are not Liable

VPN providers are not liable if they are used to bypass state-of-the-art geo-blocking measures. The same logic also holds if the geo-blocking measures are ineffective to begin with.

The EU’s top court sees VPN providers as neutral intermediaries, referring to previous rulings where YouTube and Uploaded were not held liable for pirating users. As an intermediary, a VPN itself simply acts as a secure, neutral routing tool that’s not communicating anything to the public.

“The provider of a VPN or similar services that are used in order to circumvent an ineffective geo-blocking measure and are lawful technical tools which users may legitimately use cannot be regarded as also having communicated the work to the public,” the judgment reads.

The Court explained that a VPN provider “does not give end users access to a protected work” and added that it “does not play an ‘indispensable role'” in any act of communication.

This conclusion is significant. It effectively confirms that the EU’s highest court does not see VPN providers as copyright infringers simply because their technology enables users to bypass geographical restrictions.

The Broader Fallout

The CJEU ruling means that VPN providers are not held directly liable under EU law. However, this finding still has to be interpreted by local courts.

In this case, it goes back to the Dutch Supreme Court, which still has to decide whether the geo-blocking system deployed by the Anne Frank Stichting actually meets the “state-of-the-art” threshold.

The ruling comes at a time when the status of VPNs in copyright enforcement is also being tested from the opposite direction. In France, for example, VPNs are required to block pirate sites, as they are seen as key intermediaries, similar to ISPs.

The CJEU ruling is not in direct conflict with the French court orders, which are issued under the French Sports Code. However, these blocking orders are actively contested too and may eventually find their way to the EU’s top court as well.

—

A copy of the CJEU’s judgment in Case C-788/24 (ECLI:EU:C:2026:559) is available here.

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

The Spanish-language site is particularly popular in Latin America and served more than a billion annual visits at its height.

This popularity didn’t go unnoticed with rightsholders. The site has been on the anti-piracy radar for years and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) flagged the site in its most recent report to the U.S. Trade Representative.

According to the MPA, AnimeFLV’s operators are believed to be located in Peru, Chile, and Mexico. In the latter two countries, the anime portal is also among the 100 most-visited websites. However, due to recent changes this traffic rank will likely drop.

“There are currently no videos”

AnimeFLV ran without significant issues for years, but that changed in mid-June. While the site remained online with the content listings intact, the video player categorically returns the message “Actualmente no hay videos,” informing visitors that ‘there are currently no videos.’

In other words, the popular anime site has effectively become a ghost directory of series and movies.

Initial hiccups were reported in April already but the site recovered from those. By late June, however, bug reports on GitHub from the Aniyomi anime app’s extension tracker confirmed that AnimeFLV’s player returned no video sources at all.

The site’s operators have not issued any statement to this day. No anti-piracy organization has taken credit either, but the video disappearance comes at a time when several major anime and manga operations were dismantled.

A Wave of Pirate Site Shutdowns

In April, we reported that TuMangaOnline, also known as ZonaTMO, was shut down following an enforcement action from Korean rightsholders.

Also in April, the backend infrastructure of many prominent pirate sites was knocked offline. These sites were linked to the popular “Piracy-as-a-Service” operations such as MegaCloud and VidCloud, that also acted as a hosting platform.

A few weeks earlier, the massive anime pirate site HiAnime had already closed its doors. While this action long remained unexplained, earlier this month Vietnamese authorities eventually launched a criminal prosecution against seven people associated with the piracy ring.

While AnimeFLV’s issues fit in this bigger picture, we can’t independently link it directly to these earlier crackdowns. The mid-June date doesn’t directly link to any other known enforcement actions either.

A Valuable Ghost Directory

What makes AnimeFLV’s situation unusual is that the site hasn’t disappeared. The front end remains fully functional, and the ‘ghost’ directory is still being updated.

Why the operators remain silent on the video issues is food for speculation. However, the fact that they keep the site online suggests that it may not permanently close its doors. Whether it will continue as a directory-only site or something more has yet to be seen.

While AnimeFLV still gets plenty of residual traffic, Leiinad World notes that potential successors were quick to enter the scene too. This includes a newer site called AnimeAV1, which references the more modern AV1 codec, instead of the outdated and largely obsolete FLV (Flash) container format.

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

As part of the “Operation Offsides” enforcement action, led by U.S. authorities, more than 100 domain names were seized over the past days.

These new seizures came more than two weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice officially announced the action. While no new announcement was released, the recent seizures in part target fallback domains that pirate sites switched to following the initial crackdown.

For example, when the buffstreams.plus domain name was seized, ibuffstreams.app took its place, pointing to the same server infrastructure. This backup domain did not go unnoticed and was subsequently seized, pointing to the now-familiar banner.

These secondary domain seizures also targeted many other domains and brands, including sportsurge.ws, footybite.app, totalsportekz.app, and istreameast.app. A longer list with more examples is available below.

Iranian Fallback

As long as the people running these sites are not caught, they will often launch new domain names. This is not new, but a recent series of domains caught our eye, as it is using seemingly more resilient fallback: Iran’s .ir country-code top-level domain.

OSINT data gathered by TorrentFreak found that buffstreams.ir, sportsurge.ir, and footybite.ir are all active and operational. These domains resolve to the same Ukrainian IP-address, which was previously used by the now seized buffstreams.plus, ibuffstreams.app, and sportsurge.ws domains.

The Iranian domains are paired with Iranian nameservers, ns1.pars.cloud and ns2.pars.cloud, which are also new as the earlier domains relied on Cloudflare nameservers. This suggests that the operators are intentionally moving away from American infrastructure.

Three Years in the Making

Iranian WHOIS data doesn’t reveal when the domains were registered, but SSL certificate logs tell us these .ir domains are not recent emergency registrations.

Both buffstreams.ir and sportsurge.ir received their first SSL certificates on September 22, 2023, within six minutes of each other. Their certificate chains have been renewed without interruption every 90 days since.

In other words, the .ir domains were set up nearly three years before Operation Offsides was announced. All this time they were presumably kept in reserve as a fallback and following the recent seizure actions they were brought to the fore.

The same certificate information also shows that, a few days ago, these .ir domains moved away from the Google SSL certificates they have been using for years. Instead, they switched to certificates from Let’s Encrypt.

More Iranian Links

The three domains on pars.cloud are not the only pirate streaming brands using .ir. Our investigation identified at least 20 additional streaming-related .ir domains spread across several operator clusters.

This includes Totalsportek, nflbite, and nflstreams branded sites with .ir domains, which are all share the same Cloudflare nameserver pair, indicating that they are run from the same account. There is also a separate .ir-linked mlb66 and nhl66 operation, which has been in use for a while.

These .ir domains are not necessarily a response to the recent U.S. domain seizures, as they’ve been around for much longer, but they show that more operators have discovered the .ir ccTLD.

In fact, we have also seen a cluster of Iranian sports streaming domains that are registered, but are not serving any content. These include nbabite.ir, nbastreams.ir, nhlbite.ir, mmastreams.ir, nflstream.ir, stream2watch.ir, and streameastt.ir. These may be waiting to be deployed at a later moment.

Political Tensions

Iran’s .ir country-code TLD is managed by IRNIC, which is part of the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, an academic institution based in Tehran. This makes it essentially unreachable for U.S. law enforcement.

Because of American sanctions, U.S. domain registrars are not allowed to resell .ir domain names. At the same time, given the current state of U.S.-Iran relations it is unlikely that IRNIC will voluntarily cooperate with U.S. authorities to target these domain names.

For pirate sites operators, .ir domains are also appealing due to a revision of IRNIC’s WHOIS policy in 2023. As a result, public queries no longer return registration dates, registrant names, or other contact information. For outsiders, these domains are essentially anonymous.

Notably, Iran’s copyright laws do not cover works from outside Iran, as the country is not a signatory to the Berne Convention, the WIPO Copyright Treaty, or a member of the WTO. This further complicates enforcement actions.

Of course, there are plenty of downsides to using .ir domain names. The international sanctions will make it challenging to monetize these domains, while Iranian domains are more complicated to register, and may also seem less trustworthy to the broader public.

Also, if an Iranian domain name gets millions of monthly visits, including a large American audience, the U.S. authorities may try to target these operations from alternative angles.

—

– 247sports1.live
– 4kstream.online
– 808score.net
– acrli.org
– alamalkoora.info
– alphastreams1.online
– arkooora.live
– articletech.info
– asyallakora.live
– bally-sports.click
– bintv.net
– bracupgi.org
– buffstreams.app
– coollkoora.live
– cupshots.live
– daddylive.org
– daysports.online
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– dingdongsport.org
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– extremesportstv.online
– falconstreams.org
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– foorja.live
– footfytv.live
– footstreams.link
– footy100.net
– footybite.app
– footybitez.app
– fotoklikk.live
– funteam.info
– futbollibre.gratis
– goal-koora.live
– goal2.live
– goto-matchat.live
– halastream.net
– ibuffstreams.app
– kkooora4live.net
– knatech.info
– kooora4live.online
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– koora-yallashoot.live
– kooraiive.info
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– livehd7.online
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– pirlotvs.app
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– streamcenter.live
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– streameast.mov
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– streamninja.online
– streams.center
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– stremonsport.net
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– syria-live.net
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– syrlive.net
– tarjetarojaonline.net
– tarjetarojatv.click
– tarjetarojatvenvivo.click
– techbugs.info
– techiguides.info
– the-tv.app
– therealone.online
– thetvapp.link
– transitionnorthfield.org
– trendgola.org
– tvsportslive.org
– ukdaddy.online
– us-cap.org
– vipbox-tv.live
– yalla-play.net
– yalla4.live
– yallagoolz.net
– yallaksa.live
– yallalive.fun
– yallashoot.fun
– yallashot.life
– yallasnap.net

Update July 15, the following domain names were added:

– 1sportshd.xyz
– aalexspt.xyz
– american-streams.xyz
– bizzstreams.xyz
– buff-streams.xyz
– ccrackstreams.lat
– dongleweb.xyz
– evisa-gov-md.net
– feed-247.xyz
– finalstreams.xyz
– fsportsshd.xyz
– goatsports.xyz
– gstream24.xyz
– hesgoals.lol
– hesgoaltv.lat
– hitcast.xyz
– hitslink.xyz
– jazzstream.xyz
– jonstream.lat
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– kevinsport.lol
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– kora4.xyz
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– luxurycreeks.xyz
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– saoketv39.xyz
– sportsgoals.xyz
– sportsmachine.xyz
– sportsupa.xyz
– streambest.mom
– streamninja.xyz
– streamticker.xyz
– syarlive.xyz
– tv-shihab.xyz
– volokit.xyz
– watchme.mom
– wildnature.xyz
– yallalovee.xyz
– yallashoot-id1.xyz

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

The American tech company has been ordered to block access to pirate domain names through its DNS resolver in France, Belgium, Italy and Portugal, for example.

In a recent submission to the European Commission’s call for evidence on the review of the Copyright Directive, Google lists its site blocking critique in detail. The filing is marked “Privileged and Confidential” but it was posted publicly on the commission’s website, alongside other submissions.

Blocking Harms Outweigh Benefits, Google Argues

Google’s submission addresses a variety of topics, including the company’s opposition to broad site blocking measures. This includes VPN and third-party DNS blocking, which is seen as disproportionate and ineffective. The same applies to IP-address blocking, which risks targeting infrastructure of legitimate sites and services.

“Blocking DNS resolvers, IPs, VPNs, is ineffective, as it does not remove content at all and is easily circumvented by using alternative DNS resolvers. It is disproportionate, catching lawful services, raising extra-territoriality concerns and blocking entire domains,” Google writes.

“Similarly, blocking IP addresses neither removes the content nor achieves proportionate outcomes, as many lawful services may be using the same IP address,” the company adds.

The submission cited several real-world examples to support these claims. It mentions that Italy’s Piracy Shield blocked a Google Drive subdomain, as well as IP-addresses hosting over 42 million domains of Cloudflare customers. Meanwhile, in France, CISCO stopped offering its OpenDNS service after a local court ordered DNS resolver blockades.

Google also highlights a December 2019 incident in Portugal where ISPs blocked Google-hosted Virtual IP addresses, disrupting “core Google services and cut off legitimate traffic for other innocent Google Cloud customers sharing the same virtual IPs.”

These concerns are not incidental. A large-scale empirical study published by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) recently found that following a LaLiga blocking order in Spain, more than 554,000 domains were blocked at least once during football match broadcasts. This included website from Amnesty International and the ACLU, UNICEF, UNHCR, the Australian Senate, Stanford Law Review, and Amazon S3 endpoints.

Clear Guardrails

In addition to the overblocking concerns, the submission notes that any expansions of the blocking regime in Europe should be proportional and keep the safeguards in mind that are already provided by EU law. Google specifically notes that courts “should not serve as mere rightholder ‘mail boxes’, by simply rubber-stamping blocking demands.”

Google believes that blocking injunction should only be used as a last resort if regular takedown options failed. These injunctions should be transparent, limited in time, while both rightsholders and the intermediaries share the implementation costs.

The submission shows that Google is not outright opposed to site blocking, as long as it’s restricted to targeted and proportional measures. The real solution to piracy does not lie in enforcement, Google argues, but in creating superior legal alternatives.

“In our experience, unmet consumer demand is a key driver of piracy. That is why one of the best ways to combat piracy is to provide better, more convenient, and legitimate alternatives,” Google writes.

U.S. Site Blocking Gains Momentum

Google’s EU filing was submitted a few days before U.S. lawmakers doubled down on their site blocking intentions. On June 30, the House IP subcommittee held a hearing on copyright protection and enforcement on the Internet, with planned site blocking legislation as a key topic.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa told The Capitol Forum that he planned to introduce a site blocking bill that week. While there is no record of an introduced bill, it suggests that momentum is building.

This was also confirmed during the hearing, as Issa closed by signaling that the educational phase of the lawmaking process is over.

“Language is being distributed on what we’ll believe is final compromises to get to legislation,” he said. “It’s going to be my intention, with the help of my chairman and old friend, Mr. Jordan, that we will move it out of this committee.”

Rep. Issa is retiring at the end of his current term. Whether the bill has been formally introduced since his stated deadline is not clear. TorrentFreak has reached out to Issa’s office for comment, but we didn’t hear back.

Issa’s bill isn’t the only proposal. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who introduced the competing FADPA bill last year, told The Capitol Forum she is negotiating a bipartisan, bicameral “four corners agreement” with Issa and Senators Blackburn, Coons, Schiff, and Tillis. That formally confirms out earlier reporting.

Meanwhile, the hearing made clear that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cox v. Sony only intensified the call for site blocking. The Supreme Court concluded that ISPs cannot be held secondarily liable for user piracy unless they actively induce or tailor their services for infringement, which means that rightsholders will need an alternative enforcement tool.

Google is Silent on U.S. Plans

Google has not commented on the U.S. site blocking plans yet, but it is a member of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) whose president, Chris Mohr, did testify at the recent subcommittee hearing.

According to Mohr, his members are “genuinely split” on site blocking. At the same time, he stressed that a U.S. blocking bill should have robust judicial backing, while the technical measures should be precise enough to prevent overblocking and protect shared infrastructure.

The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (I2Coalition), which represents major tech companies including Amazon, Cloudflare, and Google, has previously critiqued broad blocking plans. Last year the organization launched its DNS at Risk campaign, warning the public about DNS blocking threats.

Google’s EU submission is also quite outspoken. While it does not refer to the American plans, Google is clearly opposed to requiring blocking measures from third-party DNS resolvers, while noting that blocking is ineffective, disproportionate, and harmful to lawful sites and services.

Whether the company will make the same arguments publicly as the American bill moves forward remains to be seen.

—

Google’s submission to the European Commission’s consultation is available here (pdf).

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

The author’s personal GitHub account includes a widely referenced repository that hosts the official example code for titles including Java SE 8 for Programmers, C++ How to Program, and Python for Programmers.

These code examples are a key reference, but for a few weeks they have been unavailable due to a DMCA takedown notice. The notice in question was sent in April by Pearson’s anti-piracy vendor Link-Busters, which is the most prolific DMCA takedown sender in recent history.

Apparently, Link-Busters confused the educational code repository with an illegally posted copy of the book, which it clearly isn’t.

Deitel Files Counternotice

While Link-Busters generally has a decent track record, this notice caused clear collateral damage. In a counternotice that was sent to GitHub yesterday, July 9, Deitel requests his repository to be restored.

GitHub redacted his name in the published counter-notice, but the identity of the filer is clear from the context. The author explains that the targeted repo does not contain a copy of the book, but important code examples.

“I am the [private] of the book and [private] [private] GitHub page is where ALL [private] readers worldwide get the example code that goes with [private] books,” the counternotice reads.

“Whoever this [private] organization is has no idea of the damage they’re doing by automated scanning and sending of removal notices.”

“Had they done even the simplest bit of research they would have seen that the book was not posted in [private] GitHub repo and that it was just the supporting materials, and that [private] am the [private] of the book!”

The counter-notice stresses that access to the GitHub repository is “CRITICAL” as readers worldwide depend on it to access the example code that accompanies the book. Without it, the textbook’s code exercises are effectively inaccessible.

Waiting for Restoration

At the scale Link-Busters operates, sending billions of DMCA takedown notices on behalf of major publishers, mistakes are perhaps unavoidable. However, this example shows that even a minuscule error rate can result in real damage, even for the very people these notices aim to protect.

The contested April takedown notice covered roughly 25 book titles. Most of the targeted repositories did contain unauthorized PDF copies of textbooks, uploaded by students to “books” collections on GitHub. The Deitel companion code repo was the clear outlier.

At the time of writing, Deitel’s GitHub repository is still offline, pointing to the removal notice shown below.

Under the DMCA’s counter-notice procedure, GitHub has to restore the disabled repository within 10 to 14 business days unless Pearson or Link-Busters file a federal lawsuit to keep it offline. Since the takedown appears to be a clear mistake, it will likely be restored soon.

TorrentFreak reached out to Deitel for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication. Link-Busters has yet to respond to our request for comment too. We will update this article if responses come in.

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

As part of a crackdown on local torrent trackers, the government ordered ISPs to block access to the ArenaBG tracker in 2007.

The blocking actions resulted in public outrage and street protests. Some Internet providers pushed back as well, questioning the legality of the requested measures, and the blocking instructions were eventually withdrawn.

Today, nearly twenty years have passed and Bulgaria continues to struggle with site blocking. This, despite being part of the EU, where site blocking mechanisms are widely authorized.

Blocking The Pirate Bay and Zamunda

In February 2020, the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP) and IFPI launched a civil lawsuit against three ISPs, seeking a court order requiring them to block The Pirate Bay and Zamunda, the country’s most-visited torrent site.

Two of the three ISPs fought back hard. They described the claim as “inadmissible” and “baseless.” One, identified only as ‘N.1’ in court documents, pointed out that Bulgarian law does not recognize a claim “for blocking access to Internet sites,” and argued that EU law requiring member states to ensure access to injunction applications against intermediaries would not apply because Bulgaria had not yet transposed those provisions into national law.

The Sofia City Court disagreed. In May 2023, it ordered the three ISPs to block both sites, including all mirrors and proxies, within six months. BAMP called it “a major step forward” in the fight against music piracy. IFPI chief executive Francis Moore welcomed the ruling. It was, by all appearances, a landmark win.

However, the first Bulgarian site blocking order wasn’t final yet, as the ISPs appealed.

ISPs Win Blocking Appeal at Supreme Court

Earlier this year, Bulgaria’s Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) issued its final ruling in the blocking case, siding with the ISPs. The court held that under current Bulgarian copyright law, rightsholders cannot obtain pirate site blocking injunctions in standard civil proceedings.

EU law, specifically the Enforcement Directive (IPRED), requires member states to provide mechanisms for injunctions against intermediaries. However, the court found that Bulgaria has not fully transposed those provisions into its national copyright legislation in a way that makes permanent blocking injunctions an option.

The court noted that ISPs are seen as mere conduits. Without clear national rules balancing freedom of information and proportionality, courts cannot issue site blocking injunctions based on current copyright law.

This effectively means that Bulgarian lawmakers have to address the shortcomings with new legislation, before site blocking orders can be granted.

BAMP Wants EU to Step In

The Supreme Court appeal concluded earlier this year but largely went unnoticed, as local press didn’t pick it up. The only public mention was a brief client bulletin published by Sofia law firm Dimitrov, Petrov & Co., which is intended for corporate clients rather than the public.

The ruling came on our radar last week, when BAMP submitted its response to the European Commission’s Call for Evidence on a targeted initiative for a better copyright environment. The Supreme Court ruling shows that the EU must require its members to implement existing EU directives.

“The Court identified a legislative deficiency, holding that the existing provisions of the Bulgarian Copyright Act do not provide a legal basis for granting final website-blocking injunctions against intermediaries on the merits and that this deficiency can only be remedied through legislative action.”

“This illustrates the importance of ensuring the full and correct implementation of the existing EU acquis across all Member States before considering further legislative initiatives,” BAMP’s submission adds.

It’s Not Over Yet

The Bulgarian ruling means that, after all these years, local rightsholders are still without site blocking options. This doesn’t mean that the country isn’t making any copyright enforcement progress. With help from the U.S., Bulgaria shut down the country’s largest torrent trackers earlier this year, including ArenaBG, Zamunda, and Zelka.

Not much later, the U.S. Trade Representative removed the country from the “Watch List” category in its annual Special 301 Report. The U.S. praised the country for its significant enforcement actions, among other things.

The Supreme court ruling presents a clear setback for rightsholders. However, they are not without recourse. As highlighted by Dimitrov, Petrov & Co., the Supreme Court noted that rightsholders that are harmed by Bulgaria’s failure to fully implement EU requirements, could potentially sue the state for damages.

Meanwhile, Bulgarian lawmakers have been working on an amendment to the Copyright and Related Rights Act that could potentially address the shortcomings. The amendment has been in preparation since at least 2022 but, as of today, it has yet to be approved.

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A copy of BAMP’s submission to the European Commission Call for Evidence is available here (pdf). TorrentFreak did not have access to the Supreme Court’s full ruling. The reporting here is based on the BAMP submission and the coverage from Dimitrov, Petrov & Co.

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

In addition to targeting residential ISPs, the order also lists global domain name registrars and registries as defendants, compelling them to suspend domains.

By January, several registrars had indeed taken action. Domains linked to the American registrar Porkbun, the UK-based WHG Hosting services, and the Lithuanian registrar Hostinger were all fully suspended, suggesting that these companies complied with the Indian order. However, many other domains remained online.

For example, the long-running German websites S.to and BS.to, which both have millions of monthly visits, remained online. This did not come as a surprise. Tonga’s .to domains have generally been considered a safe haven for pirate sites, as it generally would not comply with foreign court orders.

Rightsholders, including the MPA, have repeatedly complained about the .to registry and last year anti-piracy company Warezio even threatened to sue ICANN over .to domain piracy. And then something changed.

.To Domain Names Suspended

Yesterday, the operator of SerienStream informed us that S.to and BS.to were suspended. The operator mentioned that ‘Tonic’ informed him that the domains were suspended in response to an Indian court order. Indeed, that is the December order, which was amended a few times over the past months.

The suspensions are also apparent from the WHOIS information, which shows that the domains are put on clientHold. This is an EPP status codesstatus code that is set by the domain name registrar, often in response to legal disputes.

The WHOIS result is telling in more ways than one. It clearly identifies the Government of Kingdom of Tonga as the domain registrar. This indicates that Tonga applied the clientHold status code, presumably in response to the Indian court order.

At the same time, the WHOIS data confirms that the .to domain management changed drastically. The ccTLD was previously managed by the US-based Tonic Domains Corporation, which did not offer a WHOIS service, nor could it apply EPP status codes.

Tonga Domains Restructured

Since last year, however, the Canadian domain name company Tucows is managing the technical registry backend for .to domains, with the Government of the Kingdom of Tonga being listed as the ccTLD manager or sponsor.

The structure change is more than a simple backend swap. Old IANA delegation records show that the .to registry was previously operated by Tonic’s US-based co-founder Eric Gullichsen, who was listed as both administrative and technical contact, working from the Tongan consulate address in Burlingame, California.

Gullichsen has since been replaced and the administrative contact is now Justin Kaitapu in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, while the technical contact points to Tucows in Toronto.

Tonic’s old system has been in operation since 1997 and did not support EPP status codes such as clientHold. The current Tucows-powered platform does. In other words, the infrastructure that made .to a safe haven for pirate sites simply didn’t have a suspension button. Now it does.

As mentioned earlier, the clientHold status code suggests that the Tongan registrar took action. However, when we reached out to the hostmaster address at Tonic.to, we were brushed off.

“With reference to your recent inquiry, we regret to advise that Tonic has no interest to discuss or make available the details of it’s [sic] actions or internal policies,” Tonic’s hostmaster told TorrentFreak.

We also reached out to Tucows, which handles .to’s registry services now, but the Canadian company informed us that the action was taken by the domain registrar, without providing further detail. That brings us back to the Government of the Kingdom of Tonga, which is the registrar on record.

No Safe Haven

While we were unable to get a comment on the record, it is clear that .to domain names are no longer the safe haven they were once considered. This conclusion was also drawn by the operator of SerienStream.

“In the long term, this will result in significant financial losses for Tonga and its .to domains, if they are no longer considered to be stable and safe,” the operator informed TorrentFreak.

“The Indian court has no jurisdiction in this matter, nor should an Indian judgment be binding on a German-language website,” he added.

As shown above, SerienStream now points its users to a backup (serienstream).to domain name, which was not listed in the Indian court order. These orders are regularly amended, though, so it might only be a matter of time before this one is suspended too.

In addition to S.to and BS.to, all other .to domain names listed in the Indian court order were also put on clientHold over the weekend. This includes yflix.to, anigo.to, watchflix.to, and 24drama.to and confirms that it is indeed linked to the Indian order.

Whether rightsholders will now target .to domain names en masse has yet to be seen, but the infrastructure to suspend them is now in place.

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A copy of the paperwork shared by SerienStream’s operator, including the December order from the High Court in New Delhi and several additions, is available here (pdf).

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

The site, which was a prime destination for many anime pirates, surprisingly shut down in March without offering an explanation for the sudden move.

HiAnime has been a major target for rightsholders for years. The operators were believed to reside in Vietnam, which was highlighted in the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) Notorious Markets report just days before HiAnime said its goodbyes.

American rightsholders and the U.S. Government urged the Vietnamese authorities to take action against the site. These calls were serious, as the USTR doubled down in May with its latest Special 301 Report classifying Vietnam as a “Priority Foreign Country,” opening the door to potential trade sanctions.

Vietnam Arrests HiAnime Piracy Ring

The Vietnamese authorities take these concerns seriously. Late last week, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced that its anti-corruption and economic crime unit (C03) has charged seven suspects with copyright infringement and money laundering in connection with a pirate streaming network that operated more than 100 websites.

The written reports don’t mention any sites by name, but a broadcast of the government operated state broadcaster Vietnam Television clearly identifies footage of HiAnime.to, which is crossed out.

The investigation identified four alleged ringleaders, Nguyễn Đình Minh Khoa, Nguyễn Trung Anh, Nguyễn Đình Xuân, and Nguyễn Hoàng Thanh, who were arrested and charged with copyright infringement and money laundering. Three others, Nguyễn Phước Toàn, Doãn Thành Luân, and Nguyễn Khương Duy, were charged with copyright infringement only.

According to C03, the group operated from 2020 until April 2026, offering more than 26,000 unlicensed titles across their network of sites. The operation allegedly generated roughly $12.8 million through advertising revenue.

HiAnime has already been inactive since March and in a VTV broadcast investigators browse through the Wayback Machine, which clearly identifies HiAnime.to as the target. No other domain names are mentioned.

ACE and HSI Cooperation

The investigation was not a purely Vietnamese effort. According to the Ministry of Public Security, C03 acted on intelligence provided by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the MPA’s anti-piracy arm.

The U.S. involvement comes as no surprise as both countries have been discussing the piracy problems for years. In addition to the USTR’s recent diplomatic escalation, ACE has been seeking identifying information about the operators of HiAnime.to and related sites for years.

The American intelligence eventually helped the Vietnamese authorities to locate the suspects and dismantle one of the largest piracy rings that ever operated.

Crypto and Real Estate

The seven suspects are all relatively young and some are described as recent IT graduates. The four ringleaders remain in custody while they await their trial and the others were placed under travel restrictions.

The national broadcaster featured interviews with several suspects including Nguyễn Đình Minh Khoa, who managed relationships with advertising platforms and was responsible for driving traffic to the sites.

Khoa reportedly confessed on camera to earning approximately 50 billion Vietnamese đồng (roughly $2 million) in revenue from 2019 onward, which he spent on cars and personal expenses. The other ringleaders, who reportedly worked on website design or IT infrastructure, also generated substantial revenue.

According to investigators, the suspects received payments in cryptocurrency from foreign advertising platforms. These funds were then laundered through multiple intermediaries, after which they were transferred to personal Vietnamese bank accounts.

From there, the money was used to purchase real estate and vehicles, which prosecutors allege was intended to legitimize the illicit proceeds.

‘Deterrent Prison Sentences’

This is not the first time that Vietnamese authorities shut down a large piracy operation with help from ACE and U.S. law enforcement. American intelligence also helped to shut down the Fmovies piracy ring in 2024.

Two Fmovies operators were eventually prosecuted and, while both confessed in full to all alleged crimes, they received only suspended prison sentences. This means that, similar to previous convictions in Vietnam, they did not have to serve any prison time.

These relatively mild sentences are a thorn in the side of rightsholders. The USTR also highlighted it as a problem in its recent report, urging the Vietnamese authorities to seek “significantly more criminal prosecutions against online piracy operations” while “seeking deterrent-level prison sentences”.

The first part of this request already appears to have started. On May 5, Vietnam’s Prime Minister issued Urgent Telegram No. 38, ordering a nationwide crackdown on intellectual property violations. The Ministry of Public Security followed with its own classified directive the next day.

During the following weeks, Vietnamese police reportedly opened 90 cases involving 142 suspects across various IP crimes, and shut down hundreds of infringing websites, including eight pirate film sites and 159 unnamed pirate football streaming platforms.

Whether the prosecution of the HiAnime-linked defendants will result in more deterrent sentences has yet to be seen, but it is clear that American rightsholders and U.S. authorities will be watching it closely.

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