The United States Trade Representative’s Office has published its yearly list of “Notorious Markets for Piracy and Counterfeiting”. This list calls out online websites and physical locations that are known for enabling or directly participating in large-scale copyright infringement or trademark counterfeiting.
One site featured on the 2023 list is Aniwatch, which the USTR says rebranded from the anime piracy site zoro.to after it was shut down in July 2022.
Aniwatch is called out among 38 other major piracy websites that allow users to freely stream or download copyrighted content without permission. Some other infamous sites on the list include Vegamovies and ThePirateBay.
The USTR suspects Aniwatch is run by operators based out of Vietnam, who use technical tricks to hide the location of the site’s servers.
They estimate that in just the past six months, Aniwatch has already become one of the most popular piracy streaming sites overall.
The USTR emphasized that rather than only getting takedown orders against the website itself, it’s important to legally pursue the owners running these types of rebranded piracy operations.
Aniwatch Is Marked As The Most Dangerous Pira Site
While concrete data on the financial losses from anime and manga piracy are scarce, estimates indicate major impacts. One report states that online piracy across Japanese entertainment mediums like anime, manga, and games amounted to around $15 billion in losses in 2021 alone.
This number further climbs when factoring in illegally accessed content from other countries as well, like popular Korean manhwa webtoons.
Major manhwa publisher Kakao Corporation has been actively working to fight manga piracy sites, including spearheading the shutdown of major piracy app Tachiyomi last month.
In December, Kakao announced they had identified the individuals behind the internet’s largest manga piracy operations across multiple websites.
Online piracy remains a hotly debated issue among fans. While clearly depriving creators of income, many argue more could still be done to increase the accessibility, affordability, and timeliness of legal alternatives.
In response, sites like Crunchyroll and services from major manga publishers like Shueisha have tried strategies like simulpubbing new chapters and series internationally at the same time as the Japanese releases.
Columns have also compared the catalogs and pricing of legal anime streaming sites to help fans choose what best suits their interests and budget.
Insights from the USTR Report
Piracy sites have long shown resilience against enforcement crackdowns, often re-emerging rapidly at large scale across multiple new domains.
This “hydra effect” enables operations based in lenient jurisdictions or with contingency plans to quickly shield themselves from the initial impacts of takedowns and continue thriving.
The USTR report details examples of major streaming piracy groups displaying this robustness. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment targeted variants of the movie streaming network Cuevana in 2022, successfully seizing control of 22 domains.
However, mirror sites were still able to swiftly relaunch using new web addresses and branding. Similar enforcement efforts against Cuevana brands in the past proved only temporary setbacks.
Another problematic platform highlighted is Mexico’s Pelisplus.
The USTR states Pelisplus directly streams a catalog of pirated films and TV shows to its own site visitors across multiple domains, while also supplying an illegal “content management system” to other piracy operations in Latin America in exchange for payment.
Vegamovies receives special attention as a rapidly growing new troubling streaming player after being nominated to the report in late 2022.
Potentially already the most-visited piracy site globally, Vegamovies operates multiple domains receiving approximately 185 million visits per month – 96% originating from users in India.
But with international popularity still low, it may expand its vast reach more globally.
The report underscores that while major wins against top piracy sites are achievable, determined operations can blunt the lasting impacts of enforcement through contingency planning unless authorities also pursue charges against owners and operators.
Our previous coverage highlighted circumstantial evidence around sports league pressure and hosting trouble potentially influencing RARBG’s surprise closure. But the USTR report also notes that the specific reasons still remain unclear even now.
Regardless, RARBG’s vacant notorious market slot has already been filled by rising torrent portal TorrentGalaxy.
When RARBG went offline, TorrentGalaxy smoothly absorbed the overflow traffic and new users, cementing itself as one of the world’s most visited public torrent sites. The USTR states TorrentGalaxy is reportedly Romanian-hosted.
Other absent names this year were Premier League-nominated soccer piracy streaming sites iStreamtoWatch and LalaStreams, which were taken down following US government enforcement action.
The report also spotlights more general significant anti-piracy wins globally in 2022 through collaborations between content creators and web infrastructure providers.
