ACE Targets MagisTV and Other Piracy Apps Through Cloudflare

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is the world’s most active anti-piracy coalition, with tentacles all around the globe.

The group is closely affiliated with the MPA which regularly obtains DMCA subpoenas on ACE’s behalf, aiming to pick up trails that will eventually lead to the operators of popular piracy sites and services.

MPA/ACE Subpoenas Identify Piracy Targets

This week, a new series of subpoenas appeared on our radar, requesting Cloudflare and the Tonic domain registry to share all information they have on allegedly pirating customers. These subpoenas are quite common but newsworthy nonetheless, as they provide insight on current anti-piracy priorities.

The latest requests are no exception and include some familiar names. Just a few days ago we reported how pirate streaming app MagisTV is at the center of an anti-piracy campaign in Ecuador. The same name also appears in the most recent DMCA subpoena applications.

In one of the subpoenas requests, two ‘MagisTV’ apps and their associated sites are listed, together with the ‘TVExpress’, ‘My Family Cinema’, and ‘Brasil TV’ apps. The list is completed by other (sports) streaming services such as cccambox.com and multicanais.cl.

MagisTV et al.

MagisTV is by no means a new pirate app; both MPA and ACE have been familiar with the service for a while. In fact, the MPA nominated it for the USTR’s annual list of notorious piracy markets for the past two years.

“MagisTV has been in operation since approximately 2019, significantly longer than its peers. Generally, IPTV services popular in Latin America repeatedly change domain names and/or brands to avoid detection and enforcement actions,” MPA wrote last October.

The IPTV service markets through resellers and some unaffiliated third parties try to profit from the brand as well. This makes it tricky to find out which site is official and which is a scam, as outlined on one of the targeted sites.

“BEWARE of websites that offer ‘free’ versions. These Apps and services are fraudulent and have NO relationship with Magis TV, they are clones and the dangers of their installation and use are unknown,” the note reads.

Whether this warning is legit or not is a question we prefer not to answer. It’s clear, however, that ACE is eager to find out who’s behind this version, and they hope Cloudflare can provide useful information.

Aniwatch and Zorox

The recent wave of DMCA notices also targets live-streaming portal thetvapp.to. In addition, traditional on-demand pirate streaming sites are also listed, including ssoap2day.to, allmanga.to, aniwatchtv.to, and zoroxtv.to.

The latter domain is the new home of zorox.to, which was suspended by registrar Namecheap earlier this month, following an Indian court order.

The name Aniwatch also rings a bell, as it’s similar to the popular pirate streaming portal that changed its name to HiAnime a few weeks ago. However, aniwatchtv.to appears to be a copycat that’s unrelated to the original site, much like Zorox is not linked to the original Zoro, which was the predecessor of Aniwatch (for those who can still follow along).

Futile?

Seeing the same brands reappear in these enforcement efforts isn’t necessarily positive for ACE, as it suggests that the operators, or at least the brands, continue to evade its enforcement efforts. That’s not a good thing.

ACE is aware of the limitations of its efforts and knows all too well that pirates are actively trying to evade being caught. That said, with every effort some sites and services disappear and ACE hopes that, by keeping the pressure on, it can successfully frustrate these pirate operations.

Besides direct enforcement efforts, ACE is also getting involved in research after commissioning a piracy/malware study in India recently. As we’ve seen in the past, the findings suggest that since pirate sites are disproportionally linked to malware, the Indian government should intervene.

The declarations requesting the DMCA subpoenas referenced in this article are available here (1, 2 and 3)