As at the start of every year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative publishes its list of pirate sites considered the most important during the past year. There are well-known names, but also quite a few new ones.
Most of the time, when we talk about platforms illegal downloads orIPTV, it’s about lists. They are regularly established by rights holders or governments for purposes of blocking by Internet service providers, for example. Or sent to the competent authorities to request their deletion. It turns out that every year towards the end of January, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes its own list. It aims to highlight the the most “famous” pirate sites of the past year.
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The names found there are quite varied, since the aim is to identify “significant examples” of sites which engage directly in piracy, which facilitate it, or which turn a blind eye while enjoying the benefits that this activity is profitable for them. In the latter case, we think in particular of file hostsbasically thought of as cloud storage services. It’s not for nothing that Uptobox closed its doors. The report also highlights a major problem for organizations that fight against the phenomenon.
The list of these pirate sites shows how difficult it is to get rid of them
If we find timeless ones like The Pirate Bay, 1337X or the Russian trio Rapidagator, RuTracker And V.K.we also note the presence of sites yet announced as closed by the authorities. The USTR takes the example of several sites operating under the “brand” Cuevana3 : “Cuevana’s use of multiple domains allowed variations of the site to remain operational. Despite the success of the efforts […] which allowed rights holders to take control of 22 variations of domain names in 2023, mirror sites were able to quickly reappear under new domains”. A very widespread phenomenon which sometimes takes on almost laughable proportions.
Ditto for a newcomer to the list of the American institution, in reality the new name of a well-known platform. “Aniwatch, apparently becoming one of the most popular pirate streaming sites in the world [en 2023], would also be a new version of a previously popular site, zoro.to. In July 2023, rights holders and anti-piracy associations closed zoro.to, which was managed from Vietnam, and subsequently, the site was apparently renamed aniwatch.to.”
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And there’s no need to even bother with domain name changes. Even when a site disappears “for good”, it doesn’t take long beforeanother similar one takes its place. After the closure of the famous torrent site RARBG, TorrentGalaxy experienced an explosion in its attendance to the point of entering the USTR list. Same thing for SSYouTube. The “stream ripping” platform (convert YouTube video to MP3 for example) was relatively discreet before coming to the forefront following the disappearance of its major competitors. SSYouTube would record 343 million visits per month Since.
Here are the pirate sites considered the most problematic in 2023
Remember that this is not an exhaustive list, but of the sites considered the most significant over the past year:
- Torrent :
- 1337X
- RuTracker
- The Pirate Bay
- TorrentGalaxy (new)
- YTS.mx
- File hosting :
- 1file
- Krakenfiles (new)
- Rapidgator
- Savefrom (new)
- E-commerce :
- Baidu Wangpan
- Bukalapak
- DHgate
- Indiamart
- Pinduoduo
- Shopee
- Taobao
- PaaS (Platform as a service, which are used for the development of applications in the Cloud):
- embed
- WHMCS Smarters (new)
- Advertising sites :
- Streaming and IPTV :
- Aniwatch (new)
- BestBuyIPTV
- Cuevana3 (new)
- Fmovies
- GenIPTV (new)
- Pelisplus (new)
- Shabakaty
- spider
- Streamtape (new)
- VegaMovies (new)
- Website hosting and infrastructure :
- Amaratu
- DDoS-Guard (new)
- FlokiNET
- Squitter (new)
- Social networks :
- Video games :
- Music :
- Books :
Eradicating pirate sites seems to be a never-ending war. However, more and more associations and coalitions of rights holders are turning to new, more radical and more effective methods of struggle. They could well tip the scales in their favor, but for how long?
Source: TorrentFreak