The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has delivered yet another blow in the pirate anime scene, seizing ten popular domains, including “animemovil.com,” “animemovil.tv”, “animeyt.tv”, “animeyt.video”, “animeyt.link”, “animeyt.online”, “Skanime.net” and various other domains belonging to “AnimesoneHD.”
Remember, ACE is a powerful anti-piracy coalition with a global reach and influential members such as Netflix, Amazon, the BBC, Warner Bros, Sony, Sky, NBC Universal, and many more. It goes without saying that if you’re in the crosshair of ACE, it will be hard to stay online no matter where you’re based and what domain registrar you’re using.
Animemovil domains are now registered by the MPA (Motion Pictures Association) under “MarkMonitor,” which is a piracy-fighting and brand protection company. Both Animemovil and AnimeYT were popular among Spanish audiences, as they offered pirated anime content with Spanish subtitles. While the two domains faced takedowns since early 2019, their operators moved around in other domains and managed to keep the ecosystem alive.
The four domains of “AnimeYT” fell in the MPA’s hands gradually, over the past couple of weeks, and all of them redirect to the ACE portal now.
Among the three, AnimesoneHD was maybe the most popular. Copyright holders and publishers like ‘Toei Animation,’ ‘FUNimation Entertainment,’ and ‘VIZ Media’ have been trying to take AnimesoneHD domains down for quite some time now.
Google’s recent transparency reports mention “animesonehd.com” and “animesonehd.net,” but the aforementioned studios’ actions didn’t result in anything else other than the removal of the domains from Google Search results. The above aren’t members of the ACE, but they could have sent a notice to the coalition asking for help dealing with AnimesoneHD. As no official announcements accompany these domain takeover actions, the details are always elusive.
Of course, anime pirates still have many platforms to scratch their itch since giants in the field like “KissAnime,” for example, are still online and accessible. Maybe it’s a matter of time or having ACE turn its attention to these other platforms, but only time will give us definitive answers to these questions.
For now, the Spanish audience will either have to look elsewhere or pay for authorized access to their favorite series.
If you’re looking for something like that, check out our list with the top six anime streaming platforms in 2020, and pick a free trial to test them.