World's Biggest Anime Piracy Site Added to 2024 'Notorious' Streaming List by U.S. Government

HiAnime, the world's biggest anime piracy streaming site, is now one of the newest additions to the U.S. government's annual list of notorious piracy and counterfeiting markets.

As reported by Torrent Freak, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released its 2024 report into the Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy (NML). The list "highlights online and physical markets that reportedly engage in or facilitate substantial trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy." Unsurprisingly, the newest addition to the list is HiAnime, the world's biggest anime piracy site. Readers can check out the USTR's statement on HiAnime below.

Anime Pirate Streaming Site HiAnime Explodes in Use After Gogoanime Goes Dark

The site is described: "HiAnime is reportedly a successor site to the previously popular site Aniwatch, which was listed on the 2023 NML. The Aniwatch site was itself a rebrand of the well-known Zoro.to site. In July 2023, right holders and anti-piracy trade associations shut down zoro.to, which was run from Vietnam, and thereafter the site apparently was rebranded as aniwatch.to. The site was again rebranded to HiAnime in March 2024. Stakeholders report that the HiAnime site provides pirated versions of popular movies and television, particularly anime. According to SimilarWeb rankings, the site received over 200 million visits in August 2024."

The USTR's data comes from August 2024, but HiAnime has exploded in use since then, now boasting around 331.6 million monthly visits in Nov. 2024 (per Similarweb data). This number will likely increase following popular piracy site Anitaku's (Gogoanime) silence since November. The report also saw the USTR praise several successful law enforcement efforts in 2023, including the shutdown of Fmovies and associated piracy sites in July and August 2024.

HiAnime Has Been on the U.S. Government's Radar Since Aniwatch's Rebranding

The U.S. government has long been aware of HiAnime and its past. As the report highlights, its predecessor Aniwatch, named in 2023's list, directed users to HiAnime in a defiant move following prior legal action taken against it in India. The USTR releases these reports to motivate the private sector and governments to act against piracy sites. Companies like Cloudflare and Google have come under pressure to share customer details so that rightsholders can take legal action. Google published its Transparency Report last year, revealing it had received nearly 10.2 billion takedown requests with companies like VIZ Media, Funimation (now Crunchyroll) and Toei Animation among the most active in issuing these requests. Just two months later, this has grown to nearly 11 billion.

Meanwhile, countries and governments are also taking action to combat piracy. Brazil has collaborated with Japanese and Korean law enforcement, shutting down dozens of anime piracy sites. Both the Japanese and Korean governments recently proposed plans on how AI can be used to monitor and report piracy sites.

Source: USTR via Torrent Freak.