ANTI-PIRACY ALLIANCE ACE SHUTS DOWN ILLEGAL ANIME STREAMING WEBSITE

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has shut down ANIMEFLIX, a notorious piracy website dedicated to anime content.

The operation, based near Helsinki, Finland, logged between 7 and 13 million monthly visits and had 2 million unique visitors per month.

Nearly one-third of the site traffic originated from the United States, followed by India and the Philippines. The site also logged unique visitors from other countries.

Users of the illicit site, which was available at no cost, could access more than 500 anime movies and over 400 anime series. The site’s user interface closely resembled those of legitimate streaming services, allowing users to set up accounts, tag favourite content and create content collections. It also featured a schedule of upcoming series.

“ACE is proud to partner with local law enforcement in Finland on the successful shutdown of one of the region’s most notorious infringers of anime content,” said Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer at the Motion Picture Association (MPA). “Collaboration with local law enforcement is at the core of ACE’s mission to protect intellectual property rights. There is no justification for copyright infringement. Whenever films or TV shows are pirated, it’s not just content owners or studios that are affected — it’s also the people who work as writers, storyboard artists, illustrators, editors, sound mixers and more. We will continue to fight to protect the worldwide creative marketplace.”

ANIMEFLIX and its associated domains now redirect to the “Watch Legally” page on the ACE website.

Source: broadbandtvnews.com