Popular Pirate Site Animeflix Shuts Down 'Voluntarily'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: With dozens of millions of monthly visits, Animeflix positioned itself as one of the most popular anime piracy portals. The site also has an active Discord community of around 35k members, who actively participate in discussions, art competitions, even a chess tournament. While rightsholders take no offense at these side-projects, the site's core business was streaming pirated videos. That hasn't gone unnoticed; last December Animeflix was listed as one of the shutdown targets of anti-piracy coalition ACE.

Whether these early enforcement efforts were responsible for the site's closure is unclear. In May, rightsholders increased the pressure through the High Court of India, obtaining a broad injunction that effectively suspended Animeflix's main domain name; Animeflix.live. This follow-up action didn't seem to hurt the site too much. It simply moved to new domains, Animeflix.gg and Animeflix.li, informing its users that the old domain name had become "unavailable." Yesterday, the site became unreachable again, initially returning a Cloudflare error message. This time, the domain wasn't the problem but, for reasons unknown, the team decided to shut down the site without prior notice.

"It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix. After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years." "Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms," the Animeflix team adds. The Animeflix team doesn't provide any insight into its reasoning, but it's clear that keeping a site like that online isn't without challenges. And, when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role. It's clear that rightsholders were keeping an eye on the site, and were actively seeking out options to take it offline. That might have played a role in the shutdown decision but without more information from the team, we can only speculate.

We're they charging for pirated content streams?

[DrMrLordX]

Since the summary mentioned "core business"...

Re:

[codebase7]

Hey, it worked for Crunchyroll....

Hey

[Kernel Kurtz]

Look at all these moles! Someone must have whacked one recently, that really gets them worked up.

Wonder how many thousands of man hours

[rsilvergun]

Going to protecting copyright versus going to protecting things like workplace safety or stopping wage theft.

Ever notice how the police and law enforcement always take care of anything the corporations want done but if you need somebody to protect you from those corporations it's now an "unelected bureaucrat" somehow.

For my money I would like to see the cops show up when my boss doesn't pay me for all the hours I worked.

Re: Wonder how many thousands of man hours

[ShadowMonk]

Back under your bridge, troll. This isn't 4chan.

Re:

[Iamthecheese]

In the US you can report wage theft at this URL https://www.dol.gov/agencies/w... [dol.gov] It will be taken seriously.

You can report it all you want

[rsilvergun]

The agencies that force it aren't law enforcement so they are massively underfunded. More often than not they will literally just tell you they don't have the money to help you and to try suing yourself. Of course if you were in a position to sue over stolen wages you probably didn't get your wages stolen anyway. They go after vulnerable people for that.

Of course even if your wages on stolen that money just ends up in the pocket of some billionaire in a giant money vault instead of circulating in the ec

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Going to protecting copyright versus going to protecting things like workplace safety or stopping wage theft.

Well, the copyright holders are usually businesses who pay a lot to politicians to keep things going their way.

Likewise, businesses pay a lot to keep the worker down because they are expenses. After all, non-competes are a good way to ensure your employees can't go work for your competitor who pays more money, forcing you to pay more money. (I said non-compete, not non-disclosure). It's been used ver

The takeaway I'm trying to get out

[rsilvergun]

Is that when law enforcement helps people we call those bureaucrats and when law enforcement helps corporations we call those law enforcement. That's a trick so they can undermine law enforcement that helps you. And know the cop who gave you a speeding ticket isn't really helping you. For a variety of reasons

Re:Of Course 'Voluntarily'

[codebase7]

Anime is not just for children. There's plenty of Anime with content that no child could be expected to understand let alone find entertaining. It is after all an art style, and like all art styles there's no universal mandate that it be limited to just children's topics.

Just because you don't like something doesn't make it an immoral / unethical monster to be slain and rallied against.

Then again, perhaps America should clean up it's own mess in children's programming (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, etc.) before throwing stones at hallucinations.

Also, child molester is a serious accusation. Don't degrade and normalize it because you dislike something.