ACE shuts down piracy streaming sites in Peru and Singapore

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has officially announced the closure of Peru-based piracy operation Pelisplushd.net, one of the largest illegal providers of on-demand audiovisual content in the world. ACE is the world’s leading coalition dedicated to protecting the dynamic legal ecosystem and reducing digital piracy

Pelisplushd.net was ranked as the second-largest rogue Spanish-language website in the entire Latin American region. The site had 383.5 million visits in the past six months and averaged 68 million visits per month during the last six months with nearly 75 million visits in February 2022 alone. With 1.5 million of these visits originating from the United States, it was the 15th most popular streaming site in North America last year. The site was also particularly popular in Mexico, where it was the 54th most popular site in March 2022 with higher numbers of visits than hbomax.com, disneyplus.com and primevideo.com.

“This is a huge win for the ACE team based in Latin America as we work to protect the legitimate digital ecosystem throughout the region,” said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association. “The successful action against the operator of Pelisplushd.net was only made possible because of evidence that we gathered from previous operations conducted in other countries in Latin America. This speaks volumes about ACE’s ability to crack current cases utilizing years of past gathered intelligence and highlights the global, strategic approach that determines our actions around the world.”

The collective illegal practices carried out by the operator of Pelisplushd.net are not only limited to copyright infringement and could potentially encompass tax evasion and money laundering crimes as well, which may subject this operator, as well as others in the future, to harsher sentences when criminal cases are brought against them.

After ACE identified the Pelisplushd.net operator located him in the remote countryside of Peru in March, the operator turned over all related Pelisplushd.net domains to ACE, which are now redirecting to the Watch Legally section on the ACE website.

The theft of digital content harms both local and foreign films and businesses, threatens jobs, undermines investment, reduces tax contributions to governments, and stifles creativity.

In Singapore

ACE has also shut down Singapore-operated piracy website Afdah.video. This notorious piracy streaming service was recommended for inclusion on the United States Trade Representative’s  ‘Notorious Markets’ list as well as the European Commission’s ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’.

Afdah.video had over 80,000 full-length movies stored on three video hosting platforms and at its peak had in excess of 30 million visits per annum. Domains associated with the site were also subject to judicial site blocking orders in Singapore, Australia and the United Kingdom.

“ACE’s takedown of Afdah is a critical part of our ongoing efforts to reduce piracy in the Asia Pacific region and throughout the global creative ecosystem,” said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association. “Streaming piracy websites and IPTV piracy services put consumers at risk of egregious malware, undermine investment, reduce tax contributions to governments, and stifle creativity. We will continue to identify and interdict the operators of such online piracy services”.

After identifying the operator of the Afdah piracy service, all domains have been transferred to ACE and are now redirecting to the Watch Legally section on the ACE website.