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ACE & MPA Quietly Seized Dozens of Pirate Domains in Q1 2025
Since it's launch in 2017, the Alliance for Entertainment and Creativity has established itself as the most powerful coalition of its type on the planet. In the first three months of 2025, ACE welcomed new members to its ranks but reported just two successful outcomes concerning online enforcement operations. ACE has a track record of underreporting progress, the first quarter of 2025 was no exception.
ace-s2 When the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment launched in 2017, the globalization of online piracy had been apparent for some time.
In the relatively calm waters of a decade earlier, the Hollywood majors tackled pirate adversaries all around the world, often while pooling resources under the banner of the MPAA.
Less-connected rightsholders had little choice but to go it alone while shouldering 100% of the costs. For those who meet the ACE entry criteria today, access to a wealth of knowledge and vast experience that money simply can’t buy, comes as part of the package after paying the ACE members’ annual fee.
Today over 50 companies involved in movie and TV production, broadcasting and distribution, and more recently live sports, come together as members of ACE, a collective inseparable from the anti-piracy operations of the MPA.
In day to day business, several member companies are direct rivals in the same markets, many more find themselves among general competition to varying degrees. Yet all have something in common; a persistent piracy problem that in many key markets, only seems to be getting worse.
Fighting Back Globally
The need to eliminate existing priority targets and swiftly suppress emerging priority threats is universally understood. Somewhere in the middle, where the bulk of pirate sites and services exist, sits a vast pool of potential targets ready for triage.
Relatively few are named in a full-blown lawsuit, but it does happen and can prove very costly indeed. Only very rarely does ACE confirm a shutdown in connection with a settlement agreement but again, that definitely happens too. The precise financial implications for site operators is almost never revealed but a six figure demand seen by TF some years ago seems unlikely to have been unique.
Domain Seizures For Q1 2025
Regardless of any financial terms they may or may not contain, a settlement or agreement to cease-and-desist often sees ACE/MPA take control of domain names, to prevent their infringing use moving forward.
The details occasionally appear in ACE announcements but more often than not, domains are silently signed over to the MPA, with future visitors redirected to the ACE portal for a warning on the dangers of piracy. Pick an especially rare domain and the redirect may even lead to the MPA’s site.
Pirates can pick their poison (ACE left, MPA right)
double-warning-ace-mpa
The only mention of domain seizures thus far in 2025 appears in an announcement revealing the closure of Spanish file-hosting site Gamovideo. The pair of domains seized aren’t identified by name but we can confirm they are gamovideo.com and gamovideo.net.
Domains seized during the first quarter of 2025 (plus a few seized earlier this month), appear in the table below. There’s around 80 in total, but a few more may already be in the pipeline.
The seized domains reveal a familiar mix of movie and TV show streaming sites, live sports streaming sites, plus a small number of file-hosting and IPTV services. Nothing especially unusual, at least as far as we’re able to determine.
Some of these sites may reappear in the weeks or months ahead under existing or new branding. Others may happily throw in the towel and consider themselves lucky. Much seems to depend on the location of site operators and/or the level to which ACE has managed to strip away their anonymity.
Such matters are never discussed publicly but circumstantial evidence suggesting a lack of respect for agreements among a minority isn’t too difficult to find. Nor is it likely to be forgotten – ever.
MPA Has an Impressive Domain Collection
Finally, if success could be measured based on the volume of domain seizures alone, no other anti-piracy group in the world would come close to the haul amassed by ACE/MPA.
For the sole purpose of demonstrating the scale, the table below contains roughly 500 domains. Not all domains are instantly identifiable, so there’s a chance that a small number of non-pirate domains may have slipped through the net.
If that’s the case, refilling the gaps with pirate replacements won’t be an issue. The API used to obtain this list returned around 1,300 domains in response to a reverse WHOIS query for ‘Motion Picture Association, Inc.‘ of which we discarded around 200 for being general use domains not directly connected to piracy. Another API suggests the availability of considerably more; around 11,000, give or take.
Many domains need to be renewed at the end of year one, so the cost of holding them all long-term is likely to be significant.
Not for the MPA, of course, especially when compared to the billions of untapped business said to flood away each year due to the very thing the members of ACE are determined to reduce.
