HiAnime, the world’s biggest anime piracy website, was listed in the European Commission’s latest Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List (document via Torrent Freak), which highlights “websites and physical marketplaces reported by stakeholders as putting up pirated content and counterfeit goods.” The Commission says its report doesn’t have any legal effect nor commit the Commission to any actions. It acts as a gathering of sites listed by stakeholders. You can read the remarks on HiAnime’s entry below.
ALSO READ:
All Episodes on Major AnimeHeaven Piracy Site Nuked After ‘Crunchyroll’ Action
“Hianime (formerly Aniwatch[.]to and zoro[.]to)
Stakeholders from the audiovisual industry have reported Hianime for inclusion in the Watch List. Hianime is reported to be one of the most popular pirate streaming sites globally, and understood to be a rebrand of the previously popular sites, aniwatch[.]to and zoro[.]to. The website provides pirated versions of popular movies and television, particularly anime. Hianime had a global SimilarWeb ranking of 102, industry ranking (TV movies and streaming) of 4 and received 339.4 million visits globally in February 2025.“
s attempting to access AniWatch were redirected to HiAnime in March 2024. and watchlist records were also transferred over. HiAnime quickly grew in s and debuted on the United States Trade Representative’s Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy list in January 2025. According to Similarweb data, HiAnime had an estimated 124.7 million visits in April 2025, comparable to the Crunchyroll website’s 146.2 million, and significantly down from over 339 million visits in February.
ALSO READ:
Piracy: Japanese ‘Detailed Spoilers’ Website Referred to Prosecutors Over Copyright Infringement
Other anime-d websites that made the European Commission’s list include Russia’s Rezka, Vietnam’s Fmovies, which is linked to the popular anime piracy site 9anime, and the Spanish-language Cuevana website, which remains up despite announcing its shutdown in October 2024. Its intention to shut down was in direct response to offense taken at the Motion Picture Association’s inclusion of the site in its report to the USTR, also in October (PDF, Page 6).
The MPA had listed Cuevana as a site worth adding to the USTR’s Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy list, putting it next to much bigger Spanish-language piracy websites like AnimeFLV, which Cuevana considered unreasonable. Cuevana’s response, posted on the site’s landing page, said it was trying to cooperate and the MPA’s anti-piracy organization, ACE, to no avail. This message has since been updated, reiterating that it was still trying to ACE.
The European Commission’s report also cited praise for the efforts of Brazil’s Operation 404, whose offshoot, Operation Anime, has seen numerous anime websites shut down through international cooperation, police raids, and negotiations with promises of no pursuit of criminal punishment for compliance.
Source: Torrent Freak, Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List (PDF)
Featured image © Solo Leveling Animation Partners
Participate In Discussions