The Office of the United States Trade Representative has published its annual list of problematic piracy websites and other "notorious markets." With the FIFA World Cup coming to North America this summer, this year's report puts a special focus on live sports broadcast piracy. The USTR hopes that by naming these platforms, operators and foreign governments will take appropriate action.

Every year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a list of ‘notorious markets’ that facilitate online piracy and related intellectual property crimes.

Drawing on input from copyright holders, the report includes a non-exclusive overview of sites and services that are believed to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.

For more than a decade we have covered the online section of the report. Traditionally, that includes prominent torrent sites, download portals, cyberlockers, and streaming services that offer copyrighted content without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

In recent years, the scope of the report has broadened significantly. For example, we have seen hosting companies, advertisers, and social media platforms being added. These don’t have piracy as their core business, but they allegedly facilitate infringing activity.

Issue Focus: Sports Streaming Piracy
Yesterday, the USTR published its 2025 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy. Every year, the Office selects an ‘Issue Focus’; for 2025, the target is live sports broadcast piracy. This choice is in part triggered by the upcoming FIFA World Cup that’s hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

“With the United States co-hosting the FIFA World Cup, we are particularly attuned to sales of counterfeit merchandise and illicit streaming of sports broadcasts,” Ambassador Jamieson Greer said, commenting on the release.

The USTR report notes that the stakes are high. Pirate sites and services directly threaten the global sports broadcast rights market, which was reportedly valued at approximately $62.6 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, pirate site operators continue to get more sophisticated and evasive.

“When authorities shut down a pirate streaming website, operators can simply register new domain names, rebrand under different names, or migrate to alternative hosting providers,” the Notorious Markets report reads.

“This whack-a-mole dynamic frustrates enforcement efforts and requires sustained, resource-intensive campaigns that often exceed the capabilities of right holders and enforcement agencies.”

New Legal Frameworks
What further complicates the challenge is the fact that live broadcasts typically only have a small takedown window. This means that content removals and enforcement have to be swift and global. In some countries, this may require legislative updates.

“Current legal frameworks, while providing important protections, have not kept pace with the technological realities of modern piracy operations,” the USTR writes in its report.

These legislative measures may include expedited site-blocking powers, as we have seen in Italy and Spain recently, although these could introduce overblocking risks. The USTR does not mention these examples but notes that “traditional notice-and-takedown” frameworks are often “inadequate for live sports broadcasts.”

Interestingly, United States law does not support no-fault site-blocking measures yet. Nor are there broadly used legal tools to take livestreams down instantly. That said, USTR notes that preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders could help.

“For example, the United States has expedited provisions for copyright protection, primarily through temporary restraining orders (TROs) and preliminary injunctions, which a court can grant to immediately stop infringing activity,” USTR writes.

The Notorious Pirate Sites
USTR’s strong focus on sports streaming piracy is not immediately reflected in the list of notorious markets. While there are plenty of dedicated sports piracy networks, none is mentioned in the latest notorious markets report. Instead, it mostly highlights familiar targets.

Much of the list will look familiar to anyone who followed last year’s edition. ThePirateBay, 1337X, RuTracker, and YTS.mx return in the torrent category. Filehosting platforms Krakenfiles, Rapidgator, and 1fichier are also back, while Sci-Hub and LibGen remain listed in the publishing category (full list below).

The removals compared to last year’s list also make sense. These include the prominent torrent site TorrentGalaxy, which went offline last year, as well as NSW2U, the Nintendo Switch piracy site that had its domain names seized by the FBI and Dutch authorities last year.

Meanwhile, there are some notable newcomers too. MegaCloud, for example, which is the rebranded successor to 2embed, offers a piracy video library backend system that reportedly serves over 260 streaming sites and 600 million monthly visitors. MyFlixerz, which runs on that same ‘piracy as a service’ (PaaS) infrastructure, is also listed as a newcomer.

Another newcomer is MIGFlash, which offers piracy-enabling Nintendo Switch devices, and Fire Video Player, which offers video player software that’s linked to a video library, so people can easily start their own pirate sites.

Pirate Sports Streaming?
As mentioned earlier, dedicated sports streaming sites are not mentioned. The notorious markets list does include IPTV services that support streaming, including MagisTV, but does not list dedicated sites, which is odd considering this year’s sports focus.

In the positive developments section, the USTR report does reference the takedown of Streameast, one of the largest online sports streaming networks with 1.6 billion annual visits, of which 80 domain names were seized last year. However, the original Streameast operation or other surviving sports streaming brands remain unmentioned.

The USTR’s mention of the FIFA World Cup is notable, however. In the past, the U.S. Government has launched several domain seizure campaigns close to the start of major sporting events, such as the Super Bowl, so it’s possible that we will see similar action this summer.

A copy of the USTR’s 2025 Review of Notorious Markets is available here pdf. The full overview also includes offline markets.

A list of highlighted sites and online services, including those listed for counterfeiting, is included below. The sites mentioned are categorized by TorrentFreak for clarity purposes and listed below.

Torrent Sites
– 1337X
– RuTracker
– The Pirate Bay
– TorrentGalaxy
– YTS.mx

File-Hosting/Cyberlockers
– 1fichier
– Krakenfiles
– Rapidgator

E-Commerce
– Baidu Wangpan
– Bukalapak
– DHgate
– Douyin Mall (new)
– Indiamart
– Pinduoduo
– Shopee
– Taobao
– Avito

PaaS
– 2embed
– Fire Video Player (new)
– MegaCloud (new)
– Streamtape
– WHMCS Smarters

Streaming/IPTV
– Cuevana
– GenIPTV
– HiAnime
– MagisTV
– MyFlixerz (new)
– VegaMovies

Hosting/Infrastructure
– Amaratu
– DDoS-Guard
– FlokiNET
– Private Layer (new)
– Squitter
– Virtual Systems

Social Media
– VK

Gaming
– FitGirl-Repacks
– MIG Flash (new)
– NSW2U
– UnknownCheats

Music
– Y2Mate
– Savefrom

Publishing
– Libgen
– Sci-Hub