Netflix leads Federal Court bid to have ISPs block 25 anime piracy sites
Netflix and Viacom International filed a Federal Court application on 5 November 2026 seeking blocks on 25 anime piracy sites across more than 60 domains. It names 39 internet providers, among them Telstra, Optus, TPG, Vodafone, Aussie Broadband and Superloop.
Netflix wants Australia's Federal Court to direct internet providers to cut access to 25 anime piracy sites, with more than 60 domains involved. Named targets include Aniwaves, Miruro, Anikoto, animepahe and Re:Anime, plus sites operating under the HiAnime, AnimeKai and 9anime names. OtakuDown, which has seen the court documents, reported that Netflix lodged the case on 5 November 2026 alongside Viacom International, part of Paramount.
Court records show Netflix has taken part in at least 13 blocking cases since 2019, each time as one member of a studio group led by Village Roadshow or Universal. In this case Netflix is the lead applicant, the usual group of studios is missing and almost all the targets are anime sites. OtakuDown found no previous blocking case filed in Netflix's own name.
As evidence of infringement, the filing sets out sample episodes, many of them anime from Netflix's own library, such as The Way of the Househusband, Romantic Killer, Lookism and the short film Sol Levante. Stranger Things, Squid Game and Santa Clarita Diet also appear, and Viacom offered episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.
The application lists 39 internet provider companies as respondents, including Telstra, Optus, TPG, Vodafone, Aussie Broadband and Superloop. If the court agrees, they would have 15 business days to comply. Netflix seeks a five-year block, against three years in recent orders in comparable cases. It also asks to be able to add new domains used by the same sites without returning to court, and would pay providers $50 per blocked domain.
The sites received formal notice on 11 November 2026, as the law requires, and no judge had yet been assigned. Timing has varied: the most recent case Netflix joined went from filing to order in under three weeks, while others needed four to five months.
Some of the targets are already blocked in Australia. A November 2025 order, in a Universal-led case where Netflix was a co-applicant, covered HiAnime, Miruro, Anikoto, Aniwave and 9anime, and the new filing lists domains for those too. Sites such as animepahe and Re:Anime do not show up in earlier published judgments.
Similarweb estimates cited by OtakuDown put combined September traffic for the five best-known sites at over 300 million visits. The MPA has also flagged animepahe and Aniwaves in its latest notorious markets submission to the US government.