Pirated and non-consensually shared creator content rarely lives in one place. Once a photo, video, or subscription-platform file leaks, it typically gets copied across forums, torrent trackers, Telegram channels, and mirror domains faster than any single takedown notice can follow — a redistribution pattern that shows up consistently across recent piracy, platform-safety, and child-safety research.
1. The scale of piracy traffic today
Global piracy traffic is enormous even as it declines year over year, which sets the baseline for how much redistribution infrastructure exists to move content once it's exposed.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total visits to piracy sites globally, 2025 (film, TV, publishing, music, software) | 185.6 billion visits | MUSO |
| Year-over-year change in piracy traffic, 2025 | -14.2% (steepest decline since 2020) | MUSO |
| Total piracy site visits, 2024 (prior-year baseline) | 216.3 billion visits | MUSO |
| Manga's share of publishing-sector piracy traffic, 2025 | 73.09% (up from 70.15% in 2024) | MUSO |
185.6B
visits to piracy websites globally in 2025 — down 14.2% from 2024 but still measured in the hundreds of billions.
MUSO 2025 Piracy Trends and Insights Report
Global piracy site visits, 2024 vs. 2025
“
Even a double-digit year-over-year decline still leaves piracy traffic in the hundreds of billions of visits — the infrastructure for redistribution hasn't disappeared, it's consolidated.
”— MUSO 2025 Piracy Trends and Insights Report
2. CSAM hosting and redistribution infrastructure
Because non-consensual and underage material gets tracked more rigorously than general piracy, hotline data offers the clearest picture of how aggressively hosting and re-hosting scale over time.
| Self-generated CSAM items confirmed, 2025 | 140,276 items (27% of all confirmed content) | Internet Watch Foundation |
| Unique domains actioned for hosting confirmed CSAM, 2025 | 7,268 domains (+20% YoY) | Internet Watch Foundation |
| 'TLD hopping' domain moves to evade takedown, 2025 | 514 hops across 133 domain strings (+74% YoY) | Internet Watch Foundation |
| Confirmed CSAM URLs, 2022 vs. 2019 | 255,588 URLs (2022) vs. 132,676 URLs (2019) | IWF via Statista |
| Commercial CSAM concentration on Germany's .de domain, 2023 | ~25% of commercial sites, 3,000+ criminal addresses | IWF via Euronews |
| Confirmed CSAM webpages out of reports assessed, 2023 | 275,652 of 392,665 reports | IWF via Clyde & Co |
7,268
unique domains the Internet Watch Foundation actioned for hosting confirmed CSAM in 2025 — up 20% year on year.
Internet Watch Foundation, 2025 Annual Data & Insights Report
“
Domain hopping isn't a fringe tactic — it's the default survival strategy for commercial abuse sites once a domain gets flagged.
”— Internet Watch Foundation, 2025 Annual Data & Insights Report
Domain concentration on a single country-code TLD, as seen with Germany's .de domain in 2023, and the near-doubling of confirmed CSAM URLs between 2019 and 2022, both point to the same underlying dynamic: enforcement against one host or domain rarely removes the underlying content from circulation, it just relocates it.
3. Reporting pipelines and enforcement scale
The reporting and takedown systems built to catch redistributed content now operate at a scale that itself illustrates how much material is moving.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| CyberTipline reports of suspected child exploitation, 2025 | 21.3 million reports, 61.8 million files | NCMEC |
| Share of NCMEC's H1 2025 "Generative AI" reports found to involve no actual AI-generated material | ~80% | Stanford Cyber Policy Center |
| Google Search copyright-removal URLs processed, 2025 alone | 5 billion URLs | TorrentFreak / Google |
| Share of Google's cumulative copyright removal requests filed by a single anti-piracy vendor since 2012 | >30% (3.2 billion URLs in 2025 alone) | TorrentFreak |
| Cumulative allegedly-infringing URLs reported to Google Search as of September 2025 | ~14.5 billion URLs | TorrentFreak / Google |
| Google's stated average processing time for a Search removal request | ~6 hours |
5B
copyright-removal URLs Google Search processed in 2025 alone.
TorrentFreak, analyzing Google Transparency Report data
“
A single vendor filing over 30% of all copyright removal requests since 2012 shows how automated the reporting side has become — the redistribution side automates just as fast.
”— TorrentFreak, Google Transparency Report analysis
The Stanford Cyber Policy Center's finding that roughly 80% of a mass hash-matching submission of "Generative AI" CyberTipline reports involved no actual AI-generated material is a reminder that classification tags on redistributed content — including within enforcement pipelines — can be unreliable at scale.
4. Telegram and channel-based redistribution networks
Beyond forums and torrent trackers, encrypted-messaging channels have become a documented redistribution layer of their own, with researchers now mapping their structure directly.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Telegram channels and unique posts studied in a video-piracy mapping (Dec 2023–Jan 2026) | 1,057 channels, 209,000 unique posts | arXiv preprint, Gyawali et al. |
| Estimated lower-bound financial loss from the mapped Telegram piracy ecosystem | $17.49 billion | arXiv preprint, Gyawali et al. |
| Channels and bots removed in a 61-day automated enforcement run | 524 channels, 71 bots | arXiv preprint, Gyawali et al. |
209,000
unique posts researchers catalogued across 1,057 Telegram piracy channels in a single mapping study.
Gyawali et al., arXiv preprint
“
Content was deliberately routed through resilient chains of intermediary channels and bots — removing one link rarely breaks the chain.
”— Gyawali et al., arXiv preprint on Telegram piracy infrastructure
Even a sustained 61-day enforcement effort in that study only reached 524 channels and 71 bots out of a mapped ecosystem more than twice that size — evidence that channel-based redistribution networks are built with redundancy from the start.
5. Torrent sites, mirrors, and whack-a-mole takedowns
Torrent trackers illustrate the oldest version of this pattern: shutting down a site rarely removes its content or its community, since both tend to reappear under a new name almost immediately.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Major torrent sites/trackers shut down by enforcement action since 2004 | ~20 major sites | Cogipas.com |
| Typical reappearance window for a new KickassTorrents-branded mirror | Within hours to days | Position Is Everything |
~20
major torrent sites shut down by enforcement action since 2004 — most persisted afterward as mirrors, clones, or brand-hijacking successors.
Cogipas.com
“
When a KickassTorrents mirror goes down, a replacement using the same brand typically resurfaces within hours to days — the name outlives any single domain.
”— Position Is Everything
6. Forums and dark web marketplaces for creator content
Subscription-platform content specifically flows through a mix of open forums and structured dark web marketplaces, both of which researchers have started to quantify directly.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Distinct illicit forums/marketplaces operating on the dark web | At least several hundred | Recorded Future |
| Membership range across dark web forums | A couple hundred to hundreds of thousands of registered users | Recorded Future |
| Estimated share of paid OnlyFans content stolen and redistributed without permission | 50-70% | Ceartas DMCA via Unbias the News |
| Monthly visits to Celebforum (April 2025), a forum hosting non-consensual OnlyFans content | Over 7 million visits | Unbias the News |
| Surveyed European creators reporting stolen/redistributed content without consent | 23 of 32 interviewed (~72%) | Unbias the News |
| Scale/price of a 2026 dark-web listing claiming to package OnlyFans creator data | 340 million records, 0.313 BTC (~$76,000) | Security Affairs |
| Same alleged dataset, independently reported | 340 million records, ~£60,000 | IBTimes UK |
7M+
monthly visits Celebforum received in April 2025 — a single forum built around non-consensual OnlyFans content.
Unbias the News investigation
“
Twenty-three of the 32 creators we interviewed said their content had been stolen and redistributed without consent — this isn't a rare edge case, it's close to the norm.
”— Unbias the News investigation
Notably, both reports on the alleged 340-million-record OnlyFans dataset trace it back to older, unrelated breaches (Twitter, Instagram, Spotify) repackaged and resold rather than a fresh platform hack — a pattern of "rebuilding" scraped or breached data into new forum listings that mirrors how leaked media itself gets repackaged and re-posted.
7. Deepfake redistribution channels
Non-consensual deepfake content moves through many of the same channels, with its own dedicated dark corners and rapidly growing report volumes.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Share of deepfake content that is sexual in nature | ~98% | Sensity AI |
| Deepfake-related sex crime reports in South Korea, 2023 to 2024 | 423 reports to 1,384 reports | Sensity AI, citing South Korea's Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Centre |
| Subscribers on some Telegram deepfake-generation chat rooms | Up to 200,000 | Sensity AI |
| AI-generated CSAM videos assessed by IWF, year over year | 3,443 videos, up from 13 (a 26,385% increase) | Sensity AI, citing IWF 2025 data |
26,385%
year-over-year increase in AI-generated CSAM videos assessed by the Internet Watch Foundation.
Sensity AI, citing IWF 2025 data
“
All content hosted on the five most-visited deepfake porn sites is non-consensual — this isn't a scattered problem, it's a dedicated, purpose-built distribution layer.
”— Sensity AI
Key numbers at a glance
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Global piracy site visits, 2025 | 185.6 billion |
| Domains IWF actioned for CSAM hosting, 2025 | 7,268 |
| Google Search copyright-removal URLs processed, 2025 | 5 billion |
| Telegram piracy channels mapped in one study | 1,057 |
| Estimated share of paid OnlyFans content stolen | 50-70% |
| Celebforum monthly visits, April 2025 | 7 million+ |
| YoY increase in AI-generated CSAM videos | 26,385% |
Sources
- MUSO 2025 Piracy Trends and Insights Report
- MUSO — What 216 Billion Visits to Piracy Sites Reveal About Global Media in 2024
- Internet Watch Foundation — Self-Generated Imagery, 2025 Annual Data & Insights Report
- Internet Watch Foundation — Executive Summary, 2025 Annual Data & Insights Report
- Statista — Confirmed CSAM URLs Chart (via IWF data)
- Euronews — German Internet Domain Used by Criminal Groups
- Clyde & Co — Online Child Sexual Abuse: IWF Report 2024
- NCMEC CyberTipline Data
- Stanford Cyber Policy Center — Letter to NCMEC About AI-CSAM Report Statistics
- TorrentFreak — A DMCA Bot War: Google Search Processed 5 Billion Takedown Requests in 2025
- TorrentFreak — Google Search's DMCA Transparency Report Resumes, Adds 2.1 Billion Pirate URLs
- Google Transparency Report — Copyright Removal Requests FAQ
- arXiv preprint — Gyawali et al., Telegram Video-Piracy Infrastructure Mapping
- Cogipas.com — Torrent Sites Shut Down
- Position Is Everything — KickassTorrents Mirrors Go Down But New KAT Sites Quickly Spring Up
- Recorded Future — Dark Web Definition
- Unbias the News — Consent Violated: How Creators Pay the Price for Stolen OnlyFans Content
- Security Affairs — 340 Million OnlyFans Profiles Allegedly Rebuilt From Leaks
- IBTimes UK — OnlyFans Data Leak: No Platform Breach
- Sensity AI — Deepfake Detection for Investigating Sexual Crimes