iQIYI Anti-Piracy Push Sees Aiyifan Operator Sentenced in China

A Chinese court has upheld the criminal conviction and prison sentence of an operator behind Aiyifan, a massive offshore pirate streaming network, as rights holder iQIYI continues a parallel civil offensive in U.S. federal court, according to reporting from TorrentFreak.

The Shanghai Third Intermediate People's Court affirmed the ruling against Wang Jianyang, whom iQIYI identified in court filings as a central principal of the operation. Operating through a Chongqing company, Wang supplied technical infrastructure, mobile application maintenance, and ad sales for the illicit streaming venture beginning in 2022.

Chinese authorities took Wang into custody in March 2024, preceding iQIYI's legal action in Florida. The operator had previously faced legal penalties for intellectual property theft, having received a suspended three-year prison term and a 6 million yuan fine from a Jiangsu court in 2021 over a separate copyright infringement enterprise.

The pirate platform, which operates across domains including aiyifan.tv, iyf.tv, and yfsp.tv, primarily targets Chinese-speaking audiences living abroad. Traffic data from Similarweb indicates that yfsp.tv alone registered roughly 14 million visits over the past month. Unlike a related Florida case brought by rival streamer Tencent against unauthorized service Olevod, Aiyifan has not appeared in U.S. court, leaving no named defendants in the ongoing American proceedings.

For major Asian entertainment conglomerates expanding globally, cross-border piracy represents an acute drain on international subscriber growth. As Hollywood Tomorrow tracks the globalization of major streaming catalogues, content owners are increasingly forced to coordinate domestic criminal crackdowns with foreign civil maneuvers to disrupt high-traffic networks serving diaspora markets.