World’s largest film piracy network shut down by police and Hollywood studios

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An international anti-piracy coalition has shut down Fmovies, a large illegal streaming operation based in Vietnam, in a major victory for the entertainment industry.

The coalition, which includes major Hollywood studios and is led by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), revealed on Thursday that it worked with police in Hanoi to shut down Fmovies and a host of affiliated sites.

The operation also saw the shutdown of video hosting provider Vidsrc.to and its affiliated sites, which were operated by the same suspects.

Two Vietnamese men were arrested by Hanoi police in connection with the case but have not yet been charged, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Charles Rivkin, chairman of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and ACE, praised the shutdown as a big moment for the global creative community. In a statement, he called it “a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe”.

“We took down the mothership here,” he was quoted as saying by Variety. “There was a time when piracy was Whac-a-Mole… Today, we go after piracy at its root.”

ACE includes members like Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon and Walt Disney Studios.

Larissa Knapp, a senior executive at the MPA, emphasised that the action serves as a strong deterrent and expressed a commitment to ongoing collaboration with various authorities to prosecute those responsible.

“We look forward to ongoing joint efforts with Vietnamese authorities, US Homeland Security Investigations and the US Department of Justice International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (ICHIP) program to bring the criminal operators to justice,” she said.

The operation included other sites like Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7, and Myflixer, and was described as the largest pirate streaming network in the world, with over 6.7 billion visits from January 2023 to June 2024.

At its peak in 2023, Fmovies ranked as the 11th most popular website worldwide in the TV, movies, and streaming category, according to the data analytics company SimilarWeb.

Fmovies has been on the US Trade Representative’s “notorious markets” list for counterfeiting and piracy since 2017. The USTR’s latest report states that Fmovies is linked to more than 60 domains involved in “significant piracy operations”.

Many consumers who visit piracy sites like those operated by Fmovies “don’t even realise that it’s wrong,” Mr Rivkin said.

“Some of these sites are as clean and beautiful as, say, a Netflix. It seems to be too good to be true — and it is.”

He added that the MPA is advocating for US legislation that would enable nationwide blocking of piracy sites, similar to laws already in place in over 60 other countries.

In a statement, Marc E Knapper, US ambassador to Vietnam said: “Strengthening intellectual property rights is an important element of the US-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership. These prosecutions demonstrate Vietnam’s commitment to intellectual property rights enforcement, contributing to an economic ecosystem where creators and inventors can thrive.”