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Hollywood studios have succeeded in destroying a network of pirate Internet cinemas with billions of visitors, which has haunted them since 2016. Fmovies and related web resources have been down since the end of June 2024.
Goodbye, Fmovies!
The Vietnamese authorities and the ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment) industry association, which represents the interests of 30 global entertainment companies, have smashed the most popular pirate online cinema Fmovies, writes TorrentFreak. The site and related projects, the audience of which numbered billions of visitors, almost instantly stopped their work.
The streaming platform Fmovies, which began its work in 2016, has been an eyesore for Hollywood studios throughout its existence. Copyright holders, as a rule, prefer not to mention the names of specific pirate sites in the public field in order to provide them with additional free advertising, but Fmovies has become an exception to this rule.
The degree of dissatisfaction of copyright holders with the prosperity of the service is clearly illustrated by the fact that they tried to involve the US Congress in the fight against it. In December 2023, members of the US parliament were shown in practice how easy it is to organize the viewing of illegally distributed videos anywhere in the world, even in such an impregnable place as the Capitol. The congressmen were then personally introduced to the work of the Fmovies website by the Senior Executive Vice President of the Motion Picture Association (Motion Picture Association; MPA) Karyn Temple.
The collapse of the empire
The first signs of the imminent collapse of the Fmovies "empire" appeared at the end of June 2024. Just a couple of weeks later, the service stopped working altogether - without any official explanation from the administration.
As TorrentFreak notes, further, in full accordance with the domino principle, secondary streaming portals associated with Fmovies began to close one after another. At first, their visitors were automatically redirected to the "new" pirate sites, but just the other day these web resources ceased to be available - again without any notice of the impending closure or transfer of sites to other domains.
One of Fmovies' sister sites blifxz.to posted a text message on the empty homepage that was a verbatim repetition of words published by another pirate site, 123Movies, after its closure, six years earlier. In it, the administration of the resource thanked the audience of the portal for their loyalty and urged them to pay for watching films and TV shows from now on, thus expressing gratitude to the people behind the production of the relevant content.
The choice of a soul-saving message identical in form and content by the administration of the blifxz.to may not be accidental. It is possible that the same people are behind both sites, or the network of Fmovies web resources was managed by the ideological successors of the 123Movies business, which is indirectly evidenced by the fact that Fmovies was launched and gained huge popularity after the death of 123Movies. In addition, the tracks of both base sites lead to Vietnam.
A large-scale campaign to clean up the Internet from pirated content affected not only resources that distribute "traditional" content in the format of full-length films and television series. For example, AniWave, a large pirate platform for fans of Japanese comics and animation, with a monthly audience of 170 million visitors at the peak of its popularity, also got it.
For some time, the reasons for the sudden closure of a number of popular pirate sites remained a mystery, since none of the participants in the process took responsibility for what happened. It was logical to assume that the owners of video services would not abandon the profitable business on their own initiative, therefore, the sites ceased to exist under the influence of external factors.
Over the past few weeks, the MPA and ACE have remained silent, but the recent visit of representatives of these organizations to Hanoi, Vietnam, where a four-day international symposium on the protection of intellectual property rights was held in mid-June, may indicate that U.S. rights holders and law enforcement agencies in Vietnam may have had a hand in the closure of Fmovies.
Cards revealed
August 29, 2024 ACE published a press release on its official website announcing the defeat of the "largest pirate group" by the Hanoi police. As a result, AniWave, Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movie7, Myflixer, which were part of the network of Fmovies web resources, ceased to exist.
According to ACE, Fmovies' pirated resources gathered more than 6.7 billion visitors between January 2023 and June 2024 alone. In addition, the investigation established a connection between the site and vidsrc video hosting, which also stopped showing signs of life this week, which affected the work of more modest in terms of audience size pirate streaming services.
Charles Rivkin, MPA CEO and chairman of ACE's board of directors, called the destruction of Fmovies "a tremendous victory for actors, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community around the world".
It is noteworthy that in the materials published by ACE, there is not a word about the people behind the network of web resources Fmovies: the names of the suspects are not mentioned, no detentions are reported. It cannot be ruled out that not all members of the pirate group had been identified by Vietnamese law enforcement agencies by the time the press release was published.
Goodbye, Fmovies!
The Vietnamese authorities and the ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment) industry association, which represents the interests of 30 global entertainment companies, have smashed the most popular pirate online cinema Fmovies, writes TorrentFreak. The site and related projects, the audience of which numbered billions of visitors, almost instantly stopped their work.
The streaming platform Fmovies, which began its work in 2016, has been an eyesore for Hollywood studios throughout its existence. Copyright holders, as a rule, prefer not to mention the names of specific pirate sites in the public field in order to provide them with additional free advertising, but Fmovies has become an exception to this rule.
The degree of dissatisfaction of copyright holders with the prosperity of the service is clearly illustrated by the fact that they tried to involve the US Congress in the fight against it. In December 2023, members of the US parliament were shown in practice how easy it is to organize the viewing of illegally distributed videos anywhere in the world, even in such an impregnable place as the Capitol. The congressmen were then personally introduced to the work of the Fmovies website by the Senior Executive Vice President of the Motion Picture Association (Motion Picture Association; MPA) Karyn Temple.
The collapse of the empire
The first signs of the imminent collapse of the Fmovies "empire" appeared at the end of June 2024. Just a couple of weeks later, the service stopped working altogether - without any official explanation from the administration.
As TorrentFreak notes, further, in full accordance with the domino principle, secondary streaming portals associated with Fmovies began to close one after another. At first, their visitors were automatically redirected to the "new" pirate sites, but just the other day these web resources ceased to be available - again without any notice of the impending closure or transfer of sites to other domains.
One of Fmovies' sister sites blifxz.to posted a text message on the empty homepage that was a verbatim repetition of words published by another pirate site, 123Movies, after its closure, six years earlier. In it, the administration of the resource thanked the audience of the portal for their loyalty and urged them to pay for watching films and TV shows from now on, thus expressing gratitude to the people behind the production of the relevant content.
The choice of a soul-saving message identical in form and content by the administration of the blifxz.to may not be accidental. It is possible that the same people are behind both sites, or the network of Fmovies web resources was managed by the ideological successors of the 123Movies business, which is indirectly evidenced by the fact that Fmovies was launched and gained huge popularity after the death of 123Movies. In addition, the tracks of both base sites lead to Vietnam.
A large-scale campaign to clean up the Internet from pirated content affected not only resources that distribute "traditional" content in the format of full-length films and television series. For example, AniWave, a large pirate platform for fans of Japanese comics and animation, with a monthly audience of 170 million visitors at the peak of its popularity, also got it.
For some time, the reasons for the sudden closure of a number of popular pirate sites remained a mystery, since none of the participants in the process took responsibility for what happened. It was logical to assume that the owners of video services would not abandon the profitable business on their own initiative, therefore, the sites ceased to exist under the influence of external factors.
Over the past few weeks, the MPA and ACE have remained silent, but the recent visit of representatives of these organizations to Hanoi, Vietnam, where a four-day international symposium on the protection of intellectual property rights was held in mid-June, may indicate that U.S. rights holders and law enforcement agencies in Vietnam may have had a hand in the closure of Fmovies.
Cards revealed
August 29, 2024 ACE published a press release on its official website announcing the defeat of the "largest pirate group" by the Hanoi police. As a result, AniWave, Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movie7, Myflixer, which were part of the network of Fmovies web resources, ceased to exist.
According to ACE, Fmovies' pirated resources gathered more than 6.7 billion visitors between January 2023 and June 2024 alone. In addition, the investigation established a connection between the site and vidsrc video hosting, which also stopped showing signs of life this week, which affected the work of more modest in terms of audience size pirate streaming services.
Charles Rivkin, MPA CEO and chairman of ACE's board of directors, called the destruction of Fmovies "a tremendous victory for actors, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community around the world".
It is noteworthy that in the materials published by ACE, there is not a word about the people behind the network of web resources Fmovies: the names of the suspects are not mentioned, no detentions are reported. It cannot be ruled out that not all members of the pirate group had been identified by Vietnamese law enforcement agencies by the time the press release was published.
