A major crackdown on online piracy has resulted in the shutdown of the notorious media streaming site Fmovies, a network of pirated movie and TV show websites. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition of movie studios and entertainment companies, announced the dismantling of the illegal streaming site and several of its affiliated websites.
The Fmovies operation, based in Vietnam, was taken down after Hanoi police arrested two unidentified individuals in connection with the pirated media empire. The site had amassed 374 million monthly visits and 6.7 billion visits from January 2023 to June 2024, according to data from SimilarWeb.
Fmovies was ranked the 280th most visited website in any category and the 11th most popular TV, movies, and streaming website. ACE described the Fmovies syndicate as “the largest piracy ring in the world.” The website had also been a hub for user-generated content, with a subreddit where users could request and share links to TV shows and movies.
As authorities closed in on the Fmovies operators, Reddit users began posting notices that the syndicate’s streaming sites were not working or starting to shut down. When news of Fmovies’ demise surfaced, users began asking for suggestions of alternate pirating sites.
ACE Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin hailed the shutdown and arrests as “a stunning victory for casts, crews, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe.” The move is seen as a significant blow to online piracy, with several other pirate websites also facing shutdowns in recent weeks.
The aniwave illegal anime streaming website was shut down earlier this month, with the website posting a goodbye note on its homepage urging visitors to “please pay for the movies/shows, that’s what we should do to show our respect to the people behind the movies/shows.” Another pirate website, fboxz.to, also shut down and posted a similar message.
The crackdown on online piracy has also seen the extradition of Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, who was arrested in 2012 in his New Zealand home on counts including racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering, and copyright distribution.
