An international anti-piracy coalition including major Hollywood studios has claimed a victory against Fmovies, a large illegal streaming operation based in Vietnam.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (Ace), whose members include Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon and Walt Disney Studios, said on Thursday it had worked with Hanoi police to shut down Fmovies and its associated sites. Ace said the illegal consortium, which included Fmovies as well as sites such as Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7 and Myflixer, constituted “the world's largest pirate streaming operation,” with more than 6.7 billion visits between January 2023 and June 2024.
The operation also took down video hosting provider Vidsrc.to and related sites, which Ace said were run by the same people. According to The Hollywood Reporter, police in Hanoi have arrested two Vietnamese men in connection with Fmovies, but they have not yet been charged.
Charles Rivkin, president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), a Hollywood trade group, and chairman of ACE, said in a statement that the move was “an incredible victory for cast members, crew members, writers, directors, studios and the creative community around the world.” Larissa Knapp, executive vice president and chief content protection officer at the MPA, said the removal sent a “powerful deterrent message.”
“We look forward to continuing our collaborative efforts with Vietnamese authorities, the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, and the Department of Justice's International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (ICHP) Program to bring perpetrators to justice,” she added.
Ace's international members include BBC Studios, Canal+ Groupe, Televisa, MBC Group and RTL. The group works with various law enforcement agencies to combat online entertainment piracy, filing lawsuits and issuing injunctions.
Fmovies has been an Ace target for some time. Speaking at CinemaCon in 2024, Rivkin noted that roughly one-third of the site's traffic comes from the U.S. The site and its affiliates have been included in the U.S. Trade Representative's “annual review of notorious markets for counterfeit goods and piracy” for several years in a row.
Online subreddits have been discussing the closure for days, with one user posting: “Last night/this morning we all woke up to the streaming apocalypse with our beloved site being taken down by the US government. To anyone who posted a link or listed a site name on this page, congratulations – it's your fault.”
