FMoviez, one of the largest sources of pirated entertainment content, has been shut down by authorities. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) collaborated with Hanoi police to put an end to the operations of FMoviez and several affiliated sites that had been running in Vietnam since 2016.
Authorities also cracked down on other piracy platforms, including bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer, and aniwave. These sites had collectively amassed over 6.7 billion visits in just a year, averaging around 374 million visits per month. For perspective, by the second quarter of 2024, Netflix—one of the top legal streaming services—reported over 277 million subscribers.
But that wasn’t all. ACE described this as “the largest piracy ring in the world,” and authorities also shut down a video hosting service called Vidsrc, which was allegedly operated by the same individuals. Vidsrc played a crucial role in providing content to hundreds of piracy websites worldwide. According to TorrentFreak, FMovies became inaccessible in July 2024.
A Major Win Against Online Piracy
“This was the mothership,” said Charles Rivkin, CEO of ACE, in a statement to Variety. ACE, backed by major industry players like Apple, Netflix, Sony, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros., worked closely with Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security and Hanoi Municipal Police to dismantle these piracy networks.
FMovies had been in legal trouble before. In 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered the site to pay $218,200 in damages to media giant ABS-CBN. However, despite the ruling, FMoviez continued operating—until now.
This recent takedown signals a stronger global crackdown on digital piracy, reinforcing that illegal streaming platforms will eventually face consequences.
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