‘World’s largest’ piracy ring Fmovies shut down by police in Vietnam

An international anti-piracy coalition including major Hollywood studios has claimed victory over Fmovies, a large illegal streaming operation based in Vietnam.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (Ace), whose governing members include Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon and the Walt Disney Studios, announced on Thursday that it worked with Hanoi police to shut down Fmovies and affiliated sites. The illegal consortium, with sites including Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7 and Myflixer in addition to Fmovies, constituted “the largest pirate streaming operation in the world”, according to Ace, with more than 6.7bn visits between January 2023 and June 2024.

The operation also shuttered the video hosting provider Vidsrc.to and its affiliated sites, which, per Ace, were operated by the same people. Hanoi police arrested two Vietnamese men in connection to Fmovies, who have yet to be charged, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The efforts marked “a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe”, said Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the Hollywood trade group the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the chairman of Ace, in a statement. Larissa Knapp, the executive vice-president and chief content protection officer for the MPA, said the takedown sent a “powerful deterrent message”.

“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 added.

Ace’s international members include BBC Studios, Canal+ Groupe, Televisa, MBC Group and RTL. The group works with various law enforcement bodies to fight online piracy of entertainment, pursue litigation and send out cease-and-desist letters.

Fmovies has been an Ace target for some time; in a 2024 speech at CinemaCon, Rivkin noted that about one-third of the site’s traffic came from the US. The site and its affiliates have been included on the Office of the US Trade Representative’s annual review of notorious markets for counterfeiting and piracy” for several years running.

Online subreddits have discussed the shutdown in recent days, with one user posting: “Between last night and this morning everyone woke up to the streaming apocalypse of their beloved sites being deleted by Uncle Sam. Anyone who’s posted a link or name dropped a site on this page congrats it’s your fault.”