Fmovies: “World’s largest piracy ring” shut down by Disney & major studios

Fmovies, along with other piracy sites that received over 6.7 billion impressions in less than six months, were taken down by a coalition of major studios, including Disney, Amazon, and Warner Bros.

Piracy sites have been a major problem for studios. Over the years, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) — a coalition of major entertainment companies and production houses, including Amazon, Disney, and Warner Bros.— has been working to take down these sites.

ACE has now announced that it teamed up with the Vietnamese government to take down the world’s biggest piracy ring. For the unaware, Vietnam is where most piracy sites are based.

“The takedown of Fmovies is a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe,” said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association and Chairman of ACE.

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“With the leadership of ACE and the partnership of the Ministry of Public Security and the Hanoi Municipal Police, we are countering criminal activity, defending the safety of audiences, reducing risks posed to tens of millions of consumers, and protecting the rights and livelihoods of creators.”

Fmovies, which is based in Hanoi, and its related pirate sites like Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7, MyFlixer, and Aniwave, got over 6.7 billion visits between January 2023 and June 2024. With nearly 374 million visits every month, this group was the biggest piracy operation in the world.

Piracy sites are not having a good time

Dexerto reported earlier this week that over a dozen other piracy sites, including Fboxz.to, Aniwave.to, Anix.to, AnimeSuge, and Zoroxtv, were all suddenly shut down. Ironically, the site owners had a change of heart, encouraging users to pay for content.

Neither ACE nor Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association (MPA) have yet taken the credit for the takedown, though.

Content piracy is much bigger than just the sites that have been taken down. Hundreds, if not thousands, of sites are still active; they keep changing domains and using new tactics to avoid being shut down. Many also have Telegram and Discord groups with over a million members.

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These piracy sites don’t host content themselves but provide links to cloud storage platforms. These sites use services like Mega, KatDrive, Google Drive, and GDrive, which are some of the most common platforms used by the owners of these sites to share pirated movies and shows.

Piracy also affects other industries, with unlawful manga piracy taking around $800 million away from the industry.