The world’s largest TV and movie piracy streaming ring is dead

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced the shutdown of the illegal streaming site Fmovies and its affiliated websites, including bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer, and aniwave. Fmovies was based in Vietnam and had 374 million monthly visits, making it the 280th most visited website globally and the 11th most popular TV, movies, and streaming website. Hanoi police arrested two men in connection with the pirated media empire, who are awaiting charges. ACE called the Fmovies syndicate "the largest piracy ring in the world." The shutdown and arrests were hailed as a "stunning victory" for the creative community. The Fmovies operation was shut down as authorities closed in on the operators, with users on the website's subreddit discussing the shutdown and seeking alternate pirating sites. ACE also claimed an earlier victory with the shutdown of the aniwave illegal anime streaming website on August 15. Another pirate website, fboxz.to, shut down a few days later, urging visitors to "Please pay for the movies/shows, that's what we should do to show our respect to people behind the movies/shows." The past month has been challenging for online pirates, with the US extraditing Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, from New Zealand to face charges for operating his video downloading empire.