
Notorious film piracy website Fmovies, based in Vietnam has been shut down. 2 men in Hanoi have been charged with copyright violation.
The site launched in 2016 had around 50,000 films available. It was previously identified by the USTR as a major piracy source in its Notorious Markets list. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) which represents the US movie and streaming industry, indicated that the illegal piracy site also operated a number of mirror sites such as Flixtorz, Movies7 and Myflixer as well as the Fmovies site. They believe it was “the largest pirate streaming operation in the world”. ACE data suggested there were more than 6.7bn visits between January 2023 and June 2024.
The Hanoi Economic Police worked on the case to investigate and identify the operators before arresting them. Phan Thanh Cong is believed to have been the primary operator and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from the site. On November 9, the Hanoi Police announced that they had filed criminal charges and initiated legal proceedings against 2 Hanoi men, Phan Thanh Cong and Nguyen Tuan Anh for infringement of copyright and related rights.
The Motion Picture Association President and ACE’s chair as well as the US Ambassador to Vietnam, and the Vietnam Film Development Association (VFDA) have all hailed the success.
This is the second major anti-piracy breakthrough by Vietnam’s criminal authorities in a year. See here for details of the last one.
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