Top Movie Piracy Ring Taken Down, Major Studios' Enforcement Group Claims 42
An anti-piracy coalition comprised of major studios in the U.S. and across the globe is claiming victory against Fmovies, a significant streaming operation based in Vietnam. From a report: On Thursday the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment revealed that it had worked with Hanoi police to shutter Fmovies and affiliated sites, which together made up "the largest pirate streaming operation in the world," according to the organization. With sites including bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer, and aniwave in addition to Fmovies, the operation attracted more than 6.7 billion visits between January 2023 and June 2024, ACE says.
The effort also shut down video hosting provider Vidsrc.to and its affiliated sites, which were "operated by the same suspects," per ACE. Two Vietnamese men were arrested by Hanoi police in connection with Fmovies and have yet to be charged. Charles Rivkin, the chairman and CEO of Hollywood trade group the Motion Picture Association and the chairman of ACE, called the action "a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe" in a statement. His colleague Larissa Knapp, evp and chief content protection officer for the MPA, said the takedown sent a "powerful deterrent message."
The effort also shut down video hosting provider Vidsrc.to and its affiliated sites, which were "operated by the same suspects," per ACE. Two Vietnamese men were arrested by Hanoi police in connection with Fmovies and have yet to be charged. Charles Rivkin, the chairman and CEO of Hollywood trade group the Motion Picture Association and the chairman of ACE, called the action "a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe" in a statement. His colleague Larissa Knapp, evp and chief content protection officer for the MPA, said the takedown sent a "powerful deterrent message."
Good for consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's keep Hollywood busy fighting the for-profit piracy industry. They wasted a lot of time going after individuals sharing stuff for free. I don't really enjoy downloading others' work, but they made the market as bad as it is. P2P piracy keeps the pressure on studios to make movies available on reasonable terms.
There are still movies and TV shows that you can decide to watch and then find no legitimate way of accessing them. Out of print on physical media and never made it to streaming.
Re:Good for consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
As in the case of the MTVNews website shutting down....saving copyrighted material yourself is the only way to ensure it survives to the wildly unrealistic end of protection period and enters the public domain.
If Copyright holders aren't *required* to save their work for eventual public domain usage, that should be a breach of the copyright contract we, the people, grant them.
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simply upholding article 27 of the UDHR should suffice. if they can't handle part 1 they don't get part 2.
Article 27
1 Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
2 Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
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If there's no requirement then there is no breach. And there wouldn't be anyway since they're the ones who own the work. If they don't want to save their work, tough shit on you. You're not entitled to the work they produced.
Re:Good for consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
They are granted a limited time period monopoly on their creations, *in exchange* for the public gaining free access to them after that period.
It's quite literally in the US Constitution that the Congress can extend this contract, as they have.
If an artist can reap the benefits of that contract, and then simply delete their content from public view prior to it being public domain...that's a clear common sense violation of that contract.
When Copyright was envisioned, media was all physical. So by *buying* media I had that content ready and able to be used in public domain once it was out of copyright. Now with digital streaming, there's no copy of the media available for that purpose if the artist simply deletes it...as MTVNews shows.
When Copyright was envisioned, there was also no need for 'technical devices' to consume media. I have video games that I legally purchased that I can no longer play...because the hardware for which it was written no longer works. That's obviously not a copyright problem directly but it's instructive.
Copyright is fundamentally broken and no longer serving it's express purpose "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Which by modern definition is adding things to the public domain for ALL to use however they see fit.
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They are granted a limited time period monopoly on their creations, *in exchange* for the public gaining free access to them after that period.
I disagree, there is no such exchange.they are granted a limited time period monopoly on their creations as an incentive for them to keep creating works of art. Since the start of time until the creation of copyright laws, free sharing was automatic and there were no time limits. Then some politicians came with the idea of this incentive of temporary monopoly.
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You can disagree with the actual written words, but it doesn't change the actual written words. Including yours which describe the very exchange that happens.
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If they are not saving their work, they clearly feel there is not enough value in saving their work then they have lost nothing of value in people copying their work by their own definition.
Re: Good for consumers (Score:3)
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Interesting! Who is this enforced on? Only Portuguese artists? or anyone selling in Portugal? And how does streaming factor in?
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don't really enjoy downloading others' work
I do.
It's a lot more convenient than DRM-laden physical media or steaming services that dictate how you can consume what you paid for - when they don't plain remove access to what you paid for without giving you any explanation and without giving you your money back.
Or did you meaning downloading without paying? Those are two different things.
You enjoy downloading content? (Score:1)
Re: Why do they use all that DRM, I wonder? (Score:3)
There might be a reason. Not every reason is a good reason. Greed is usually a bad reason, and studios have shown they have plenty of that.
The comment made above makes sense from a moral perspective: copyright could come with responsibilities too. Either way, if content isn't provided, what is a good reason to not consider it abandoned and therefore free of rights? I am not talking about what the current laws say (this depends on the country), but about what we want for society.
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Well...there's a reason my comment only started with "I don't really enjoy downloading." It won't prevent me doing so if I have no legitimate alternative. Waiting for the public domain is usually multiple generations of people away. I don't really care if people 100 years from now can freely watch it.
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It's flamebait response, but I'm doing it for the sake of training the AI that's about to become our overlord:
I think they are doing it for fun, defined as an irrational pursuit of gratification.
Theft includes an element of depriving the owner of their use, and sharing of data leaves original ownership intact. It is not theft, and whether the sharer profits is irrelevant. Certain kinds of sharing are *illegal* under certain authorities, but again, it is not theft.
But to my first point, it's not rational to
Man, I love being right. (Score:2)
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Do you suppose the studios are doing all this just for fun, or do you think there might be a reason?
I'll be waiting for the torrent of flames telling me why theft and piracy are okay. Some of those flames will be well thought out and sophisticated, I'm sure. They'll still be justifying theft and piracy. In three . . . two . . . one . . .
They're a corporation employing thousands of thousands of people.
It is their job to try everything possible to increase revenue.
Most will not work but have to try it because you don't know what will work without trying.
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Not sure if stupid or trolling ... but I'll bite.
> or do you think there might be a reason?
If piracy REALLY was a financial loss that these studios "claimed" then they would list it in their quarterly financial reports. They DON'T because they are pulling these numbers out of their ass.
> theft and piracy
With your confusion there is a lot to unpack here. There are many reasons why people justify copyright infringement: some legal, some illegal, some moral, some immoral -- note that legality and immo
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I've tried to find a way to legally download my favorite shows and movies, but there aren't any options anymore. The only options are to rent the video or show, or buy into some service whereby said show or movie is available, but this doesn't allow you to download the show or movie.
So what I do is pay for whatever service to provide me with the show, then I go to thepiratebay and download the best version that I can find. This situation has absolutely been created by Hollywood, so fuck'm.
I can sleep easy at night now... (Score:2)
Total increased revenue as a result? (Score:4, Insightful)
$0
Hollywood accounting (Score:2)
Then no artists were furthermore compensated either. So, not for the artists then really.
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Then no artists were furthermore compensated either. So, not for the artists then really.
I suppose at one time it may have been about the artists but likely not in my lifetime & I'm not young - at least not in the music industry.
I recall one of the really big female artists - I'll say Mariah Carey, not exactly sure but someone in that league - saying she's NEVER truly had a gift from the studios / labels, that audits have shown that every "gift" of flowers, wine, etc, was charged back to her or deducted from payouts.
Perhaps the movie industry is different? But from what I've read about "Hol
Whack-A-Mole, the real life game. (Score:2)
The good way to kill off mass piracy (Score:3)
We could do it with a simple law change that would set up a server-based version of the video store carve-out for lendable physical media. When services like Netflix could buy DVDs and lend them out, a customer could get any movie they wanted by waiting a few weeks for it to 'go to DVD'. Everyone got paid, and everybody was happy. But now that DVD is an obsolete format, the streamable format of every movie is imprisoned in some proprietary streaming service. This, and only that, is why people are going to the trouble of pirating again. It's the industry's own damn fault.
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Thats what fmoviesz, the subject of this takedown, proved.
The various sites had loads and loads of searchable content, new, old, in between.. whats hot, whats not... if it was ever on a streaming service anywhere, these guys had 3 working mirrors of their own.
Its been several months since the main takedown, and the service had proved to be fairly resilient even tho the operators were no longer operating it, but in the past few weeks they seem to have finally taken down most of the
I don't think so... (Score:1)
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to be clear... (Score:1)
"a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe"
I'm not familiar with that spelling of "shareholders, executives, and lawyers"
movie piracy (Score:2)
Fewer and fewer people are willing to pay money for the drek that comes out of Hollywood. At least those using the pirates are watching the product placement.
Bastards (Score:2)
Fmovies was my family go-to entertainment site for several years.
No scammy popups and almost no porn ads.
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Fmovies is(was) great (Score:1)