The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is arguably the world’s most active anti-piracy coalition.
The group systematically hunts down key piracy players on behalf of the major Hollywood studios and other prominent entertainment companies such as Apple, BBC, and Netflix.
It’s safe to say that ACE had a hand in the demise of most large piracy operations of recent years. The group took down several key players including the original 123movies, Openload, Rapidvideo, Vader Streams, Animeflix, and pirate release group EVO, to name a few.
The Fmovies Cabal
ACE has enjoyed numerous successes and continues to expand its operations. However, in the case of the sudden demise of Fmovies, arguably the largest pirate site shutdown in recent history, the group has remained remarkably quiet.
Fmovies began to unravel toward the end of June. Without an official explanation, the site stopped adding new movies and TV shows and it eventually went offline a few weeks later.
Details of the shutdown are still shrouded in mystery but as we highlighted earlier, ongoing enforcement efforts alongside political and diplomatic pressure may have played a role. The fact that the MPA visited Fmovies’ alleged home country, Vietnam, right when the trouble started, is definitely noteworthy.
What also stood out is that other pirate streaming sites, which were linked to Fmovies, all closed their doors at the end of July.
Disperse, Shutdown, and Redirect
A few days after Fmovies shut down, several ‘sister sites’ decided to throw in the towel as well. Instead of simply pulling the plug, these sites redirected to new pirate streaming portals, ostensibly operated by different people.
These simultaneous shutdowns took place at more than a dozen sites, some of which had millions of monthly visitors. They include flixtorz.to, movies7.to, and swatchseries.mx, which were redirected to theflixtor.to, mov2day.to, and 2flix.to respectively.
“The site has been closed. To continue watching free movies, you will be redirected to other site [insert domain here] (managed by other team),” a brief message on the domains explained.
The message suggests that the original operators wanted to signal that they are no longer involved. That’s odd, since the owners have always been anonymous, at least to the wider public. Maybe the message wasn’t intended for the sites’ users, but for anti-piracy groups who were getting close to the fire?
ACE Targets ‘Successors’
ACE and MPA have previously indicated that they know who’s behind Fmovies, having previously located the operators in Vietnam. The anti-piracy groups likely know a thing or two about the sister sites too, which were presumably operated from the same region.
What ACE thinks about the recent domain redirection efforts is unknown, but the group is certainly eager to find out more about the people behind these new pirate streaming portals.
This week, MPA obtained a DMCA subpoena requiring the .TO domain registry Tonic to share all information it has on the registrants of several domain names. This includes the websites that took over from Fmovies sister sites; theflixtor.to, mov2day.to, and 2flix.to.
The subpoena request follows a familiar format, asking for all usable personal information Tonic has on file.
“[Y]ou are required to disclose to the Motion Picture Association, Inc. (on behalf of the ACE Members) information sufficient to identify the infringers. This would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history,” it reads.
Whether this subpoena will result in any actionable data is unknown. By now, the operators of major pirate sites are well aware of the subpoena option, which is why they often use false information.
That said, ACE has had success with this strategy in the past, and even smaller traces, fake or not, might turn out to be useful. In any case, the subpoena indicates that whether these are new operators or not, ACE intends to press on.
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A copy of the legal paperwork for the DMCA subpoena, addressed to Tonic, is available here (1, 2). A list of all the targeted domains can be found below.
– filmoflix.to
– papadustream.to
– animesuge.to
– vidsrc2.to
– flix2day.to
– 2flix.to
– theflixtor.to
– mov2day.to
– fboxz.to
– cinezone.to
– aniwave.to
– anix.to
– zoroxtv.to
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
