Big blow for the Pirates

Many pirate websites have closed their doors in recent weeks. Forever? Hard to say. Perhaps, but as always in the pirate world, there is at least one successor. It may be more difficult this time, as the pirate actors targeted by the authorities in this round were considered some of the biggest.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and the Hollywood Motion Picture Association (MPA) have been working to end piracy for years, which sounds like an impossible goal, but they say the latest raid has taken a significant step toward that goal. They managed to shut down the Fmovies website, which was one of the largest providers of streaming services for popular movies and series. After the successful campaign, ACE called it "the world's largest piracy streaming operation". Authorities in the city of Hanoi have arrested two suspects for suspected links to digital piracy.

MPA CEO and ACE Alliance President Charles Rivkin described the removal of Fmovies as "a stunning victory for actors, crews, writers, directors, studios and the creative community around the world."

MPA's head of content protection, Larissa Knapp, added that the organizations felt the move was a "strong deterrent message" to others who currently run similar pirate sites to stream copyrighted material.

The website was founded in 2016 and successfully evaded the authorities, especially the American ones. Recently, two other similar sites (Aniwave, AnimeFlix) have said goodbye, which is also a strong blow for fans of anime content. It is not clear whether ACE contributed to their closure or whether managers preemptively decided that the risk was too great.

Although piracy is most often associated with the theft of intellectual property, it can also be associated with good intentions. A good example is content that is not available in a certain market. Japanese anime and manga are examples of content that for many years was not available outside the domestic market or only in a limited form. The only way to enjoy this content was through amateur enthusiasts who translated the content into English and other languages.

Today we also have countless streaming services available (Netflix, Disney+...), which is also grist to the mill for piracy. If you want to access the desired content, you have to subscribe to several platforms and put up with price increases and often worse offers almost every year.

In short, there will always be an interest in piracy, either due to the unavailability of the content, the exorbitant prices, or simply because the content is free. But the authorities will continue to look for ways to stamp out the spirit of piracy once and for all.