Edit: So it looks like there are a couple posts about how this crackdown is fake news. Even in this very thread, someone is doing that, though they actually don't have a clue as to what they're talking about.
No, this is not fake news. These sites that are still up are not fmovies, which was itself part of a large piracy network, the rest of which has been dismantled as well, as has been discussed in other posts here. The sites still up are merely copycat sites riding the success of fmovies and trying to cash in themselves. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that, and if you can still watch movies like you did with the real thing, great. But some of them it appears are not the most scrupulous of pirates and have or link to potentially dangerous malware.
Regardless, please don't jump to "fAkE nEwS!" accusations when you don't know what you're talking about. All you're doing is muddying the waters about what really is going on and possibly leading people to think that misleading, potentially dangerous sites are fine. Don't do that.
- archive: https://archive.is/DEvXP
- original: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/29/fmovies-shut-down
So that's what happened to my beloved free treat-dispensing Fmoviesz. It hasn't worked for a month or so, but now there's no more need to speculate exactly why. There has been a huge wave of "piracy" outfit takedowns recently, which is both sad and worrisome and I wonder why this is all happening so all of a sudden. Why the severe crackdown now? Or is it the sort of situation where a big domino fell and they're all connected? They're really making sure any hint of commons gets enclosed and demonize it in the meantime.
I also wonder about the political motivations of Vietnam to go along with this and make the actual arrests. Is it due just to pressure from the west? Does Vietnam have any stake in copyright laws and this takedown, or the precedent of it, does actually benefit them somehow? What's the deal with all that?
From the article:
The efforts marked “a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe”, said Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the Hollywood trade group the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the chairman of Ace, in a statement. Larissa Knapp, the executive vice-president and chief content protection officer for the MPA, said the takedown sent a “powerful deterrent message”.
“We look forward to ongoing joint efforts with Vietnamese authorities, US Homeland Security Investigations and the US Department of Justice International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (Ichip) program to bring the criminal operators to justice,” she added.
The Balkans and Russia are the goats of piracy.
As the Balkans become more cucked to the west probably Russia will be the final boss.
Also a fun fact I learned a few years ago is the Soviet Union was around just barely long enough to be assigned a country name top layer domain (TLD).
Like .us, .fr, .ru, etc.
After the dissolution of the USSR the Russian Federation took over ownership of the .su domains. I've seen them becoming more popular recently.
🫡 .su lives on 🫡
Really Vietnam?
Have they taken an IMF loan or something? Why do they care about US IP bullshit?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_and_the_International_Monetary_Fund
As of August 2016, the current IMF Resident Representative to Vietnam is Jonathan Dunn
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/johnathan-dunn/
Former attorney, Paris and Los Angeles. Currently, Global Leader, Consumer Tech,
Media and Entertainment Practice, McKinsey & Company. 
But the CIA says they dont do that sort of thing anymore
Damn that genuinely fucking sucks, hate to see all the piracy crackdowns recently. I only used fmovies a few times but it was a really nice resource if I was too lazy to download off a private tracker. That does remind me that I have a few avistaz invites I can give to any comrades that promise to keep a good ratio, feel free to pm me if interested.
Answering the OP, there is more(growing collaboration and lobbying) there but one reason
Vietnam’s Upcoming U.S. Cinema Promotion Program
Highlighting benefits for Vietnam shows that this enforcement action doesn’t only impact U.S. rightsholders. In this regard, it’s worth mentioning another collaboration, which remains unmentioned in today’s press release.
According to documents published by Vietnamese authorities, the country is currently planning a Cinema and Tourism Promotion Program in the United States.
Hollywood can play an important role in drawing more American tourists to Vietnam. By choosing Vietnam as a film location, more people may be inclined to visit, for example. This plan is now underway and events in Los Angeles are scheduled for later this year.
Translated, Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism describes the goal as follows:
“Take advantage of the prestige and influence of Hollywood partners to organize the Program, attract public attention, and widely promote Vietnamese tourism. Promote tourism promotion through cinema, effectively exploit tourism from cinema, create a breakthrough in tourism promotion and promotion.”
The Motion Picture Association, under which ACE is managed, is in the loop too. According to the paperwork, an unnamed representative of the movie industry group is scheduled to give a speech at the event.
How the MPA will benefit from this tourist promotion program remains undiscussed. That being said, with the Fmovies piracy ring effectively shut down, the event will likely be quite a cheerful one. That may even have been part of the plan.
Slopbrained treatmaxxers making a remake of Apocalypse Now on location and thinking that makes it better somehow
Vietnam is going after IP infringement sites in Vietnam to attract the Empire to make movies there.
They are going to show how wrong the Empire was and the war from the Vietcong resitance side right?
They hope it will attract the dwindling wealth of decreasing Empire tourists and bring Vietnam closer to the Empire's favor to anchor a proxy nation close to rebel base China.
But they will still show the Vietcong resitance and the crimes of the Empire right?
Fake news again, like when they said Annas Archive was dead.
Several Fmovies mirrors are working as well today as they were yesterday.
There is a difference between a mirror and a copycat site. This is not fake news.
In addition to that, fmovies being gone is old news. What's new here is knowing what happened to it.
I mean yeah Vietnam is probably doing a crackdown because they're doing an dengism right now.
Try Laos or Cuba next? 😔
Cuba's only got one undersea cable connection to the rest of the internet, bad place to try and serve a ton of video traffic from
Cuba's only got one undersea cable connection to the rest of the internet
When did even that happen? Last I heard every plan to lay one kept being blocked by the US so they only had satellite connections.
It turns out I was actually mistaken. ALBA-1 is the initial undersea cable established and brought online in 2013, this is a connection from Santiago de Cuba to Venezuela. There was ALSO another connection made in 2023 from Cuba to Martinique in partnership with a French company, and this cable is called Arimao. So, two cables, I don't think Intersputnik's satellites have been used for a while.
Huh. Since I heard about them not having a cable at all just a few years ago the person I heard it from must have had very outdated info even then lmao. That's interesting, thanks.
Serbia, Russia, Mongolia (maybe), Albania and other Balkan countries. Ukraine before this current war was also a haven of piracy. Dunno if that will be returning
Russia is the best. Not only is piracy legal there, but it is encouraged due to the sanctions (western companies can no longer hold IP in Russia after the sanctions)
Also, anyone who uses these free treat-dispenser netflix-killer sites, feel free to share any other decent ones you know of.
I have been using https://www.braflix.ru and https://ww4.123moviesfree.net since fmovies was murdered. They both have their issues and using an adblocker is strongly recommended. I had a bunch of others bookmarked, but a lot of them went down shortly before or after fmovies.
Like, there was fboxz.to, but now when you try to access their site, all that's there is some text that says this fucking cringe garbage:
We've been providing links to movies and shows for a long time. Now it's time to say goodbye. Thank you for being our friends and thanks for staying with us that long. PS: **Please pay for the movies/shows, that's what we should do to show our respect to people behind the movies/shows.**(Emphasis mine.) My god, fuck off with that noise. What were you doing hosting pirated content if that's what you think? Or is that what the copyright pigs put up after seizing the servers, just pretending to still be the people who ran the place?
That's the same kind of cringe text Aniwave put up after being shut down, so your last point is possible.
”We know that this stuff is out there and easy to pirate, but uhhh, please don't do it! You wouldn't download a car!”
Wait did WhyEssEff say something too, are are you talking about @Awoo@hexbear.net's post here?
oh, my bad. I see you meant this. Edit again: WhyEssEff is awesome, but I think she gets a lot wrong in that post. Not the least of which being the legality/illegality of the end users using or talking about these sites. And people talking about them is not what gets them taken down.
Yeah do we really think that the feds just don’t know about piracy sites?
They keep track of websites like this at fmhy.net
https://github.com/fmhy
i do fancy pirating with NZBs and shit. https://1337x.to/ + utorrent works fine though
I once looked at how to use NZBs, but it seemed a little bit daunting.
You shouldn't use µTorrent though, it's trash. Use qBittorrent or Deluge or whatever instead.
It's really not, people just like to get nerdy about it because there's potential for there to not be overlap in what is findable.
There's two components, an indexer (think pirate bay), and the provider (which is kinda like a shared seedbox). You just search the indexer to get an NZB for what you're looking for.
I use NewsHosting as my provider, they have one of the best retention rates. They charge tons of money if you pay regular rates, but promo rates are like $25 a year. After the first year try to cancel and they'll give you the cheap rate everyone pays.
In terms of open registration indexers, NZBGeek is open, I haven't had a problem with them. I also have DrunkenSlug, but they have limited registration.
But yeah, I can find much more than on torrent sites, and it downloads at 10's of MB a second.
https://redlib.nohost.network/r/StremioAddons/comments/15agu2p/stremio_torrentio_debrid_a_howto_guide/ easiest to set up streaming
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Yeah, I've seen stremio mentioned a lot as the best way to go. It was always just easier to to go a known website, enter in a title, then play the movie. But at this point, with the other options being a bit hit or miss, it might be time for me to stop being lazy and get to using stremio.
oh I see thanks. well that site I posted has been working for me for the past few months so maybe it'll be useful for others who are in search of a new treat dispensary.
