Studios are cracking down on some of the internet’s most popular pirating sites

For years, The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has worked with Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association (MPA) to crack down on digital piracy, and this week, it seems like the organizations took a huge step towards reaching their goal.

Today, ACE — a coalition of over 50 major entertainment companies and production studios including Amazon, Disney, and Warner Bros. — took partial credit for the shuttering of Fmovies, a popular network of streaming sites hosting pirated films and television shows. In a statement, ACE called Fmovies and its affiliated sites “the largest pirate streaming operation in the world,” and according to The Hollywood Reporter, two suspects have been arrested by Hanoi police because of their connection to the operation.

MPA CEO and ACE Chairman Charles Rivkin described the takedown of Fmovies as “a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe.” The MPA’s chief content protection officer Larissa Knapp added that the organizations see this move as “sending a powerful deterrent message” to others currently running (or thinking about starting up) similar piracy sites streaming copyrighted material.

The shuttering of Fmovies, which launched back in 2016, comes as other illegal streaming sites like Aniwave and AnimeFlix have suddenly gone dark — sending their regular visitors into a panic. Along with an embed of Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again”, Aniwave’s website currently features a short message (presumably from its former operators) explaining that their goals with the site were “creating better products that provide an improved user experience and fostering competition to drive the market to enhance products.”

The message also ends with a specifically-worded call to action: “If possible, please use legal paid services. It’s something we should do to show our respect for creators and content producers.”

ACE hasn’t claimed responsibility for Aniwave’s closure, but as The Los Angeles Times notes, the call to action’s verbiage matches statements posted on other sites that the anti-piracy trade organization has gone after.

For obvious reasons like lost revenue, studios have never been hot on the idea of people consuming their intellectual property without paying for it. But piracy has still thrived for reasons other than people not wanting to hand over their cash to watch the latest blockbuster. Pirating things (read: stealing) is cheaper, yes, but the sites’ value also stems from the way they tend to offer far larger catalogues of things to consume compared to their legal competition.

Whereas studio-owned streamers have gotten into the habit of disappearing their content, or splitting it up amongst themselves in ways that make it both difficult and expensive to track down, piracy sites have essentially been big buckets users could dip into to find what they wanted with ease. And while copyright infringement is a crime, part of the reason that people do it is the simple fact studios haven’t made the legal option appealing enough for people to default to it.

That’s always been a challenge for studios, and it’s obviously become less of a priority as streamers have pivoted to price hikes. But at this point in the streaming wars and Hollywood’s larger push for financial profits, it’s not surprising that pirates are taking some hits.