If some pirate sites try to take up residence in the open sea or on an island (The Pirate Bay wanted to buy its own island in 2022, in order to free itself from copyright laws), others have found a less expensive solution by installing their servers in less fussy countries. And among these territories, there is one that particularly attracts them, as the authorities are so lax.
Bmovies, Bflix, Fmovies, 9anime… What is the common point between these sites, which offer to watch thousands of films and series in streaming and completely illegally ? They are all hosted in the same country: Vietnam. Also, it looks like most are owned by one of the biggest pirate IPTV services, BestBuyIPTV.
If the country has been on the list of countries monitored by the United States for a few years, the latter cannot ultimately do much to stem the phenomenon. Worse : these hyper popular sites would generate several billion views of films and seriesillegally made available to Internet users.
Vietnam hosts the biggest pirate sites in the world
Relations between the United States and Vietnam were however strengthened in 2018. At the time, the American ambassador had to intervene with the local authorities. Some of the biggest pirate sites, like 123movies or Putlockerhad closed their doors overnight.
According to SimilarWeb, which lists the Internet traffic of each site around the world, it appears that a site like fmovies.to, which takes root in Vietnam, generated 92 million visits last March (85 million in January and 77 million in February). And pirate sites of this kind, there are dozens of them that are managed and hosted in the country.
If this type of site can act without too much concern in the face of the authorities, it is mainly because there are no criminal investigations or prosecutions. According to the country’s criminal law, only “substantial fines and years of imprisonment” are incurred by fraudsters. However, despite the attempts of rights holders to win their case by having these sites closed, in almost all cases, no action is taken by the authorities.
Although the USTR (United States Trade Representative) tightened the screws on the Intellectual Property Code in January 2023, Vietnam was not placed under priority surveillance. Sites like fmovies or bmovies are however part of the list of pirate sites published by the USA last February. The country continues to turn a blind eye and the offending websites, which generally offer a paid Premium plan, continue to reap the profits.
Source : TorrentFreak
