On the tail of winning an injunction against Altered Carbon in August, the Alliance for Creativity and Media confirmed the shutdowns of Flixanity, a streaming site that had been operating since 2015 through various domains, two additional illegal streaming sites operating in the United States, and Phommoi, a popular pirate site in Vietnam.
In recent years, Flixanity’s operation was expanded to include several domains that bear names similar to other popular pirate brands to attract more visitors. Over the last year, traffic to the Flixanity-connected sites had grown tenfold with 29 active domains connected to the service.
All domains related to Flixanity were transferred to ACE and are redirecting to the Watch Legally section on the ACE website.
Two illegal US sites
MyTVBoss was an IPTV subscription service with 7,000 live channels. ACE outreached directly to the Arkansas-based operator and the service is now offline. All MyTVBoss domains have been transferred to ACE and are now redirecting to the Watch Legally section on the ACE website.
EZTV Streaming was an IPTV subscription service with 3,400 live channels. ACE identified the operators in Alabama and following direct communication, the service went offline.
Collaboration in Vietnam
ACE collaborated with the Vietnamese law enforcement agency PC03, to identify and interview the founder and operators of the piracy website Phimmoi as part of the first step in the ongoing prosecution process.
According to the ACE news release, “Phimmoi is the most visited piracy streaming website in Vietnam. At its peak of popularity between June 2019 and June 2020, Phimmoi was the 22nd most popular website in Vietnam and averaged over 69 million visitors per month. The website has been listed on the United States Government USTR ‘Notorious Markets List’ for the past two years and according to some estimates, Phimmoi can earn as much as $170,000 per month in advertising revenue alone. The losses to the Vietnamese and international content industry caused by Phimmoi illegally making their movies and TV shows are in the tens of millions of dollars.”
Read ACE’s Flixanity news release
Read ACE’s news release about MyTVBoss and EZTV Streaming
Read ACE’s Phommoi (Vietnam) news release
Why it matters
ACE exists to ensure the legal distribution of works by major media companies. These shutdowns ensure that consumers can no longer access these infringing sites directly, nor can any of them act as seeds to provide stolen programming to other pirates.
In Vietnam, 60% of consumers use illegal streaming sites and 21% use illicit streaming devices, according to a study released by the Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) earlier this year.
