ACE Hits Hundreds of Pirate Streaming Sites By Shutting Down 2Embed

In recent years, pirate streaming platforms have surpassed torrent sites and direct download portals in terms of popularity.

These portals offer the ‘on-demand’ convenience many people have grown accustomed to. For site operators, the streaming business also has its advantages.

Piracy as a Service

The streaming boom has created a new branch of pirate entrepreneurs that offer “piracy as a service”. This includes platforms that provide access to a library of pirated content, which streaming sites can subsequently use to embed movies and TV shows.

This means that site owners no longer have to source and store content. They simply connect an API to the backend of their public-facing streaming portal. Front-ends can also be bought in the form of pre-packaged scripts and templates, if needed.

2Embed is one of the pirate libraries that has taken the pirate streaming world by storm. The site offered access to a catalog of pirate streaming links for 300,000 movies and TV shows, which could easily be embedded in any website using an IMDb ID for reference.

2embed.to embeds

The service has long been a thorn in the side of the movie industry. The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has repeatedly reported 2Embed to the U.S. Trade Representative. In its most recent filing, the MPA wrote that hundreds of streaming sites relied on 2Embed, a service that it had linked to Vietnam,

“Pirate site operators can either use 2embed’s service for free, in which case 2embed remunerates itself by inserting ads, or use its paid service that allows them to insert their own ads. MPA has evidence of the site’s connection to Vietnam.”

Hollywood’s concerns didn’t go unheard. Both the U.S. Trade Representative and the European Commission highlighted 2Embed as a notorious piracy source. Vietnamese authorities started to take an interest in the problem as well.

2Embed Shuts Down

Last week, representatives from the MPA and the affiliated anti-piracy group ACE visited Vietnam, speaking with local government officials. Around the same time, ACE booked a major success by shutting down 2Embed following negotiations with its Hanoi-based operator.

“[T]he service was shut down through direct operator outreach,” ACE chief Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak, noting that the action directly impacted hundreds of streaming sites.

“Of the 457 streaming sites identified by ACE as using 2Embed as their exclusive source of content, 302 are now unavailable, offline or devoid of content since ACE took the service down. These 302 sites received a combined 2.756 billion visits in the past two years.”

Domino Effect

According to ACE, Fmoviesto.site was the largest site hit by the shutdown. The streaming portal had nearly 15 million visits in May. At the time of writing, Fmoviesto.site appears to be streaming pirated content again, but others still display an error message, as seen below.

Refused to connect

The 2Embed takedown is a significant blow to the pirate streaming ecosystem. Many of the affected streaming portals may eventually recover using alternative video libraries, such as the copycat service 2embed.cc, but other sites are threatened more directly.

Van Voorn explains that the 2Embed operator is also behind other popular sites. This includes Zoro.to, which has over 200 million monthly visits and is currently the 180th most visited website in the world. ACE is in discussions with the Vietnamese operator to shut this site down as well.

These negotiations ran into complications earlier today when Zoro.to announced that the site had been “acquired” by a new dev team. The domain now redirects to Aniwatch.to, which is probably not the resolution ACE was aiming for.

Vietnamese Connections

MPA and ACE are not likely to let this issue go easily, though, especially at a time when they’re strengthening their relationships with Vietnamese authorities. A few days ago, the anti-piracy group met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), to discuss future cooperation.

ACE/MPA meeting with Vietnamese officials (photo)

Through this meeting, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Public Security, Le Quoc Hung, asked MPA and ACE to share intelligence going forward so that both sides can cooperate in their efforts to curb online piracy and copyright infringement.

According to Van Voorn, who was present in Vietnam, the job is not done yet.

“There is much to do in Vietnam, which has become a major global source and exporter of pirated content. But engagement with the government, particularly the Ministry of Public Security, is progressing,” Van Voorn tells us.

It’s unclear which ‘Vietnamese’ sites and services are next on the list to be targeted. However, the MPA previously linked Fmovies.to, Myflixer.to, BestBuyIPTV.store, Abyss.to and Fembed.com to the Asian country.