Egyptian Authorities Shut Down Movizland and Arrest Operator

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is the most active anti-piracy coalition, assisting enforcement efforts around the world.

The group is backed by prominent rightsholders such as Apple, BBC, beIN, Canal+, Disney, Sky, Netflix, and Warner Bros, as it systematically hunts down key piracy players.

Through new partnerships and connections, ACE expanded its work in the MENA region last year. This includes Egypt, where the coalition teamed up with local law enforcement to tackle several large streaming portals over the past months.

Movizland

This week, another casualty was added to this growing list. ACE announced that it assisted the authorities in taking down Movizland, a popular pirate streaming site that has been in business for over a decade.

As part of the enforcement action, the alleged owner was arrested. The site originally launched in 2012 by an Egyptian national, who operated it out of the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Movizland provided access to a library of roughly 34,000 movies and series and had roughly 12 million monthly visitors, spread across several domain names.

The streaming site was popular in the Middle East, with Egypt being the top traffic source. In recent months, Movizland was among the top 100 most visited websites in the country.

Taking Out Major Players

ACE boss Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak that his organization brought this case to the attention of the authorities after it identified the operator. This person was located through an in-house investigation by ACE, where third-party subpoenas also proved useful.

The anti-piracy group regularly targets third-party intermediaries, including domain name registries and CDN provider Cloudflare, with subpoenas that request information on pirate sites. This occasionally leads to useful information.

The takedown of Movizland follows after earlier successes against various sports streaming sites in Egypt, as well as other popular pirate streaming portals such as MyCima and Shahed4U.

“We are thankful for the continuous hard work of the Egyptian authorities to address these criminal networks,” Van Voorn tells TorrentFreak, adding that there is “more to come.”

Persistent Pirates

These enforcement efforts undoubtedly have an effect, and not just on the operators. Based on the responses on social media, many people are disappointed to see their favorite pirate streaming site offline.

Whether they will do much to eliminate piracy in the region is another question. For now, we have seen that pirate brands such as Egybest, MyCima, Shahed4U, Yalla-Shoot and Yallakora live on, presumably under different operators.

These alternatives typically start as clones and copycats but can eventually become just as popular as the original.

ACE hopes, however, that by continuing to apply pressure, most pirate site operators will eventually give up. That may work, but there’s plenty of work left to do; despite the takedowns, Egypt’s top 100 most visited websites list still features dubious streaming sites.