
This ring of piracy services had been blocked in at least eight countries prior to its shut down and efforts are underway to shut down the copycats as well: Since its closure, many copycat sites have emerged. An important development in 2018 was the shuttering of a ring of piracy services that had operated under the names 123movies, 123movieshub, gostream, and gomovies following the launch of a criminal investigation in Vietnam and significant industry engagement. 'Letter to Sung Chang, Director for Intellectual Property and Innovation' (PDF).
^ a b c Charles Rivkin (CEO MPAA) (1 October 2018). Gostream (and its associated domains) garnered 18.45 million unique visitors in July 2017 according to SimilarWeb data. Gostream currently has a global Alexa rank of 477 and a local rank of 170 in the U.S. The site has undergone changes in 2016-2017, rebranding as gomovies in March 2017, and then the domain name registered as gostream in July 2017 it is believed this is due in part to highprofile pressure. 123movies, now redirects to Gostream.is, the latest iteration of which is a very popular streaming website that embeds popular movie and series content from third-party cyberlockers. 'Letter to Christine Peterson, Director for Intellectual Property and Innovation' (PDF). ^ a b c Charles Rivkin (CEO MPAA) (2 October 2017). Similarly, the earliest article on TorrentFreak regarding 123Movies dates from late 2016. ^ The MPAA only first makes comment on 123Movies in its 2016 report to the USTR it does not appear in the MPAA 2015 report to the USTR on Notorious Markets. Popcorn Time, a freeware program allowing users to watch movies through torrenting on several platforms. YIFY Torrents (or YTS Torrents), online movie file downloading network. Putlocker, similar online movie streaming network. In November 2018 TorrentFreak reported sites connected or similar to 123Movies such as had also been shut down by the FBI, but were re-directing to other file sharing sites. However, the MPAA report also noted that numerous copycat sites had emerged in at least eight other countries. In October 2018, the MPAA's update on Online Notorious Markets to the United States Trade Representative, said that the closure of 123movies, 123movieshub, gostream, and gomovies, on foot of a criminal investigation in Vietnam in 2018, was 'an important development' in combatting illegal film piracy services.