123Movies Website — Review and History
123 movies, Gomovies, Gostream or 123cinema club, — Vietnam’s network of streaming websites that allows users to watch movies for free.
The American Motion Picture Association (MPAA) named him in March 2018 «the most popular illegal site in the world», and a few weeks later it was closed on the basis of a criminal investigation by the Vietnamese authorities. As of April 2020, the network is still active through clone sites..
Development
The site went through several name changes after closing from different domains; sometimes the name appeared as «123 movies», and sometimes how «123 movies». The original name and url was 123movies.to, which changed to other domains, including 123movies.is, before being redirected to gomovies.to and later gomovies.is. It was changed to gostream.is and then to memovies.to before moving on to 123movieshub.to/is and staying there until the work is completed.
In October 2016, the MPAA listed 123Movies in its review. « Notorious online markets» for the US Trade Representative (USTR), stating that: «The site has a global Alexa rating of 559 and a local rating of 386 in the US 123movies. According to SimilarWeb, in August 2016, there were 9.26 million unique visitors worldwide.». In October 2016 Business insider reported that 123movies.to was «most popular pirate site» In Great Britain.
123Movies includes HD, HD-RIP, Blu-ray, and movie quality cameras. The video hosts and players he used included Openload, Streamango, and MyCloud. During the period of existence and closure of the site Torrentfreak illuminated its functions, uptime / downtime, shutdown and shutdown reasons.
In December 2017, the creators of 123movies launched another streaming anime website called AnimeHub.to, which remained online for several months after 123Movies closed.
Malfunction
Site shutdown notification
In March 2017 Torrentfreak reported that US ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius was in talks with local information and communications minister Truong Minh Thuan to close down illegal streaming video sites operating from Vietnam and listed 123 films as one specific site.
In October 2017, the MPAA listed 123 Movies (and GoStream.is) in its review. «Notorious online markets» for the US Trade Representative, stating that, although the site was technically hosted in Ukraine, that: «The site is taking numerous steps to hide the identity of the operator, including the use of Cloudflare, but there is good reason to believe that the operator is still in Vietnam; content downloaded using cyber-blockers from multiple email accounts originating from Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy».
In March 2018, the MPAA announced that the site is «the most popular illegal site in the world», stated that he works from Vietnam and is estimated to be visited by 98 million people a month. On March 19, 2018, the site was announced to be closed on the website’s homepage, and he called on users «respect directors by paying for films and television shows».
In October 2018, the MPAA update on Internet markets for notorious The United States Trade Representative states that the closure of 123 films, 123movieshub, gostream and gomovies on the eve of the criminal investigation in Vietnam in 2018 was «an important event» in the fight against illegal movie piracy. However, the MPAA report also notes that numerous copycat sites have appeared in at least eight other countries. In November 2018 Torrentfreak reported that sites related or similar to 123Movies, such as Watchasap, the FBI was also shut down, but redirected to other file sharing sites.