123movies anyone can watch movies, and T.V. shows online for free. You don’t have to create an account or watch any ads. Watching things online is easy because they’ve made it possible to watch exactly what you want without having to pay or deal with any trouble.
The websites 123Movies, GoMovies, GoStream, MeMovies, and 123movies hub, were all part of a network of file-streaming sites based in Vietnam that let people watch movies for free. In March of 2018, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) referred to it as the “world’s most popular illicit site.” A few weeks later, though, it was shut down because the Vietnamese government was investigating a crime. As of July 2022, and network can be accessed because it can be reached through clone sites.
Innovation
After being taken offline from several domains, the website underwent several name changes. Depending on the domain, the website’s name could be “123Movies. The website used to be called 123movies.to, and its URL was 123movies.to. However, it changed its name several times and redirected users to gomovies. To and then gomovies. Is. First, it was sent to gostream. Is. Then, it was sent to movies. To. After that, it was sent to 123movieshub.to/is, where it stayed until it was shut down.
In October of 2016, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) provided the Office of the United States Trade Representative with a list of Notorious Online Markets. (USTR). 123Movies was included on this list. The summary adds, “The website’s current global Alexa rank is 559 and its local rank in the United States is 386.” In August 2016, 123movies. had 9.26 million unique visitors around the world.” Business Insider published a study in October 2016 that said 123movies.to had become the “most-used pirate website” in the U.K.
Users of 123Movies could watch movies in high definition (H.D.), high-definition rip (HD-RIP), Blu-ray, and camera quality. It used video hosting and playing services like Openload, Streamango, and MyCloud. TorrentFreak talked about the site while it was still up and after it was shut down. They talked about the site’s features, how often it was up and down when it closed, and why it closed.
In December 2017, the same people who started 123movies also started a site called AnimeHub. After 123movies were taken offline, this site stayed online for several months.
Blackout
In March 2017, TorrentFreak published an article saying that the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius, had met with the Vietnamese Minister of Information and Communications, Truong Minh Tuan, to talk about shutting down illegal video streaming sites that were run from Vietnam. The article pointed out that 123movies.com was one of the sites being discussed.
In October of 2017, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sent the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative with a list of Online Notorious Markets. On this list, both 123Movies and GoStream.is appeared. Even though both sites were technically run from Ukraine, the MPAA said that the following was true about 123Movies: “The site takes a lot of steps to hide who runs it, like using Cloudflare, but there are good reasons to think the operator is still in Vietnam.
In March 2018, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) declared the website to be “the most popular illegal website in the world.” The website has approximately 98 million monthly users and was situated in Vietnam. The MPAA also said that the website was run out of Vietnam. On March 19, 2018, a message was posted on the website’s homepage telling visitors that the site was closing down and encouraging them to “honor filmmakers by paying for movies and T.V. shows.”
Resurrection
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) provided the United States Trade Representative with an update on online notorious markets in the month of October 2018. In that report, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) referred to the closure of 123movie, 123movieshub, gostream, and gomovies in 2018 as “an important development” in the ongoing battle against illicit film piracy services.On the other hand, the MPAA report said that at least eight countries had at least one copycat website. In November 2018, TorrentFreak said that the FBI had also shut down websites like WatchAsap that were connected to 123Movies or similar, but that they were sending users to other file-sharing websites.
