A major pirated movie website in Vietnam stopped operating

When accessing the website and fanpage of RoPhim On the morning of February 5, users received information from the administrator about the shutdown, “closing the journey of ‘Basket’ from today”, and recommending users to switch to copyrighted platforms such as FPT Play and TV360. Previously uploaded movies are also inaccessible.

RoPhim is one of the major movie sharing websites in Vietnam, emerging in 2025 by posting a lot of foreign film and television content. This site then developed a mobile application, which is considered to have an easy-to-see interface and diverse content, but is not copyrighted, meaning it is “pirated”.

This website was also blocked many times and had to be changed to another domain name. The last time this system announced a domain name change was on February 2, before closing today.

In the farewell post, the administrator also admitted the existence of pirated websites “affecting official platforms”, so “clearer actions are needed to demonstrate their responsibility”.

Previously, on February 2, Xoi Lac TVanother website specializing in streaming live TV shows of many sports such as football, tennis, badminton, basketball. also suddenly “froze” the content. The fanpage and group systems believed to be under the management of this page also stopped updating new information but did not make an official announcement. In addition to streaming copyright-free live videos, this website also has a large team of commentators who all use nicknames instead of their real names.

According to industry experts, pirated and uncopyrighted content is a burning problem in the digital content sector in Vietnam. Recently, many sites spreading pirated content about football and movies have attracted a large amount of traffic, but also caused many consequences, such as affecting businesses that buy official copyrights, causing domestic users to have limited access to copyrighted content. In addition, the livelihood of these sites comes from gambling advertising and malware distribution, which is illegal behavior.

Violating channels will only disappear when people stop watching them illegally

An intellectual property expert said that the behavior of copyright-infringing websites is a story that has been mentioned for many years, but enforcement and handling are not just legal issues. “That also includes technical issues and people’s awareness,” he said.

From a general management perspective, television copyright is one of the major issues in the intellectual property industry. However, sanctioning cross-border copyright infringement platforms is not easy. This is also an issue that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is concerned about and is coordinating with countries to find measures to prevent it.

Sharing his perspective, he said that the existence of websites with infringing content is also influenced by people’s habits. “If people limit viewing pirated and pirated products, it will not create a market for those websites,” he said.

Xoi Lac TV and related pirated websites have been repeatedly warned by authorities about violating television copyrights of international sports tournaments, including the English Premier League and matches with Vietnamese teams. These websites often operate multiple domain names simultaneously. When a website is blocked, the system switches to a new domain name or IP address.

In 2025, the National Assembly passed the Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Intellectual Property Law, including new regulations on copyright protection measures in the digital environment. Based on those regulations, the Prime Minister issued Directive 02 on strengthening the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

Directive 02 recognizes that the situation of intellectual property rights infringement is still complicated, with increasingly sophisticated methods and tricks. These acts affect the investment environment, legal rights and interests of people and businesses, and impact the national image and reputation.

The cause comes from many factors, including some legal regulations that are not consistent with reality and have not kept up with technological developments. The system of tools and means to detect and handle acts of intellectual property rights infringement is still limited and does not meet set requirements.

Faced with that situation, one of the requirements raised is to strengthen criminal penalties, research and amend the Penal Code in the direction of expanding the scope of regulation and raising the level of criminal penalties for crimes of infringing upon industrial property rights, copyright rights and related rights.

The Prime Minister also requested ministries, branches and localities to drastically implement solutions to improve the capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of intellectual property rights enforcement. The handling of violations must ensure the motto “6 clarity”: clear person, clear job, clear time, clear responsibility, clear product and clear authority.