The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition, today announced it has shut down France’s second most popular illegal streaming and direct download site, Extreme-down.

ACE identified the operator in Houmt Souk, Tunisia. ACE approached the operator, who subsequently ceased the illicit operations and transferred all domains to ACE. The domains now redirect to the “Watch Legally” page on the ACE website.  The service had more than 14 million visitors each month.

“Thanks to ACE’s rapidly expanding global network, we are in a better position than ever to act decisively against illegal piracy operators in all markets across the world,” said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Global Content Protection Chief of the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE. “Extreme-down offered a large library of TV series and movies in French and original versions; we counted more than 40,000 movies and TV series episodes affecting ACE members. That library is now closed.”

French premium television channel providers and ACE members CANAL+ and France Televisions worked closely with ACE and local authorities on this action.

“CANAL+ Group has fought content piracy for years and, as a member of ACE, we are particularly pleased with the takedown of this notorious illegal website,” said Celine Boyer, Global Head of Content Protection at CANAL+ Group. “The elimination of this website is a massive success for the protection of rights holders in French-speaking countries.”

“The damaging effects of piracy cannot be overstated, especially for a global public service media company like ours,” said Nathalie Bobineau, Senior Vice President of International Development for France Televisions. “We applaud the efforts of ACE in their fight to defend copyright and successfully close down a piracy operation of this magnitude. ACE is currently the only organization able to give powerful and efficient support to our relentless fight against piracy worldwide, and we will continue to work with ACE to combat illegal operations that threaten legal content creators.”

This article was first published on Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment