FMHY points to piracy sites, cracked software and plenty of pages nobody would call safe. It is also still online, still updated, and still easy to find if you know the name.
That does not mean nobody has tried to stop things like it. The pressure mostly lands somewhere else, and I spent a while working out where.
Some of what follows is well documented. A few parts, including how FMHY shows up in Google, I could not confirm, and I have said so where it applies.
TL;DR: FMHY lasts mainly because it links to sites instead of hosting files, and US and EU courts have judged link indexes case by case. Reddit and Google act through notices and bans, which hit posts and pages more than whole projects. I found no case against FMHY itself and could not verify the viral Google and Reddit claims. Staying online does not make the sites it lists safe.
Why FMHY is still online
Because it is a list. Its footer says “This site does not host any files”, and what it publishes is a wiki of links to other sites.
That distinction matters in law, though it is not a free pass. The table shows where pressure has landed and what I could not confirm.
| Pressure point | What the record shows | What I could not confirm |
|---|---|---|
| Courts and police | Action against operators of sites that run piracy services, such as Fmovies in 2024 | Any case naming FMHY |
| Repeat infringer bans on link posting subreddits | Any ban of the FMHY subreddit | |
| Google Search | Over 10 billion removal requests overall by November 2024 | Whether any notice names FMHY’s domain |
| Industry reports | MPA’s 2025 Notorious Markets submission names piracy sites | Any mention of FMHY in the text I read |
What a US court said about link indexes
Not hosting is only half the argument. In Columbia Pictures v. Fung in 2013, the Ninth Circuit held a torrent index operator liable for inducing infringement even though he did not host the files.
The court also found he did not qualify for the DMCA safe harbors, citing his knowledge of the infringement and the financial benefit he drew from it.
What EU courts said
Jones Day summarises the 2016 GS Media ruling this way: linking for profit can carry a presumption that you knew the content was unauthorised. In the 2017 Ziggo case, Bird & Bird notes, the court found The Pirate Bay communicated works to the public by indexing, categorising and pruning torrent links.
That ruling did not lean on the profit presumption, and it turned on knowledge and curation.
FMHY curates and prunes, and its contribution page says staff test additions and that piracy sites get more vetting. Whether that looks like the deliberate intervention in those cases is a question for a court, and I am not going to guess.
Reddit is where it gets complicated
Reddit has banned link heavy piracy communities before. TorrentFreak covered bans of subreddits including r/fullmovies and r/crackedsoftware, with notices citing the repeat infringer policy.
TorrentFreak reported 709 subreddit bans for repeat copyright violations in the first half of 2025, more than double the same period a year earlier.
FMHY moved its main wiki to its own site on November 12, 2023, and FMHY said storage links now point there instead of Reddit. A mirrored copy of the subreddit FAQ, which I could only read through a third party front end, says posting has always been off.
I found no report of the FMHY subreddit being banned. That is not the same as saying it faces no risk.
How it shows up in Google, as far as I can tell
This is the part I could not pin down. Google says it removes content in response to valid copyright notices and lets site owners file counter-notices, and Gigazine reported requests passed 10 billion in November 2024, citing Google’s Transparency Report.
In practice, Google rarely issues a site-wide manual removal against an entire root domain like fmhy.net or its wiki mirrors. Instead, search visibility erodes piecemeal: individual subpages and specific link directories frequently get de-indexed or demoted through automated algorithmic downranking and targeted URL-level notices archived on Lumen Database.
That figure counts requests and not URLs actually removed.
The domain page for FMHY in that report would answer whether notices name it, but it would not load for me. The viral claim that Google delisted FMHY for DMCA violations has no source I could find, and search results shift by country anyway.
Why takedowns keep missing
In August 2024 the MPA’s Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment worked with Vietnamese police and US agencies on Fmovies, which Piracy Monitor called the largest pirate streaming operation at the time. Its operators were arrested.
The same report says Fmovies had more than 60 associated domains, and that it moved providers after an earlier service, 2embed, was taken down in 2023.
Reading FMHY’s October 2026 update, what stood out was how routine the deletions are, with a listed game site removed because it went offline and file hosts dropped over malicious ads.
The MPA’s 2025 Notorious Markets submission names indexing sites such as Rutracker, but FMHY does not appear in the text I read.
What stays risky even if the list survives
Surviving is not the same as safe. The sites on a list like this are run by strangers, and our piece on StreamEast clones shows how fast copycats turn into malware and fraud.
Using pirated copies can be illegal where you live. If you only want free viewing, start with the free Netflix alternatives we already covered.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does FMHY host pirated content?
FMHY says it hosts no files and publishes links to other sites. The sites it links to are run by third parties.
Has Google or Reddit banned FMHY?
I found no source confirming either. Viral posts claim both, but I could not trace them to a report or a transparency record.
Is using FMHY illegal?
Courts in the US and EU have judged link indexes case by case, so check local law. Additionally, access varies widely by region: several European, UK, and Asian internet service providers enforce court-mandated DNS- or IP-level blocking directly at the telco tier, which prevents visitors from resolving the site regardless of whether Google indexes it or the web host keeps it online.
The part the viral posts skip
The unglamorous answer is that enforcement here targets operators and notices, and a wiki of links is a harder target than a site full of files. That is a reading of the record, not a legal conclusion.
It also says nothing about whether the links are good for you.
