In July, the streaming platform Cineby was enjoying immense popularity, pulling in more than 160 million visits and cementing its status as one of the most prominent pirate streaming sites on the entire internet. However, that high-traffic reality shifted drastically in August, when the site’s operators abruptly announced a surprise shutdown. The platform was systematically taken offline in stages over the course of more than a week, with its final domains going dark completely by early September.
Initially, the individuals behind the service offered no explanation for why they were throwing in the towel. Later, in a final statement released to users, they pointed to structural failures behind the scenes. They stated that their two main video infrastructure providers—which they identified as the "Sflix group" and the "1Movies group"—had been taken down roughly three months earlier, leaving Cineby unable to ever fully recover its operational capacity.
Throughout this sudden collapse, no formal anti-piracy operations were publicly mentioned by law enforcement, and prominent enforcement groups like the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment remained completely silent on the matter—until now.
The MPA Takes Credit
Last week, the Motion Picture Association submitted its annual overview of notorious foreign piracy markets to the United States Trade Representative. Before diving into a comprehensive listing of the ongoing threats that continue to plague the entertainment industry, the Hollywood-backed group highlighted what it considers significant positive developments since its previous submission.
The sudden demise of Cineby is counted proudly among those victories, alongside the linked embedding service Videasy. In its official filing, the MPA explicitly links these closures to coordinated pressure.
"On another positive note, 2025 submissions Cineby[.]app and Videasy[.]net have ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions," the organization writes.
Earlier within the same filing, the MPA connects the takedown of Cineby-associated domains to an extensive investigation and multi-region enforcement effort. Following this coordinated push, the primary cineby.at domain has been rendered completely nonfunctional, and Videasy has vanished offline. Other services mentioned alongside them, such as Vidking, remain technically accessible according to the report, but currently operate without any connected source servers.
The submission notably does not mention a specific court order or a direct police intervention, pointing instead toward a private enforcement effort. Further granular details regarding the exact nature of these private actions were not disclosed by the group.
However, the same filing heavily credits Vietnamese law enforcement with successfully dismantling the massive HiAnime piracy network. According to the MPA, that particular network also encompassed related operations such as Sflix, MyFlixer, MegaCloud, and Vidcloud. Seven suspected operators linked to that ring were formally charged in July. This law enforcement action aligns directly with the "Sflix group" reference made in Cineby’s post-mortem statement, suggesting that Cineby relied heavily on backend services provided by the Vietnamese network before its downfall.
While the MPA officially lists Cineby as defunct and no longer active, the brand itself has not entirely vanished from the digital landscape. Several copycat sites have naturally emerged in its wake, including cineby.vg, which the MPA explicitly acknowledges in its newly released report.
AnimeFLV Too
Cineby is far from the only unexplained shutdown that the MPA is now claiming as a major victory for rightsholders. The submission also details the fate of the massive Spanish-language anime portal AnimeFLV, which previously pulled in more than a billion annual visits, according to figures cited by the MPA.
"Additionally, the AnimeFLV family of sites included in last year’s submission has shut down following MPA and ACE actions. This shutdown represents a significant enforcement success," the MPA writes in its filing.
Earlier in July, reports indicated that AnimeFLV had mysteriously stopped serving video content around mid-June. The operators of the platform remained entirely silent, and no major anti-piracy organizations stepped forward to claim responsibility at the time. Today, the core AnimeFLV domain no longer loads any media content, instead returning a standard HTTP 502 error to visitors. Much like Cineby, the vacant space left by the brand has quickly been filled by various copycat domains trying to capture residual traffic.
The Hydra Keeps Growing
Despite celebrating these high-profile victories, the MPA’s comprehensive submission makes it clear that the broader piracy landscape continues to expand like a hydra. The group emphasizes that its overview is not intended to be entirely exhaustive, yet it highlights dozens of ongoing, critical threats that demand immediate attention from international regulators.
In last year’s report, platforms like Myflixerz/Sflix, Cuevana, and HiAnime were designated as top priority linking and streaming sites. In the new submission, Kisskh stands alone as the primary entry in that specific category, while Cuevana has been shifted down to the regular list. Kisskh, which focuses primarily on Asian dramas alongside mainstream Hollywood content, drew more than 70 million visits on its kisskh.is domain in August alone, with the vast majority of its audience originating from India.
The "hydra sites" category, introduced by the MPA in the previous year’s report, remains a primary source of industry anxiety. These modern pirate portals frequently rely on third-party Piracy-as-a-Service platforms to handle their heavy video hosting and delivery needs. This includes live sports infrastructure services like Streamed. According to data presented by the MPA, the approximate 30 different sites utilizing the Streamed sports PaaS accumulated 463 million visits in July, marking a massive surge from the 134 million visits recorded just a year prior.
Fresh hydra threats highlighted in the document include 1Shows/1Flex, CineHD/VidBox, and StreamEX. On the infrastructure side, while former giants like Videasy and MegaCloud have been successfully knocked offline, new alternatives have rapidly taken their place. VidFast, for instance, is reportedly utilized by at least 158 distinct pirate sites, pulling in a staggering 629 million monthly visits combined.
Within the cyberlockers and direct video hosting category, Telegram has now climbed to the very top of the priority list, pushing DoodStream down to the regular category. The MPA sharply criticizes Telegram for its inconsistent moderation, noting that the platform’s response time to formal copyright takedown notices can range anywhere from swift processing to weeks of complete inaction. Telegram is characterized within the report as a platform of immediate concern for rights holders.
The MPA also shared updated intelligence regarding Netulu, a hosting provider first flagged in the previous year’s report. Netulu was officially incorporated in Delaware in April, and according to the MPA, all pirate sites previously hosted by Private Layer were transferred directly to it around that time. U.S.-based investigators are reportedly actively following the resulting paper trail.
Meanwhile, the controversial pirate application MovieBox has returned to the spotlight. The MPA cites over 243 million downloads originating from the Palm Store alone, though recent independent reports indicate that the application’s actual download counter across various distribution channels has already surpassed the 300 million mark.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative will review the MPA’s submission alongside extensive feedback submitted by other industry stakeholders over the coming months. The USTR’s official annual notorious markets list is anticipated to be published early next year.
Leave a Reply