In July, the massive pirate streaming site Cineby recorded more than 160 million visits, cementing its status as one of the most popular unauthorized video portals on the entire internet. But that momentum came to a sudden halt in August, when the site’s operators announced a surprise shutdown that left the online piracy community guessing. Over the course of more than a week, the platform was taken offline in stages, with its final domains going dark by early September.
Initially, the operators offered very little explanation for why they were throwing in the towel. However, in a final statement released to users, they revealed that their two primary video providers—which they identified as the "Sflix group" and the "1Movies group"—had been taken down approximately three months earlier, leaving the service unable to fully recover its operations. At the time of the closure, no anti-piracy organization stepped forward to claim responsibility, and major enforcement groups like the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment remained publicly silent. That dynamic has now changed, with Hollywood stepping up to claim the victory.
The MPA Takes Credit
Last week, the Motion Picture Association submitted its annual overview of notorious foreign piracy markets to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Before diving into the ongoing threats that continue to plague the entertainment industry, the Hollywood advocacy group took the opportunity to highlight several major positive developments and enforcement successes that have occurred since its previous submission to the federal agency.
The demise of Cineby prominently figures among those positive developments, alongside the closure of the linked embed service Videasy. In its official filing, the MPA explicitly links the collapse of these platforms to concerted intellectual property enforcement efforts.
"On another positive note, 2025 submissions Cineby[.]app and Videasy[.]net have ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions," the organization writes in the document.
Earlier in the official filing, the MPA connects the takedown of domains associated with Cineby to an extensive investigation and a multi-region enforcement effort. As a result of these concerted moves, the primary cineby.at domain is currently nonfunctional, and Videasy has been driven completely offline. Meanwhile, another related service mentioned alongside them, Vidking, remains accessible to web users, though the MPA notes that it currently operates with no connected source servers.
Because the regulatory submission does not mention a specific court order or a direct law enforcement raid, the operation appears to be part of a broader private enforcement effort orchestrated by rights holders. Further specific details regarding the exact mechanics of the takedown were not shared in the public document.
However, the same USTR filing credits Vietnamese law enforcement authorities with successfully dismantling the HiAnime piracy network. According to the MPA, that particular criminal ring also encompassed the Sflix and MyFlixer platforms, as well as the Megacloud and Vidcloud infrastructure. Seven suspected operators linked to that network were formally charged by authorities in July.
This law enforcement action aligns directly with the "Sflix group" reference made by Cineby’s operators during their shutdown, strongly suggesting that Cineby relied heavily on backend infrastructure and video hosting services provided by the Vietnamese syndicate that was dismantled earlier in the year.
Although the MPA officially categorizes Cineby as no longer active, the brand has proven resilient in the underground streaming ecosystem. Several copycat sites have already emerged to capitalize on the defunct brand’s lingering recognition, including cineby.vg, a domain that the MPA specifically calls out within its newly published report.
AnimeFLV Too
Cineby is not the only high-profile, unexplained shutdown that the MPA is now claiming as a major victory for the entertainment industry. The organization’s USTR submission also highlights the demise of AnimeFLV, a massive Spanish-language anime portal that previously pulled in more than a billion annual visits, according to estimates provided 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 report.
Back in July, industry reports noted that AnimeFLV had mysteriously stopped serving video content around mid-June. At the time, the site operators remained completely silent, and no anti-piracy coalition claimed responsibility for the disruption. Today, the primary AnimeFLV domain fails to load any content, returning instead a standard HTTP 502 error code. Much like Cineby, the vacant space left by the original platform has since been populated by various copycat domains trying to capture its former audience.
The Hydra Keeps Growing
Despite celebrating these high-profile victories, the MPA’s detailed submission makes it clear that the global piracy landscape resembles a hydra, with new threats continuously replacing the services that get knocked offline. The group emphasizes that its overview is not intended to be a comprehensive catalog of every infringing site on the web, but it successfully spotlights several key areas of ongoing concern.
In last year’s report, platforms like Myflixerz/Sflix, Cuevana, and HiAnime were highlighted as top-tier priority linking and streaming sites. In the new report, Kisskh stands alone as the sole priority entry in that category, while Cuevana has been moved down to the regular list. Kisskh, a platform specializing in Asian dramas alongside Hollywood film and television content, drew more than 70 million visits on its kisskh.is domain alone in August, with the vast majority of its audience originating from India.
The category of "hydra sites," introduced by the MPA in previous submissions, remains a central headache for rightsholders. These decentralized pirate portals frequently rely on third-party Piracy-as-a-Service platforms to handle their video delivery. This includes live sports infrastructure such as Streamed. According to the MPA’s figures, approximately 30 different sites utilizing the live sports PaaS Streamed accumulated a staggering 463 million visits in July, marking a massive surge compared to the 134 million visits recorded just a year prior.
Fresh hydra threats highlighted in the report include 1Shows/1Flex, CineHD/VidBox, and StreamEX. While previous PaaS heavyweights like Videasy and MegaCloud have been successfully shut down and removed from the active list, new alternatives have rapidly taken their place. VidFast, for instance, is reportedly utilized by at least 158 distinct pirate sites, generating a combined total of roughly 629 million monthly visits.
Within the cyberlockers and video hosting category, Telegram has risen to the top of the priority list, while DoodStream has been shifted to the regular entries. The MPA expresses acute frustration with the messaging app, noting that its responsiveness to copyright takedown notices is wildly inconsistent, ranging from swift removal actions to weeks of total inaction.
"Telegram is a platform of immediate concern," the MPA explicitly states in the report.
The filing also sheds new light on Netulu, a hosting provider that first appeared in last year’s MPA documentation. The company was formally incorporated in Delaware in April, and according to the MPA, all pirate streaming sites previously hosted by Private Layer were transferred directly to Netulu at that time. U.S.-based investigators are reportedly actively following leads related to this corporate migration.
The controversial pirate application MovieBox also reappears on the MPA’s radar. While the MPA’s report cites more than 243 million downloads originating from the Palm Store alone, rightsholders have more recently pointed out that the application’s cumulative counter has already surpassed the 300 million download mark.
The U.S. Trade Representative will spend the coming months reviewing the MPA’s detailed submission, alongside commentary and data provided by other industry stakeholders. The federal government’s official Notorious Markets List is expected to be published early next year.
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